I Climbed the Highest Mountain in the Netherlands!

Today we are setting out on an epic adventure. To climb to the absolute highest point … in the Netherlands. To achieve this heroic feat we will need to  travel over two hours by train from Amsterdam to the border town of Heerlen. Then continue on bicycle for a grueling 22 kilometres up-hill, Until we finally reach Vaalserberg, the highest point in the Netherlands at  a whopping 322. 4 metres above sea level. It’s going to be a long  journey... [jingle! ] [clank! ] so let's get started... [bicycle ASMR] [transit ASMR] [beep! ] [transit ASMR again] [Day Pass Cameo] [transit ASMR, continued] [Walking ASMR] [because you're not allowed to bike here] [bicycle ASMR] [Limburg edition] Ahh. Whew. Almost there... We did it, chat! We made it to the highest point  in the Netherlands! Woo-hoo-hoo! ah, hah... But … wait … why isn’t this video over? [NJB Intro] [ding ding! ] The Netherlands is a small country in Europe, but for several centuries the Dutch had colonies around the world, including the Caribbean.   Especially after the Dutch West India Company was founded in 1621. Which was the same year that the Netherlands declared war on Spain, And so the Dutch West India Company pretty much immediately started plundering  Spanish ships, in the Caribbean, As well as conquering Spanish islands, such  as Curaçao which became one of the largest distribution hubs of slaves from Africa. After several centuries of history I feel nowhere near qualified to talk about  because this is not a history channel, The Dutch ended up owning several islands in  the Caribbean that were collectively referred to as the Netherlands Antilles. These islands  were not technically part of the Netherlands, but they were considered a constituent  country in the Kingdom of the Netherlands. Technically England, Scotland, Wales,  and Northern Ireland are also constituent countries of the United Kingdom of Great  Britain and Northern Ireland, but they’re a lot more integrated than the Netherland  Antilles was to the rest of the Netherlands. But regardless, there were many people who  were very unhappy about this situation, especially on Arubu, which became an  independent constituent country in 1986. This ultimately resulted in referendums across  the other islands, and in October of 2010, the Netherlands Antilles was officially dissolved. Curaçao and Sint Maarten voted to become independent constituent countries, like Aruba. While Bonaire, Statia, and Saba voted to become part of the Netherlands. As a result, these last three islands are no longer constituent countries,  they are now part of the Netherlands. The legal term is openbare  lichaamen, or public bodies, which is exactly the same legal classification  that this chunk of reclaimed land had before it became the province of Flevoland. And I’m telling you all of this because it means that the highest point in the  Netherlands is not this 322. 4 metre hill, It’s the 870 metre high Mount  Scenery, on the island of Saba. Which you can hike to from here. So let’s get started, and I’ll tell you about Saba on the way. Saba is an island in the Caribbean, located right about here. The entire island  is only 13 square kilometres in size, And just over two thousand people  live here, which makes Saba the smallest territory in the Americas by population. Incidentally, whenever I’ve heard someone in the Netherlands, that is, the mainland Netherlands,  speaking about the island, they call it Sah-bah, but everyone I spoke to on the island called it  SAY-bah, so that’s what I’ll call it. In case you’re ever confused, just remember it rhymes with [SEGA] We were staying in Windward Side,  the second-largest town in Saba And you will be shocked to learn that it is  located on the windward side of the island. But most importantly, the trailhead to the Mount  Scenery hike is located right at the edge of town. Most of the hike up Mount Scenery is on steps  like these. There are apparently 1064 steps but I didn’t count them, so I might be guilty  of spreading misinformation on the Internet. Oh, and I noticed that this  cottage, located a short way

