Saba - the Netherlands Tallest Mountain, Touching the Clouds

On most days the Jungle Island of Saba is visible from Sint Maarten's southern beaches — a steep mountain rising out of the ocean, its summit wrapped in cloud. At five square miles, Saba is home to about 1,650 residents whose ancestors had to make an extraordinary effort simply to survive the terrain.

The island's four main settlements were once connected only by stepped pathways. In the late 1930s, against the advice of European engineers, the island's population began building a road — The Road — using knowledge gained through a correspondence course. The first segment took five years. The full project took twenty. The first car arrived in 1947 — a Jeep, nicknamed the Iron Donkey.

Today Saba's untouched landscape makes it one of the Caribbean's premier scuba diving destinations, with numerous dive sites and the protected Saba Marine Park. Hiking into the tropical rainforest is the other major draw — which is why the island's nickname, the Unspoiled Queen of the Caribbean, has stuck.

Saba is part of the Kingdom of the Netherlands, with Dutch as the official language — though English is spoken everywhere, as on most neighboring islands. The island is reachable from Sint Maarten by a 15-minute flight or several hours by ferry.