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Surreal seamounts and dizzying walls make for thrilling diving off Saba, Statia and St. Kitts.
A hawksbill turtle cruises around the dramatic slope of Diamond Rock, one of Saba's premier dive sites.
January 2007
By Deborah Kirk
Photography by Michele Westmorland
It doesn't get any better than this. I'm relaxing on powder-soft Maho Beach, where the water's a supernatural shade of turquoise. As I wade in the warm shallows, I begin to think: yep, I could really get used to this.
But then--out of nowhere--a roaring sandstorm surges in my direction. Gale-force winds rip across the narrow strip of beach, driving fine grains of sand into my hair, ears and every pore of my skin. I get blown off my feet and rammed straight into the water. The force is so strong I can't get up. My backpack and flip-flops, which I'd left on the beach, have been whooshed into the water along with everyone else's stuff, and I watch them float away.
Within seconds, the fierce winds abruptly subside. Sunbathers return, we collect our things, and the beach returns to its glorious status quo. As if nothing happened.
Wiiiiild!, I think. But even wilder is this: This exact scenario is repeated at least half a dozen times a day.
Maho, on the south shore of the Dutch Caribbean island of Sint Maarten, has the distinction of lying a few feet from the runway of an international airport. Here, when commercial jets leave Princess Juliana Airport, the prop blast tears across Maho like a sirocco whipping across the Sahara. When they come in for a landing, they often descend to within 100 hair-raising feet of shore. At nearby Sunset Beach Bar--a lively joint by day or night--an upright surfboard posts the day's arrivals and departures, so thrill-seekers know precisely when to expect the adrenaline rush of being on the underside of an incoming 747 or being tumbled by the blast of an outgoing one.
This high-velocity action is Day One of my weeklong adventure in the Eastern Caribbean. I've come here to begin an excursion aboard the Caribbean Explorer II that involves diving around the islands of Saba, St. Eustatius and St. Kitts. Since Sint Maarten is not on the live-aboard's agenda other than as a jumping-off point, I arrive a day early to see as much as I can--and get an involuntary dermabrasion in the process. It turns out to be the perfect introduction to a week of diving that's so extraordinary it can only be described as ... wiiiild.
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