The Sandy Cruz trail starts just above the town of Hell’s Gate and winds around the north side of the island. It is high enough to be in a damp, dense forest with luscious vegetation. We spent about two and a half hours on the trail. It could be done faster, but you wouldn’t have time to see much. If I had my choice, I would have poked along for four hours or more finding creatures and taking photos. Below are a few shots from our trip. They start with a few birds taken en route to the trailhead. Apparently the great egret turned up on the island after a tropical storm.

On the trail, we saw many of the usual subjects, such as the whistling frog, Saban anole, red-bellied racer and a rat. There were also, of course, many snails and other invertebrates.

Saba rises abruptly out of the water, leaving precious little space for extreme shallow snorkeling. There is, however, an area of tide pools near the airport that is quite suited to our favorite pastime. Below are some above water shots of our expedition to the tide pools. There is also some underwater footage that Madam J has, which I can hopefully post later. Nestled in a rocky outcrop, there were several large tide pools, including one that was big enough to support a variety of corals.

On a day off diving, Yann, Marie and I went to the top of Mt. Scenery, the tallest point on Saba. As mentioned before, it’s mostly a long series of stairs leading up through various types of forest to the elfin cloud forest at the top. On the way up and back we saw many things.

Many of them were snails. I think most of them are from the family Helicinidae.

There were many other invertebrates as well, mostly insects. Although I found few insects on the way up, on the way back I began to notice more of the smaller insects, like leafhoppers and flies. On the trip down I ended up seeing a pretty good amount of diversity, though not large numbers.

I have some reptile photos from the following day, but the most notable vertebrate we found on this hike was a big-eared rat that was walking around with his eyes closed. Yann and Marie gave him some granola bar.

There was also plenty of great scenery, which I did not capture in all its glory. It was still great to see.

Below are some shots of critters that I found on an afternoon wandering around The Cottage Club. There are several photos of the endemic Saban anole (Anolis sabanus). Males of this species have a striking pattern of black spots, while females are mostly tan. In the forest, the young actually look a lot like the bearded anole (Anolis pogus) which is on St. Martin. There is also a photo of a green iguana, which I initially thought was the Lesser Antillean iguana (Iguana delicatissima). As it turns out, the green iguanas on Saba are a distinct population with unique coloring, although they haven’t been designated as a separate species or subspecies…yet!

Tent Reef is another gorgeous dive site near the harbor. There are actually three moorings at various depths. One thing that is surprising about Saba is how close the dive sites are to the shore, which is due to the steep slope of the island both above and below the water line. The site features lots of overhangs and swim-throughs, as well as sandy patches with loads of garden eels.

Man o’ War Shoals is a dive site right beside Diamond Rock, which is sort of a mini-pinnacle. From a sandy bottom at about 25 meters, a pair of peaks rise to about five meters below the surface. It’s another gorgeous dive site, and since it’s relatively shallow, we had plenty of time to explore its sponge and coral encrusted slopes. Once again, my photos mostly showcase the beautiful landscape, but you can also seen that there are tons of fish, including lots of brown chromis.

Mt. Michel is another pinnacle dive in Saba, peaking about 30 meters under the surface. It had been without a mooring for about two years until a new one was recently added, so it hasn’t been explored much lately. I had the fisheye lens on again, so mostly I took photos of the spectacular sponges.

Before prepping these images, I spent a little time watching some instructional videos from Underwater Photoshop. I have had the DVD for over a year, but hadn’t gotten around to watching most of it. Although I didn’t mess with my images too much, there are some really great techniques covered in the DVD.

It seems I only managed to do a proper terrestrial nocturnal photo shoot once while I was on the island, but I did manage to see quite a few critters right around The Cottage Club. Whistling frogs were dime a dozen around the swimming pool, and my favorites were the Saban anoles sleeping in the bushes.

Between our early afternoon arrival and a Sea and Learn talk about spiders by Leslie Bishop in the evening I had enough time to make it almost all the way up Mt. Scenery and back. I learned a couple days later that I was only about five minutes from the top when I turned back to get to the talk on time.

The Mt. Scenery trail is mostly made of steps, 1064 of them, which take you from the town of Windwardside to the cloud forest. The top of the mountain is 877 meters. From Windwardside, it’s about the same vertical climb as it is from Grand Case to the top of Pic Paradis, the highest point on St. Martin. The vegetation is astounding, and I saw two red-bellied racers, a snake that is only found on a couple islands. Given the lush surroundings, I was surprised that I didn’t see more insects. This would also be rectified somewhat on my next trip up there. They did have a lot of ferns of many varieties, including tree ferns.

Taking a step back for a moment, below are some photos from our arrival on Saba. We opted for the fourteen-minute plane flight, landing on the world’s smallest commercial runway, which looks more like a driveway. Included below are a few photos of our arrival, the view of nearby islands Statia, St. Kitts and Nevis and some shots of the landscape from the cab ride to The Cottage Club, where we were staying.