Montserrat is a geologist’s dream. A tiny island, once a haven for the UK’s rock stars, its volcano blew its top in the 90’s and buried the previous capital, Plymouth. The southern half of the island is off-limits unless you are a scientist. The northern half is incredibly beautiful. Plus their immigration stamp in your passport is a green four leaf clover!
The main anchorage is Little Bay at the northern tip. There are plenty of guides waiting to drive you to the volcano observatory and give you commentary on the way. But if you are cheap, and we are, you can take a minibus for 5EC (that’s Eastern Caribbean Dollars, the currency shared amongst non-French islands, about $2.50CDN). Not only do you get to hang out with some cool Montserratians and listen to some great reggae, you get to hear all the local gossip as well!
The volcano observatory, although quite high up, did not give very good views of the destruction, which is what we were after. Fortunately we ran into a young marine scientist there that lived in Montserrat, was on vacation, and had just gotten engaged the day before. And she had a car and knew how to drive near the potholed exclusion zone like a rally car driver. The four of us made it up to the the closest peak to Plymouth which gave us a great view of the brown lava/mud/ash flows covering buildings and sloping gently into the sea. What a contrast to the lush green vegetation covering the rest of the island. Thanks Robin and Phil for the fantastic view!
We spent the afternoon hiking the Oriole Walkway. The name makes it sounds like an easy jaunt in the woods. Think again. Once you have actually found the trailhead, halfway up the mountain, you are surrounded by thick rainforest, chirping birds, and water dripping from steep cliffs. Unfortunately we didn’t see any Montserrat Orioles, but Kate did almost step on a snake and we got one hell of a view of the northern half of the island, and a pretty great workout.
The next day we took it easy and did some incredible snorkelling at the beach around the corner. It was like swimming in an aquarium - just walls of fish all around us. We saw all kinds of tropical fish and even a school of squid that seemed to move randomly but in formation. Mesmerizing!
On our way to the beach we stumbled on a real live bat cave - even from the water you can hear them shuffling around inside the cave.
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| Outside Bat Cave |
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| Inside Bat Cave |
We were in Montserrat in June - better late than never???
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| Never Seen one of these signs for my hometown of NOTL before!! |
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| Volcano ash and lava |
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| The side of the ruined by the volanco |
