Queen's Garden Saba - Cancelled

We had been looking at Saba before. Even contacted this beautiful hotel before for an offer. Than, early this year, we decided to go there. Queen's Garden Resort & Spa, run by a Dutch couple. Hidde and Claire. We booked an 11 nights stay in a Superior Suite, including 6 days of diving (2-Tank in the morning incl. lunch). Claire even tossed in a 3 course dinner in their romantic birds nest for Petra's birthday. A wonderful offer we couldn't resist.

And then Irma came. The category 5+ hurricane damaged Saba. But more important, destroyed Sint Maarten. As there was some time between this horrible event and our stay, we kept track of the progress in rebuilding Saba and its connections with Sint Maarten.

It all looked to go the right way. Sint Maarten airport was re-opened for international flights. Winair, connecting Saba to Sint Maarten, was back in operation. And the hotel reported "bruised but okay" and reopened soon after.

However, due to the devastation of Sint Maarten, international connections were being re-routed. First KLM announced they would only fly on specific days, with some connecting through Curaçao. This created two issues for us:

1. We booked this as there is a direct flight from Amsterdam to Sint Maarten, followed by connection to Saba with little lay-over. Due to my chronical illness I better not travel too long. So a direct flight is preferred, making a connection through Curaçao not an option.
2. Any KLM flight (direct or not) was arriving too late to catch the Winair flight to Saba. Next to that they were on an other day than what we booked the Winair flights for. And staying over on Sint Maarten was not an option. There simply wasn't anywhere to go to.

The escape was to re-book through Air France. So we did. In this way a direct flight wasn't an option (transfer in Charles de Gaulle - Paris), but it looked doable. And had a good (even better) connection to Winair. Pfew, we can still go.

Unfortunately also Air France started to re-route and cancelled direct flights to Sint Maarten. They only had the option Amsterdan - flight to - Charles de Gaulle Paris → Charles de Gaulle - bus/train - Orly Paris → Paris - flight - Guadeloupe → Guadeloupe - flight - Sint Maarten ... to arrive a day early without any accommodation on Sint Maarten.

This left us with only one reasonable option: Cancel the trip to Saba.

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As alternative we have booked our old friend Bonaire (we also looked at Curaçao, but we'd just been there ... twice). This time at a new location: Bamboo Bali. Looking forward to go there next week.

In the meantime we also couldn't resist the sale of the Aggressor fleet (34% off). We have never been on a liveaboard and always had millions of excuses not to go, but the call of the Maldives, the huge discount and the possibility to dive new places - we are doing a ten day Male to Addu trip - convinced us to jump in the adventure and just do it. This adventure is for early next year.