Our First Volcano

Are we nuts?  That thing looks freaking huge!

Today we climbed a volcano.

St. Eustatius is a volcanic island, with two volcanoes that eventually merged their flows to form the island.  The taller, single cone is called “The Quill”, the name of which is a mangling of the Dutch word “Kuil” which means “pit”.  The center of the volcano forms a deep circular valley or pit – in the days of slavery runaway slaves supposedly went there to hide. 

The highest point of the Quill is almost 2000 feet (600 meters) above sea level.  The bottom of the pit is 895 feet (273 meters) above sea level, so the drop from the peak to the floor is around 1,100 feet deep.  This is a dormant volcano, meaning it is not “Extinct” in that there was volcanic activity about 1,600 years ago.  On the nearby island of Montserrat the volcano there was believed to be extinct, until it erupted in 1995.  This one seems pretty quiet though – there is absolutely no evidence of any sort of activity that scientists are aware of though it is considered “Dormant.” 

Obligatory “gorgeous flowers we saw on the walk” photo.

The St. Eustatius National Park maintains and protects the Quill.  Like everything here there is a lot of history to it.  The slopes of the volcano were farmed in the past, with various spices and other cash crops grown in plantations.  All of that is abandoned now and the area is protected from cultivation.

We intended to set off early this morning, but early this morning it was raining.  So instead we made waffles and waited for the rain to let up, finally getting to shore around 11:00 a.m. to being the long hike upward.

Even 1/1000th of a second couldn’t catch his wings!

The first third of the elevation to climb is basically in the town.  Leaving town, you start slowly heading up hill towards the Quill.  Signs point to it, as you work your way up from the paved roads to a dirt road. On the way you pass houses, some fields with cows, dogs, chickens, flowers and a lot of hummingbirds.

The dirt road eventually comes to the start of the path up the hill.  At this point you’ve already climbed up a fair amount, and the huge tankers in the harbor below look like child’s toys.  We can’t even see out boat because it’s lost under the edge of the cliff, and the volcano still looms over head, wreathed in clouds.

Because of it’s height and the enclosed crater/pit, the volcano supports several distinct ecosystems which you can see as you climb.  The St. Eustasius Parks site describes it better than I can, but suffice it to say you can clearly see the changes in the vegetation as you get higher and higher and the inside of the cone looks like a different place entirely.

The main fauna on the volcano are large hermit crabs, iguanas, red bellied racer snakes, vzarious small grounds lizards, a variety of birds…and chickens.

The hermit crabs are amusing.  From an evolutionary viewpoint their behavior seems very, very…stupid.  These things are all over the hill side, a very STEEP hillside.  The range in size from little ones smaller than a quarter, with the largest we saw being a little smaller than your fist.  Now suppose I was some Hermit Crab Eating Predator (HCEP), walking stealthily along the path looking for lunch.  The crab’s reaction to our presence was to immediately withdraw into their shells.  Now keep in mind, the live on a STEEP slope, when they pull their bodies in their shells they let go of what they are holding on to and immediately roll down hill.  Right onto the trail, though you hear them rustling as they roll through the leaves as you walk along the trail there is a constant, intermittent rain of idiotic hermit crabs rolling in front of you.  If I was that HCEP I would have eaten my fill long before I reached the top.  At least the odds favor that there were an equal amount of crabs downhill from the path that rolled away to safety.

The trails are well marked, and the roughest part of the hike was after the sign that pointed to “Crater Rim, 10 Minutes”, at the top of which I was puffing like the bellows in a blast furnace run amok.  After six weeks in St. Martin wallowing in a sea of French bread and cheese floating in a small ocean of French wines I thought, somehow, climbing a volcano would be a good idea.  Well…it wasn’t pretty but I made it up there.

Me having words with a rather pushy chicken.

For the last 10-15 minutes of the hike, we were treated to the loud serenading of…chickens.  Yes, domestic chickens run feral live all over the top of the volcano.  It seems that some hikers even feed them, since there was a pair at the summit of our hike that were quite friendly and forward.  Especially when you reached in to bags for water or camera lenses, they were right there with you.

View of the crater

At the top of the crater rim we were about 1,300 feet above sea level.  From this point there were a couple of paths we could have taken, one that went around the rim which was supposed to be difficult but took you to the highest point on the island, pictured above.  The other was down to the bottom of the pit, which was supposed to take about an hour round trip.  We guessed that was less than ten minutes getting down, and the other fifty climbing back.  It was steep, rocky, slippery and plastered with numerous warnings about the hazards you may face on the way down.  The fundamental problem we saw with tackling either of the “Difficult” paths is that they lay after you’ve already climbed to the top of the volcano and are already pretty pooped.  We decided that though the trip down to the bottom of the crater sounded really, really cool on paper were really weren’t up for it.

At the top of the trail we met a couple of English cruisers with an appreciation for this sort of natural beauty as well.  We had a companionable chat about the volcano and cruising while we all were catching our breath and resting our trembling limbs for the trip down.

One of two Red Bellied Racers at the top of the trail

Fortunately going down hill seems to use rather different muscles than going up – you get a great burn going in your quads but it’s a lot faster.  And your water bottles are a lot lighter!

We headed back to town on a mission – find someplace to sit, drink something cold, and eat which we finally did just across from the dinghy dock.  So we did our first volcano…where’s the next one?