Dairies of a Wikipedia Explorer: Saba, the Unspoiled Queen of the Caribbean
Wikipedia is the wonderland which Alice was lost in. A frequent destination for the bedroom time traveler and world explorer, one can simply enjoy being lost in the annals of the website. On the latest expedition Saba popped out on a page about the Netherlands Antilles, more specifically the island’s capital of The Bottom caught the eye. The original was De Botte, “The Bowl,” due to the small city’s seat being surrounded by verdant mountains; The Bottom is the English corruption of the Dutch name. There are also other places on this Island with intriguing names such as “Old Booby Hill,” “Hells Gate,” or “Man of War Rocks.” This tickled the curiosity of a veteran Wikipedia explorer, what were a bunch of English doing on a Dutch Caribbean Island renaming everything.
Saba was originally settled by the Cibony around 1100 BCE. The Arawak then came to the Island around 800 CE, from South America. Columbus sighted the Island, never landed. In 1632 a shipwrecked English bunch found themselves on its rocky shores, followed by a stray Frenchmen in 1635 who claimed the entire isle for King Louis XIII, then the Dutch entered the scene in the 1640s with a few families from Sint Eustatius. Unfortunately for the Dutch, a Jamaican governor kicked them out. But the determined Dutch returned in 1816 to finally take the Island once and for all. The connection with Jamaica did not end though as Jamaican pirates continued to hide in the lush vista of Saba. In fact, pirates seemed to love the slopes of the Unspoiled Queen of the Caribbean as many of them found themselves a haven in her embrace.
In the 19th and 20th centuries the Island’s men found themselves more legitimate sources of income on the high seas, while the women became producing the Island’s best export — “Saba Lace.” The men gone for extended periods of time and the women responsible for majority of the GDP, Saba became known as “The Island of the Women.” In 1943 a self-taught engineer named Joseph Hassel, and nicknamed Lambee, began building roads on the island. Lambee’s roads brought some much-needed infrastructure to people of the Island. Today Saba has an Airport, a large pier, and is a municipality of The Netherlands following the dissolution of the Netherlands Antilles.
Saba is the Caribbean’s crown jewel, a tourist hotspot, a diver’s dream destination. It has gorgeous reefs filled with fishes of all kind, mountains covered in tropic majesty, red roofed houses popping out from the wilds, and the Caribbean weather which can turn a cynical pessimist into a jolly optimist. I will have to leave the wonderful Wikipedia world and head to explore this paradise in person, Saba is a destination one must experience in person before its too late.
