Volcanoes!
We sailed from Dominica north to the tiny Dutch island of St. Eustatius, aka Statia. It is more or less on the way to the USVI. Statia and its nearby cousin Saba are isolated rocks with steep drops and 17,000 year old volcanic cones. The one on Statia is called The Quill and is a child’s imagining of what a volcano looks like: a symmetrical cone rising abruptly from the surrounding land and sea. We hiked up the dry forested slopes of the Quill with Tim and Diane from Skylark and found a magical microclimate had produced what was correctly termed the Elfin Forest. Just along the narrow edge between cone and crater at a certain elevation on the eastern rim grow numerous exotic looking ferns and thick viridian mosses, twisting vines and gigantic philodendron. This lush growth is kept verdant by the moisture that condenses at just this spot as it passes from east to west over the top of the Quill. At the end of the trail stood Mazinga, a giant boulder perched on the edge of the cone. Not many rocks get their own name.
St. Kitts. The smoke is just from a field being burned off, it’s not an active volcano!
From its summit we could see south to St. Kitts and its dramatic volcanic cone. I never really understood how volcanically active the Caribbean is until we came here in person. Dominica has 9 volcanic areas considered active: witness the bubbling mud pools. Montserrat, 30 miles adjacent to Antigua blew its top in the 90’s killing scores and devastating half of the island. It still has a no-go zone around part of its coastline and we saw it spewing smoke on several occasions. On our sail to Statia we passed in the lee of Montserrat and could smell the strong odor of sulphur on the evening breeze. And as I write this La Soufrierre on St Vincent south of Martinique is most seriously erupting, spewing ash and smoke which is covering the island and its neighbors.
Saba looms in the distance north of Statia.
