Yes, its volcano still simmers, but things are heating up around the rest of the island as well.
By John Deiner
Washington Post Staff Writer
Sunday, March 2, 2008
Clover Lea bursts through the open door of my villa at Gingerbread Hill, the inn she owns on the west coast of Montserrat. She doesn't knock, but that's fine by me. She has a machete in one hand, home-grown citrus in the other.
For $125 a night, I've been renting her two-bedroom, two-bath hideaway, which I've had to pry myself away from each morning. There's an open-air living area complete with a porch swing, an expansive view of the Caribbean, a hummingbird feeder with more traffic than the Capital Beltway and a mama dove and her chick roosting in an alcove near the dining table. Victorian flourishes frame the roofline, and a vine with large yellow flowers has wrapped its tendrils around the rails of a fence and is reaching into the home.
From the kitchen I can see mountains dipping into the sea, but the Soufriere Hills Volcano, the intolerable stepchild that's been reigning over this speck in the British West Indies for more than a decade, is far to the south. Out of sight, but never out of mind.
Clover, a self-described hippie and American expat who has been my island muse for the past few days, places the oranges and grapefruit on the kitchen counter and, as she has each morning, starts questioning me. Did I watch the documentary on the volcano made by her husband, David? Have I tried the fish dinners from the stand up the street? Did I visit the new cultural center?
This time, I have some questions of my own. For two days, I've had the island to myself, and during the peak winter season at that. Montserrat, though, seems poised for a comeback, and during my visit locals have spoken of little else. I look at the Caribbean, devoid of pleasure craft, and strain to hear traffic on the nearby road.
Do you really want more people on this island, Clover? Won't that spoil what you have?
"Oh, we want all the tourists we can get," she says, staring wistfully to sea. "We just want to be sure they're the right ones."
* * *
It began on July 18, 1995, when steam and ash starting belching from an ancient crater in the Soufriere Hills. All at once, the scene was set for a decade-long assault on the island, which had just recovered from a direct hit in 1989 by Hurricane Hugo.
About a month later, another eruption blanketed the capital, Plymouth, in ash, initiating the first evacuation of southern Montserrat. And so it went for years, an unrelenting barrage of evacuations, dome collapses, ash clouds, pyroclastic flows (fast-moving walls of superheated gas and rock that destroy everything in their path), mudflows -- and bad press. For weeks, sometimes months at a time, the population was wedged into the northern chunk of the island before the all-clear was given for the Montserratans to return.
If they could. By November 1997, Plymouth lay buried in ash, and the airport terminal had been destroyed.
Today, about two-thirds of the island has been declared an Exclusion Zone and is off-limits to most locals and visitors. And while the last major outburst was almost a year ago, the volcano is by no means dormant. According to the latest report by the Montserrat Volcano Observatory, which keeps close tabs on the beast, the news -- for now, at least -- is good: "The pause in activity continues."
That might as well extend to the tourism trade. Before the eruption, nearly 24,000 people a year visited the island, according to the Montserrat Tourist Board. Last year, the number had dwindled to about 9,500. It's not the same Montserrat, for sure, but once I finally control the urge to mutter "liquid hot magma" like Doctor Evil every time I see the volcano, I find that's not such a bad thing.
* * *
Near an abandoned home that once overlooked Montserrat's only golf course, a sign rests on its side. That's an odd position, inasmuch as it's warning passersby of the potential dangers posed by being in this area. Sunny Lea, my 29-year-old guide and son of Clover, steps over it as we clamber down a goopy embankment and onto a vast plain of solidified volcanic barf.
For hours, we've been crisscrossing his gorgeous little island, all of seven miles wide by 11 miles long. He's been showing off empty black-sand beaches, hiking trails that wind through unblemished rain forest, a new housing development perched on a cliff side and a soccer field so meticulously groomed you'd swear it was faux turf.
But I've also seen the decimated airport, the buried remnants of what more than one local has called "our beloved Plymouth" and the steaming lava dome of the volcano itself. Nothing, though, has humanized the calamity more than this home in the path of the tyrant's haphazard fury.
Inside, shelves in the second-floor master bedroom are still strewn with wedding photos, paperbacks, toiletries -- and, oddly enough, a Montserrat tourism brochure. The front features shots of the Great Alps waterfall, the island's war memorial and a group of duffers teeing off. On the pages within, vacationers are enticed by ads for the Island Bikes rental shop, the Suntex Bakery, the Etcetera gift shop and the Montserrat Springs Hotel, all in Plymouth.
The date on the cover: 1993/94.
The waterfall, the war memorial, the hotel are now gone. The golf course -- and much of the home I'm exploring -- are entombed in layers of volcanic ash and other detritus, which turn into a torrent of muck whenever it rains heavily. As we scramble out of the house, I take another look at the brochure's cover and am suddenly struck by its message to would-be visitors.
