Montserrat marches on

By Brad Kovach

updated 1:53 p.m. ET Feb. 9, 2007

I’m standing in the hardwood lookout pavilion on Jack Boy Hill, in the midst of terraced gardens and a herd of wandering goats, admiring the view of the Soufriere Hills Volcano. Trying to, anyway. On this particular afternoon, cheesecloth clouds drape the crater’s lava dome in gauzy white.

“She’s feeling shy today. She’s hiding,” says tour guide Jadine Glitzenhirn. “Come on, girl, lift your skirt a little.”

My guide’s cheeky commentary typifies the contagious and good-humored optimism of the 4,500 hardy souls still living on Montserrat. The volcano that many outsiders believe wiped out the tiny Leeward island has in fact given rise to a new sense of self: A burgeoning eco-adventure industry has risen from the ashes, with the very culprit of all the adversity turning out to be a star attraction, the live volcano only adding to the island’s lost-world allure.

As we linger to view the petrified remains of a pyroclastic flow that stretches from the volcano down into the sea like a vast gray glacier, the clouds slide westward and Madame Soufriere favors us with a smoldering look. The steep sides of the dome shimmer with escaping heat, and the rounded top wears a crown of spines formed from tiny eruptions of lava over a steam vent. “That’s the most I’ve seen of her in weeks,” says Glitzenhirn. “See, we’re always willing to please here.”

By the mid-80s, Montserrat had attained a paradoxical reputation both as a popular roost for rock royalty – with frequent sightings of Eric Clapton, the Stones, Sting and Elton John, all of whom came to record at Sir George Martin’s Air Studios – and as a secret getaway. Its dramatic peaks and valleys were free of expansive resorts and casinos. In their stead: small hotels, guesthouses, villas and 11,000 disarmingly friendly descendants of 17^th-century Irish settlers and African slaves. Times were good on “The Emerald Island of the Caribbean.”

Montserrat Tourism Board Rendezvous Bay, one of the island’s rare white-sand beaches.

But everything changes starting in 1989, when Hurricane Hugo steamrolled the island. Six years later, the most fruitful and historic part of Montserrat disappeared under a massive cloud of volcanic debris. The initial eruption of the Soufriere Hills Volcano in July 1995 began a period of regular activity that rendered the island’s south end unlivable. A climactic explosion two years later killed 19. More than half of the residents fled, many to England, which maintains Montserrat as an overseas territory.

These days, the volcano still belches ash across the southern Exclusion Zone every few years when the percolating gases feel the need to vent. Incandescent rocks the size of pickup trucks sometimes trumble down its deserted eastern face; along with the glowing lava dome, they can be seen at night from Jack Boy Hill. Scientists at the Montserrat Volcano Observatory predict these episodes will decrease in frequency until Madame Soufriere ultimately dies in her sleep a few years from now. But the legacy of the volcano will cast a long shadow.

Spunky Montserratians like Carol Osborne, a U.S. citizen who has lived on the island for 34 years, are quick to point out fringe benefits of the tectonics. Locals claim volcanic deposits have enriched the already fertile soil, improving their fruit and vegetable crops, and divers say that slightly warmer water temperatures along the coast have attracted more varied marine life. Then there’s the increasing number of “volcano tourists.”

“Visitors here used to be in their 60s and 70s. They’d play golf in the morning, then sit around the pool the rest of the day,” says Osborne, who owns the ‘60s-era Vue Pointe Hotel in Old Towne, a mellow residential village midway up the leeward coast. “Now it’s people in their 30s and 40s who want adventure and activities.” Pastimes such as hiking, mountain biking, sport fishing, diving and bird-watching are more vital now than they were before the deluge.

Montserrat Tourism Board Villas abound on Montserrat.

General tourism, however, is a long way from what it once was. Montserrat used to receive 30,000 visitors a year by air and sea; now only 1,300 drop in annually. The ferry from Antigua has been cancelled indefinitely, and the only planes landing at Gerald’s Airport are Twin Otters carrying 20 passengers each, four times a day from Antigua and St. Maarten. And Air Studios is long gone, having closed in 1989 after damage by Hurricane Hugo.

Yet Montserratians are determined to rise above. Tourism officials say they will work in the years ahead to expand access to the island, improve the infrastructure and increase the number of hotel rooms – right now there are only two conventional hotels, offering less than 50 rooms total. But rather than trying to encourage mass tourism, the plan is to appeal mainly to independent travelers and those taking short side trips from other islands. “We don’t want to be overrun, which will help keep Montserrat a naturally spectacular destination,” says Dr. Lowell Lewis, chief minister of Montserrat.

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