The Dutch engineers had delivered their verdict: no road was possible on this volcano rising from the sea. An island carpenter, Josephus Lambert Hassell, then took a correspondence course in civil engineering and, with his neighbours, spent twenty years carving "the road that could not be built" into the cliff. That's the road you travel today after landing at Fort Bay, Saba's only landing point, where expedition ships anchor at the foot of cliffs that plunge straight into the ocean.

A vertical island

Saba is like nothing else in the Caribbean: thirteen square kilometres, about two thousand residents, no permanent beach — and no regrets. Everything here goes up or down. From the landing, the winding road climbs to The Bottom, the tiny capital set in an old crater a kilometre and a half from the pier. White houses with green shutters and red roofs, flower-filled gardens, silence: it feels like a dollhouse village clinging to the mountain. An unwritten convention imposes this colour scheme on the entire island, giving the hamlets a rare harmony. Minibus taxis wait at the landing and happily serve as guides, family anecdotes included. Many offer a detour to the airport, a local point of pride: its 400-metre runway set on a promontory is among the shortest in the world to handle commercial flights.

Windwardside and the lace

The ribbon of asphalt continues to Windwardside, the island's second village, perched even higher. Its lanes hold a few shops, a museum set in a 19th-century sea captain's house and artisans who carry on Saba lace, brought back from a Venezuelan convent around 1870 and long sold by mail order around the world. Buying an embroidered handkerchief here means leaving with a piece of island patience. The village cafés also serve a local specialty of spices steeped in rum, Saba Spice, whose recipe every family jealously guards — ask for a taste before you buy, as the variations can surprise you.

Mount Scenery, the stairway to the clouds

Across from the Windwardside trail shop begins the day's great challenge: the 1,064 steps of Mount Scenery, the highest point in the Kingdom of the Netherlands at 870 metres. Allow about ninety minutes to climb through a cloud forest where tree ferns, bromeliads and orchids cling to the mist. At the summit, the clouds play hide-and-seek: when they part, the view sweeps across St. Martin, St. Eustatius and the vast blue. Good shoes and a water bottle are a must — and you need to be back down before the last tender.

Beneath the surface, the pinnacles

The marine park that has surrounded the island since 1987 protects rare formations: volcanic pinnacles rising from the depths to within twenty-five metres of the surface, covered in coral and frequented by reef sharks and turtles. The dive centres in Fort Bay organize half-day outings; certified divers speak of these walls as one of the best-kept secrets of the Caribbean.

Landmarks

The summit you keep inside

You leave with burning calves and a head full of green mist. This island without sand or casinos offers what standard itineraries almost never do: the feeling of having earned your landscape, step by step. On the tender back, watching the cliff rise toward the clouds, everyone appreciates the tenacity of a people who built their road by hand — and their stairway to the sky.