The Quill, a Volcano Hike on Statia

A post by Sally

On May 22nd, we started our day at 7am. We got dressed, ate breakfast, and put our shoes on. After dinghying in to the dock, we walked up the road and started walking up a dirt path on a hill to get to town. Willie loved seeing all of the goats! After walking across town, we got up to the dirt road and the hot sun started beating down on us. We walked on stopping once for a water break. We got to the trail head and shade was just ahead of us. Willie decided that under a tree with shade was the best spot to lay down. We finally got him up and it was a nice hike up with lots of shade. There were water droplets on the trees so if you got a little hot, you could just shake the tree and get a little shower of water to cool you off.

After about an hour of hiking through the forest, we arrived at a spot where we had to make a decision which way to go: up, down or around. We decided to go up—a fun hike with lots of climbing. After a steep hike up we were all rewarded by the pretty views.

At the top, we had a snack break and got refreshed with water.

Willie had fun running down the mountain, trying to catch up to Heidi, and looking for goats, and in the process nearly yanked my arm off! We hiked down a little more and got back to where the trails split. We met two people coming up from the bottom of the crater and asked them how it was. They said it was good so we decided to go down to the crater bottom—a steep, windy hike with lots of hanging vines and big trees with huge trunks. For this, we let Willie off leash. I would grab his leash and Lucy would run ahead and then I would let him go.

There were lots of signs with edible plants, so Lucy and I kept our eyes peeled for edibles! But…we couldn’t find anything. We continued down and found a huge tree and a thick rope hanging down. We all took a turn swinging on it.

We kept going down until we reached the end, where we turned around and the down turned into uphill. We started back up.

We got up the hill, back to where the trail split and took a break. We then continued down the rest of the trail, bumped into a few other cruisers, and continued back into the town. By now, at around 1pm the sun was blazing down on the pavement and we were HOT! We hurried through town while dogs barked from everywhere. We kept going down until we finally reached the beach. Willie pulled to get in the water and when he was done swimming, he dug himself a hole, for a cooling off spot. We went to the hiking office to refill our water bottles, then motored back to our boat to go swimming. We’ll be resting for the rest of the day. What a day!