Christopher Columbus reportedly sighted Saba during his transatlantic voyage but never landed; the rocky shores offered no safe approach. When the Dutch West India Company colonized the island in 1640, sending settlers from neighboring Sint Eustatius, they found terrain so forbidding that invasion seemed nearly impossible. Nearly. In 1664, the buccaneer Sir Henry Morgan managed to evict the Dutch settlers, one of the few successful assaults the island's cliffs have ever permitted. In the 17th and 18th centuries, Saba became a haven for Caribbean pirates drawn by its natural defenses. Sugar and rum fueled the economy, followed by lobster fishing, and then something unexpected: lace. Saban women developed an intricate pulled-thread technique that became so popular abroad that by 1928, the island was exporting $15,000 worth of lace annually. The tradition, introduced by Gertrude Hassell, continues today.

For most of its history, the only way on or off Saba was via Ladder Bay and 'the Ladder,' 800 near-vertical steps carved from rock and concrete. Supplies were hauled up by hand; departures meant descending a staircase that drops almost straight to the sea. Engineers declared it impossible to build a road on the island. Josephus Lambert Hassell disagreed. Self-educated and determined, he designed the road himself in 1938 and supervised its construction over the next 25 years as locals laid 14 kilometers of asphalt by hand and wheelbarrow. The men of Hell's Gate reportedly worked the hardest, since their village was farthest from Fort Bay. Today 'the Road' winds through four villages perched on the mountainside: The Bottom, the capital, which sits high on the island despite its name; Windwardside, the tourist hub; Hell's Gate, the first stop from the airport; and St. John's, largely residential and home to the island's schools.

Saba's Juancho E. Yrausquin Airport opened in 1963 on Flat Point, the island's only sizable piece of level ground, a cliff-ringed promontory where the runway ends at sheer drops into the ocean on both sides. Approaching aircraft fly directly toward a large cliff before banking hard left to line up with the strip. Pilots require special training, and only Winair's DHC-6 Twin Otter serves the airport. The runway is marked with a white X at each end, the international signal that it is not for standard commercial use. Despite appearances, there have been no fatal crashes since the airport opened. The airport manager, according to local tradition, watches every landing closely and will personally tell a pilot if the approach was sloppy. There is a bar at the airport. There is no air traffic control tower.

Below the waterline, Saba transforms. The island's volcanic flanks plunge into deep ocean, creating underwater cliffs, walls, and pinnacles that make it one of the world's top scuba diving destinations. The Saba Marine Park protects 26 designated dive sites, and the biodiversity is staggering for a place so small: over 200 species of fish, more than 60 species of birds on land, nine types of wild orchids growing along hiking trails and roadsides. Mount Scenery, the island's peak and the highest point in the entire Kingdom of the Netherlands, rises through cloud forest where conditions shift from tropical to temperate in the span of a single hike. The 1,064-step trail to the summit passes through dense jungle; on clear mornings, neighboring islands emerge from the haze at the top. The ocean surrounding Saba transitions from shallow to abyssal depths so quickly that wall divers sometimes find sea creatures oriented sideways, confused about which direction is down.

About 2,150 people live on Saba, including 200 to 300 medical students at the Saba University School of Medicine, whose campus includes a hyperbaric chamber that conveniently serves the island's diving community. Saba is so safe that some hotels do not bother with door locks. Grocery deliveries arrive by boat on Wednesdays, and the day takes on an almost ceremonial significance: it is the best day for fresh meat, and locals often throw cookouts, sometimes inviting visitors who happen to be nearby. Hitchhiking between villages is common, and taxi drivers have been known to pick up riders for free if they are headed the same direction. The island is a special municipality of the Netherlands, uses the U.S. dollar, and speaks English despite Dutch being the official language. It is a place where the global and the intimate coexist without friction, where a medical school and a pirate's ghost share the same volcanic slopes.