The formalities taken care off, we set off to explore the town. Our first stop is the National Park office to get some maps of the walking trail. There is plenty to do in terms of walking up and around the Quill, the volcano. There are also a few trails north of the island we would like to do but we only have 4 or 5 days. The old slave road is the steep cobbled street that gets you from the sea front to the town. At the top of it is the church. The town is very small and quite charming, full of colour. It does remind me of the Channel Islands. It is our first Dutch island, but apart from one of the local radio, we hardly hear Dutch spoken at all. The very surprising thing is the number of cars, big ones and very new. They are everywhere on the road and parked in the narrow streets. Apart from that it is very sleepy on land but not so in the harbour, there is a constant flow of ferries. Diving boats and tugs coming and going out to the huge tankers parked outside of the bay.
There are plenty of evidence that the town was much larger and much more prosperous, ruins of churches and impressive houses are buried under a riot of colourful weeds. The old tombs also speak of a prosperous time. The fort is impressive but also quaint; all the shutters are painted bright colours. Of course Irma has left its mark and a few roofs have disappeared but the damage is not so obvious.
