Saba, Part IV

Sorry for the delay between Saba Stories. The Management (that would be me) has received complaints that my last Saba Story was sad and/or whiny. Yeah, yeah, nobody asked you. Just kidding. Anyway, maybe this one will be more uplifting.

Tuesday. It rained all morning, but by afternoon it had stopped enough to go for a walk. We headed up to the top of Booby Hill (awesome name, no?) because we were told there was a glass blower's shop. On our way up, we ran into Marylene who was busily stuffing the trunk of her tiny European car full of guavas. Literally. There was an orchard across the street, and Marylene informed us that the owner allowed her to collect the fruits that fell on the ground. Since it had stormed badly the previous night, there were approximately 322345235 guavas scattered around. She cracked one open for us to taste--I devoured it eagerly since I'll eat just about anything, but Josh proclaimed it "seedy" ("seedy," as in, too many seeds. Not like, "south Atlanta after dark" seedy) and refused to eat it. Marylene was convinced that we needed our own collection of guavas and proceeded to stuff Josh's cargo pants' pockets full of them. We continued our walk.

The glass blower's shop turned out to be a glass bead-making shop. It's owned by a loud-mouthed American woman who commanded us to watch her make a glass bead as soon as we walked in. We obliged. It wasn't really that exciting, but she did put a nice tiny frog on the bead. How much for the beads? About $40 a pop. We managed to sneak out of there without breaking anything. Luckily.

Shortly thereafter we happened upon a very, very large cow. She was enjoying a pile of hay, and did I mention she was large? Yes. On the return trip, we found her passed out in the aforementioned pile of hay.


The best part of the walk was the killer view from the top of a cliff. There was an abandoned house right at the precipice (check out my mad vocabulary skillz). Like I said, killer views.


We returned to Iris House to try our hand at making guava daiquiris from a bottle of rum that we acquired for a mere $6. Let's hear it for the Caribbean. Anyway, the daiquiri-making proceeded something like this (click away to see bigger versions):

Step 1: Add guavas to blender and puree.


Step 2: Strain out all those pesky seeds.


Step 3: Add copious amounts of very affordable Caribbean rum.


Step 4: Drink, drink, drink.

In the end, we found that something icky happens to guavas when you try to make them into a daiquiri. They go sour. I don't know if it's the alcohol or what, but I would not recommend any combination of ice, alcohol, and guavas.

While in the St. Maarten airport on the way down to Saba, we came across a Cuban cigar shop. We took advantage of being in a country not exercising an embargo against Cuba, and we bought two cigars. They're supposed to be the best, right? After the guava daiquiri fiasco, we brought those puppies out, lit them up, and puffed away (and watched the rain, which had begun again with a fervor). Half an hour later, we discovered that there's really nothing that special about Cuban cigars, other than the fact that they are from Cuba. Another fifteen minutes later, we discovered that Cuban cigars may be a little stronger than others: our heads were quite swimmy (and I spent some time hanging over the balcony in nauseated expectation of vomiting. I managed to fend it off, though). Anyway, the final verdict on Cuban cigars is that people only want them because they can't have them. As is true for a lot of other things in life, methinks.

We also saw another Sea and Learn talk--the second given by my friend. It went better than her first talk. We ducked out in the middle of it to catch our dinner reservations at the local Western saloon (seriously). And they had some seriously good bbq.

Nope, I'm not out of stories yet. Stay tuned.