Stuck in Saba

When the CEO finds out that the teeny, tiny hardware store on that island carries mostly DeWalt power tools, and this CEO is an extremely aggressive go-getter who used to be the CEO of DeWalt, then flying to this tiny island and visiting this hardware store becomes your priority.

This is what happened with me.  Joe, the CEO of TTi (the company that owns Milwaukee Tool), recently hired a new chef for his Baltimore home, and this chef had just moved from the island of Saba.  Mike, the chef, jokingly brought up to Joe one day that the little hardware store in Saba only carried a couple of Milwaukee tools.  Well, Joe went ballistic and pretty soon the Milwaukee VP of Hardware, my boss’s boss, was emailing and calling me to figure out when I could go to Saba and convert this tiny hardware store.  I had already been in contact with this tiny store as they purchase about $300/year in drill bits, but it was never on my radar of places to physically visit because a store that size will usually stock about 5 tools and maybe purchase $2000/year in tools and accessories total.  That does not merit a visit. But, when the CEO demands something, it needs to be done like yesterday.  So, that’s where I went last week.  But a 6-hour day trip turned out to be 3 days stranded in Saba with not much more than the clothes on my back.

Here is the tiny store - HES Home & Hardware Do It Best

Saba – an island that’s part of the Dutch Antilles islands (which also include Curacao, Aruba, Bonaire, St. Eustatius, St. Maarten, St. Barth’s) has a population of 1200, with an additional 600 who attend the Saba University School of Medicine on the island. 



Here is Saba as we are approaching it to land. I was 1 of 4 passengers on the 20-seat prop plane.

The island is 5 square miles, literally a mountain jutting out of the ocean. It’s the top of an underwater (dormant) volcano, and is covered with lush, beautiful rainforest.  There is one road that winds around the island, and crime is almost non-existent.  According to my hardware store customer, there are no tow trucks on the island – if you need a tow they use a rope. 

 

It's an unwritten rule in Saba that all houses must be white with red roofs and green shutters (I see a yellow-ish one...).

It's a Dutch island, which you note by the style of buildings.

Beautiful views!

Electricity only arrived to the island in 1967.  Franchises are not allowed on the island, and there is one gas station there.  Here it is:

Here's the one and only gas station on the island. Fancy.

Saba is most known for its awesome hiking trails and beautiful scuba-diving experiences.

Down there are the elementary and secondary schools on the island. Not a bad view from the classroom...

This is The Bottom, the capital city of Saba.

 

The airport runway is logged as the shortest commercial runway in the world, 1300 feet long, with cliffs dropping into the ocean on either side.  Pilots have to have special training to fly here. 

There's the airport (one room) and the runway!

In case you missed my Facebook post of a video of a Saba landing, here it is:

 

Only small prop planes can land (a 12-min flight from the nearby, larger island of St. Maarten) and only if the wind is right.  The airport runs East-West, so if there is a crosswind coming from the north or the south, flights simply do not happen.  It’s rare that there’s a crosswind, and even more rare that the crosswind lasts for two full days, but that’s what happened!  I landed on Wednesday at this ‘international airport’ the size of my apartment, and the purchasing manager of HES Home & Hardware Do It Best Store, Glen, picked me up and we drove the 10 minutes in his truck all the way to the other side of the island where the store was located.  The meeting went well (I doubled my estimate of what I had anticipated that they would invest in for Milwaukee), and we went to lunch at a restaurant called Tropics, part of Juliana’s Hotel, which was great food with an awesome mountain view.  Little did I know that this would be my home for the next 2 nights…

 