Montserrat: The Way the Caribbean Used to Be.
If anything, these words are truer now than they were in the pre-eruption days. Translation: Montserrat may be an untouristed wonder, but it's not for everyone.
No resorts line the beaches, so if you insist on surf-side service and drinks served with little umbrellas, you're better off in Antigua, the much larger island 29 miles to the northeast. Roads are dicey (there are no traffic lights, few shoulders and an army of itinerant goats that pop up in unexpected places), and dining options are limited. The island's premier lodging is arguably the Tropical Mansion Suites hotel, which opened in 1999, but it's no Breezes.
Shoppers are likely to be disappointed once they step ashore. One of Montserrat's biggest stores is Arrow's Manshop, owned by local celeb Alphonsus "Arrow" Cassell, who wrote the soca classic "Hot Hot Hot." (You probably remember Buster Poindexter's version, which is hard to get out of your head once it gets in there.) It's more of a five-and-dime than a tourist-junk budget-buster, though. At the Art & Craft Association, unassuming even by this island's standards, there's a bounty of souvenirs with shamrocks, a testament to an influx of Irish Catholics in the 1600s. Sure and begorrah, Montserrat remains the only country outside Ireland where St. Paddy's Day is a national holiday.
It wasn't always this way. Before the Soufriere Hills Volcano began to rewrite the island's geologic history, the British territory was home to about 12,000 and was the Caribbean's pretty little secret.
Plymouth -- a hub of restaurants, shops, expensive homes, schools and a new hospital -- welcomed yachts and their rich occupants, who found the paparazzi-free streets a welcome respite. Beatles producer George Martin opened Air Studio on a hillside in 1979; Sunny remembers seeing such musicians as Eric Clapton and Jimmy Buffett sucking down beers in Plymouth pubs. Visitors could hop ferries and several airlines, which served the now-ravaged Bramble Airport.
Today, Sunny notes, a little more than 5,000 people remain, many of them Brits and American expats who've scooped up real estate. There's no ferry service, though the $18.5 million Gerald's Airport opened in 2005; its sole tenant is Winair, which can fly only 19-seat prop planes in. As a result, fares are expensive, schedules often change (my flight over from Antigua was canceled at the last minute) and luggage is frequently delayed.
The situation on the island, Sunny says softly, "is pretty fragile."
* * *
I'm finishing up a pile of fish and chips at Gourmet Gardens when the restaurant's owner, Mariet Walters, ambles over and clears her throat.
"How did you find us, anyhow?" she asks, eyes narrowing.
Huh? I got directions from my innkeeper.
"No, how did you find this island? Hardly anyone comes here, and for no good reason. If it weren't for the volcano, it'd be paradise."
Like just about everyone I've met on this island, Walters is friendly, outspoken and a junior vulcanologist. Before long, the Dutch transplant is talking about her 17 years on Montserrat, throwing in phrases like "lateral blast" and "pyroclastic flow" and "my aching back." She has shoveled her share of fallen ash, which accumulates like snow and nibbles away at her business.
"I've been through thick and thin lately, mostly thick. Every time there's another event on the mountain, I'm reaching for my checkbook," she says, happily pointing out that the last major "event" was in April 2007.
Without asking, she grabs my leftovers and begins to crumble them. After she tosses them into the yard a few feet away, a half-dozen chickens race over and begin to feast. One breaks from the pack and starts pecking a lumbering green iguana the size of a trombone.
I watch the bird toy with the reptile, an easy entertainment on an island full of them. I've filled my days lounging on the beach at Woodlands Bay, where the snorkeling is amazing and the black sand scorching. I've hiked on verdant mountain trails that go from flat to vertiginous in 100 yards, and I've stopped to sip from Runaway Ghaut, a spring alongside the main road. It's said that drinking the water (perfectly safe island-wide, by the way) ensures your return.
After a harrowing drive up to the Montserrat Volcano Observatory, I get my closest peek yet at Soufriere Hills. A film chronicling the eruptions is terrific, but the employee at the front desk is even more illuminating. Like Walters, she has done her share of ash-kicking . . . and she's tired of it.
"I got over being afraid of that thing long ago," she says. "Now I'm just annoyed by it."
Indeed, islanders seem eager to move on, even though the volcano hasn't made up its mind to do likewise. At the new Montserrat Cultural Center, I look over an exhibit on long-term plans to turn the Little Bay area -- now a mash of dilapidated buildings and dirt roads on the northwest coast -- into the island's capital. There'll be a marina, a cathedral, shopping promenades, parks, fountains.
Great for the island and these people I've come to adore, no doubt, but I already feel a tinge of loss for this Caribbean the way it used to be.
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