Tidy white houses cling to the mountainside, and small family cemeteries adjoin each dwelling. Lace-curtained, gingerbread-trimmed cottages give a Disneyland aura.
The first jeep arrived on Saba in 1947. Before that, Sabans went about on foot, climbing from village to village. Hundreds of steps had been chiseled out of the rock by the early Dutch settlers in the 1640s.
Past storybook villages, The Road goes over the crest to The Bottom. Derived from the Dutch word botte, which means "bowl-shaped," this village is nestled on a plateau 240m (790 ft.) above the sea, which is surrounded by rocky volcanic domes. It's also the official capital of Saba, a charming Dutch village of chimneys, gabled roofs, and gardens.
From The Bottom, you can take a taxi up the hill to the mountain village of Windwardside, perched on the crest of two ravines about 541m (1,774 ft.) above sea level. This village of red-roofed houses, the second most important on Saba, is the site of the two biggest inns and most of the shops. A little beyond Windwardside, a set of 1,064 hand-hewn steps scales the side of Mount Scenery, going through a rainforest where wild orchids bloom along with giant elephant ears, palms, ferns, and mangoes.
From Windwardside, you can climb steep steps cut in the rock to yet another village, Hell's Gate, teetering on the edge of a mountain. There's also a serpentine road from the airport to Hell's Gate, where you'll find the island's largest church. Only the most athletic climb from here to the lip of the volcanic crater.
A Roller-Coaster Road -- Regardless of what road you travel in the Caribbean, there's nothing to compare with the 31km (19-mile) of The Road. Its hairpin curves climb from the little airport up the steep, steep hillside to the lush interior of Saba. In days of yore, engineer after engineer came to the island and told Sabans they'd have to forget ever having a road on their volcanic mountain. However, Josephus Lambert Hassell, a local, had high hopes. In the 1930s he began to take a correspondence course in engineering while he plotted and planned The Road. Under his guidance, his fellow islanders built The Road over the next 2 decades or so. In recent years, it's been necessary to reconstruct The Road, but it's there waiting to thrill you. At the top of The Road stands Windwardside at 541m (1,774 ft.), Saba's second-largest settlement and the island's midpoint.