So we finished with lunch and with business, they took me on a short driving tour to The Bottom, the capital ‘city’ of Saba, and then we arrived at the airport to take my flight back to St. Maarten.  Unbeknownst to us, the 5pm flight was cancelled.  The 3pm flight was also cancelled before me, but those people were able to jump on the public ferry last-minute to get take the 90-min boat-ride back to St. Maarten.  I had no such luck, and since the other ferry that usually came to Saba on Thursdays was broken down in the lagoon of St. Maarten from Hurricane Gonzalo, there wouldn’t be another ferry until Friday (it was Wednesday), and the winds weren’t looking any better to fly until Saturday.  So I ended up calling Juliana’s Hotel my home for the next 2 nights, taking the room of a business traveler who was stuck on the other side in St. Maarten.  The tricky part was that I had not anticipated staying overnight, so now I had to go buy a toothbrush and contact solution. I didn’t buy a comb, so I combed my hair with my fingers and you bet – I handwashed my undergarments in the sink with a bar of soap.  That bit of training on hand-washing clothes on my last trip to Guatemala came in handy! I had packed with me some sweatpants and a t-shirt because I was hoping to go for a short hike if there would have been time on Wednesday afternoon (which there wasn’t time, plus it was rainy and too muddy), so those pink sweatpants and t-shirt became my clothes for the next 2 nights and 2 days.  Yuck! And due to the windy and rainy weather going on, it was actually COLD in Saba, so on night #2, I had to break down and buy a Saba University School of Medicine hoodie – XL the only size available.  And when I was in the store, I gave in to the purchase of a green ‘I <3 SABA’ t-shirt, looking forward to a clean shirt to put on that next morning.  Those basic tourist trap souvenir tops cost over $65!  You bet that I will be expensing them and Milwaukee Tool will be happy to reimburse me.  Here’s me in my trendy outfit on my last day, with Garvis, the taxi driver who drove me back and forth to the airport 3 different times as I wishfully thought there would be a break in the crosswind and an airplane would come and get me.

Me and Garvis, my taxi driver.

After the first night, when I was hanging at the airport hoping for a miraculous change in the winds, the airport agent approached me and few others and said that there was a fisherman going out soon and was willing to take us to St. Maarten in his tiny boat as long as we chipped in for gas. Mind you – I had heard that the big catamaran ferry that was coming on the following day was a nauseating 90-minute ride.  Riding on this fisherman’s small dinghy boat would mean guaranteed nausea and getting soaked by waves, let alone the fact that there was a storm front passing through so it was actually be a bit life-risking to brave the waters.  I passed on that offer.

So just imagine me, rolling around this nice boutique hotel in baggy (and bleach-stained) sweatpants and a baggy tshirt and black hoodie.  I seriously looked like a nomadic vagabond. The first night I was so emotionally overwhelmed that I didn’t eat dinner and just sat in my room, but the 2^nd night I went to the neat little hotel restaurant for dinner, in my stylish jogging suit, for a nice romantic candlelight dinner for one, surrounded by people dressed a little better than me.  Haha. 

The island truly is beautiful and I had wifi at the hotel, so I was able to get a lot of computer work done.  I met some interesting people and was lectured by a group of Americans from Pittsburgh who were there for diving and couldn’t believe I traveled to all of these islands and had never scuba-dove. I really should get certified and do some diving... I would have liked to go on a hike, but I wasn’t really equipped with boots and stuff.  Plus the constant rain made for extremely muddy trails, and I couldn’t afford to get my ONE outfit muddy.

Blessings of the trip: while it’s not an ideal way to spend on a beautiful island, it doesn’t take away from that fact that it is a beautiful place with lush green mountainsides plunging into the vast ocean.  I had my laptop with me so I was able to work, and I had more time than I’ve had in months to just think, read, pray, and be still.  Life is busy, as you all know, and we are so distracted with so many options of entertainment and activities and buzzing technology.  I tend to run around like a chicken with my head cut off, and I think God truly gave me these days to slow down and be still. There was literally nothing else to do.  So I’m grateful for that.  And I’m also grateful for my wonderful customer in St. Maarten, Audrey from Electec, who helped me to check out of my St. Maarten hotel on Thursday (remember all of my clothes and stuff were still in my hotel room in St. Maarten) as I was expected to check out on Thursday and return to Miami from there.  Audrey held on to my suitcase and then also worked with the car rental place in St. Maarten to tell them to take my rental out of the airport parking lot and that I would return my set of keys when I became unstranded from Saba.  Audrey and the store Electec were the first meeting I ever had with this job on the first Caribbean island I had ever traveled to (St. Maarten) back in November of 2010.  It would only be right to give them a shout-out because they’re a very special customer to me.  This month of November, four years ago, is when I started this Caribbean sales job.  Here is a photo I found of Team Electec and me last year at this time, celebrating our ‘3 year anniversary.’

Here I am with the Electec staff! Audrey, the purchasing manager, is in the purple shirt.

And now I know another island country, the island of Saba! I still would most definitely return to Saba for a hiking vacation (but not alone again). It would be a neat, weeklong vacation to fly from the U.S. to St. Maarten, which is also a great island with lots to do and see, and then include a couple of days in Saba.  Well, I would say plan for 2 days in Saba but acknowledge that 2 days could turn into 4, just as 6 hours turned into 60 for me last week.

 

So relieved to be boarding the plane on Friday.  Like my shirt?  A little ironic, I know...

Thanks for reading, love you all!

-Anna Banana