CaribEthnoExp. Part V. Montserrat

March 14 ... April 5, 2014

The country of Montserrat occupies just one island.

One day in 1997, the volcano here become active, burying an entire city under lava.

All of the city’s inhabitants had been evacuated a week before the eruption. But there were a few hillbillies who didn’t believe the scientists.

They figured, hey, the volcano’s been dormant for four hundred years, it’s probably no big deal this time, either.

But the volcano went and erupted.

Good thing there were only eighteen of the unbelievers.

There was a city called Plymouth—and then there wasn’t.

Now it’s Pompeii II.

You can’t enter the lava-covered territory: two-thirds of the island are now an exclusion zone and closed off to the public. But this doesn’t apply to construction workers, who collect the volcanic ash to make foam concrete. Trucks circulate back and forth ceaselessly to supply materials for construction on the safe part of the island.

The governor’s house.

Plymouth.

Living on the edge.

Oh God.

Oops.

There are no tours of Plymouth.

The inhabitants of Montserrat are lucky and unlucky at the same time. On the one hand, the island only became known after it got wrecked by a volcano. On the other hand, the locals haven’t come up with anything to do since then. There are no cities, no architecture; the remaining population has been forced up to the tops of the mountain ridges. They could have built a new gem, like New Zealand did (see my story about Napier), but it seems they never got around to it.

The exclusion zone has a part you can visit during the day. It closes at 4 p.m. And we didn’t make it in time.

So there we were, driving back. At least we had an upbeat, chatty taxi driver who was showing us and telling us about everything. At one point, we came across a guy walking down the road towards us, and the driver pulled over to exchange a few words with him. The guy dialed someone up and said, “Let them through.”

Turns out, that was the Premier of Montserrat. The cops who had sent us packing earlier had no choice but to salute us and let us through.

We get closer to Plymouth.

There are lots of homes with all their contents still intact.

Everything’s still sitting here.

The pool at the fanciest hotel.

Illustrations for a Bradbury novel everywhere you look.