up the hiking path, is currently for sale. The asking price is 525 thousand US dollars. Uh, contact Jeff if you’re interested. Despite being part of the Netherlands, the official currency of Saba is the US dollar. They  used to use the Netherlands Antillean guilder, but after the Netherlands Antilles was dissolved  in 2010 that currency couldn't be minted anymore. Since the exchange rate of the Antillean  guilder was already pegged to the US dollar and the economy of all the islands  depended a lot on American tourism, the easiest thing to do was to just use the US  dollar until a better solution could be found. Curaçao and Sint Maarten developed a new  currency called the Caribbean guilder, which was introduced in 2025. But Saba and the other islands switched to the US dollar and  have never adopted anything else. By contrast the French side of  nearby Saint Martin uses Euros. This small stone structure along  the hike is kinda interesting. It reminds me of the one we found in the  forest in the first episode of Day Pass. The path splits off into multiple different hiking  trails here. We’re going to the right though, to the top of Mount Scenery! Now the hiking trail runs along this road for a while. You could start  hiking from here if you really wanted to, but it doesn't really save you much time, and  it kinda spoils the fun of walking from town. The main road around Saba is very steep and  winding, and the story of how this road was built has become a foundational story on the island. Before the road, people would get between towns by walking up stone steps, carrying heavy items by  donkey, and development on Saba was far behind the rest of the Netherlands Antilles as a result. So there was a strong desire to build a road, but when Dutch engineers were brought to the  island in the 1930s they said that it would be impossible to build a road here. Presumably because the elevation was higher than 322. 4 metres. One Saba resident named Josephus Lambert Hassell, known on the island as  “Lambee”, was not satisfied with this answer. So he signed up for a correspondence course  by mail and taught himself engineering. Then he and dozens of other Saba residents  all got together to build the road themselves. And I love the photos of how they delivered  the first motor vehicle to the island. Sabans now refer to this as “The  Road that Could not be Built” And there’s this sign explaining  this on the side of Lambee’s house, which was recently converted into a café. Well, that’s the story anyway, and it’s mostly correct but the truth  is a little bit more nuanced. This road to the harbour was engineered by  the Department of Public Works on Curaçao. And it’s not so much that the Dutch engineers  said that building the rest of the road would be literally impossible, so much as it would  be extremely difficult and prohibitively expensive, and most importantly, that the  government wasn't willing to pay for it. But Lambee and his fellow Sabans did genuinely  design and build the other roads on the island by themselves, and without any machinery, which is  incredibly impressive, and deserving of legend. As for the road along the  hiking path, it just goes by Some public gardens, As well as these greenhouses. This is called Gezondheid Farms which is  what I would expect from Saba. One Dutch word, one English word. Saba is a strange mix of American influence and Dutch influence. Children learn both languages at school, but English is by far the  dominant language on the island. About a third of the population speaks  Dutch, but nearly everyone speaks English. We stayed at the Cottage  Club Hotel in Windward Side. That had some great views of  the mountains and the sea, And you can tell that they’re Dutch because the  brickwork of the klinkers is really well done. Windward Side is fairly small and everything was  within easy walking distance, which was nice. There were several shops and restaurants, A playground, And two grocery stores that were surprisingly well-stocked. The grocery store was funny, because the shelves had many products commonly found in Dutch grocery stores, Mixed in with the rest of  the items from North America. So of course I had to pick  up some Nederlandse drop. It was also weird to be on an  English-speaking island in the Caribbean, And see very Dutch-looking  police and fire vehicles. After leaving the greenhouses the path  continues, and there are no more buildings until the top. The number of different kinds of  trees and vegetation along the path is amazing. If I knew anything about it I would tell  you something about it here, but I don’t, so I won’t. The hike up to Mount Scenery is  not particularly difficult, but it is tiring, And I preferred climbing the parts that  were just a steady ramp up than the parts with stairs. Although I find it difficult  to complain at all about a hike like this when I know that somebody once had to climb up  this hill and build the stairs as they went.

These stairs might look like they’ve been  here for centuries but they were actually only built in the late 1960s. Oh, nice, a bus shelter. I’ll take transit the rest of the way up. Unfortunately, Saba is very car-dependent. A public transit route was launched in 2024,  but it is only available to residents of Saba. And I’m assuming that this bizarre schedule would  make sense to you only if you actually lived here. Of course, the towns are very  small, and you can easily walk to where you’re going in a few minutes. To get between towns, we mostly took taxis, which sounds fine, but in reality,  it was a giant pain in the ass. There aren’t a lot of taxi drivers on Saba,  so whenever a flight would come in most of them would be busy with airport pickups. So there were a few times where I couldn't book a taxi to get where I wanted to go. Like when I needed to make it to my scheduled boat trip so that I could  film the island from a distance. So I had to walk along the road which  really sucked. There’s no sidewalk and some people drive really fast. This was definitely the worst part about staying on Saba. But this car dependency is typical of most islands in the Caribbean. A few years ago I made a video about Nassau, the capital of the Bahamas, and I talked about  how bad the traffic was, despite being on an island that’s smaller than the city Amsterdam. We also visited the nearby island of Sint Maarten, and the traffic there was absolutely  ridiculous, especially given the population. And some of the walks I did there were so  bad it made me wish I was back in Houston. As I always say, there’s no solution to car  traffic except viable alternatives to driving, and since these islands don’t have any  viable alternatives, everybody drives. Saba has less than a tenth of  the population of The Bahamas, so the traffic was nowhere near as bad, but I did find it annoying that there was an almost constant flow of cars through  the middle of Windward Side on weekdays. But at least they had speed bumps to keep  people from driving too quickly through town. So what Saba really needs to do is to  stop talking to those Dutch engineers and get some Swiss engineers in here to  build some trains, trams, and funiculars. I’m sure you can get some EU  funds to pay for all that, right? I was pleased though to see that the  cars in Saba were mostly small cars. It was nice to see that the disease of  oversized SUV hasn’t infected the island yet. It was also interesting to see that the  license plates were Saban and not Dutch. For example, cars on the French side of  Saint Martin do have EU license plates. I saw many small pickup trucks  like these, which are very similar to the K-trucks that are common in Japan. And some of them even had right-hand drive, and were likely imported from Japan. I saw some larger pickup trucks as well, but amazingly, people were actually using them for their intended purpose of hauling  things, which is pretty rare to see these days! In most other countries, pickup trucks are  primarily driven empty by insecure assholes. Especially in the rest of the Netherlands. And the cars were pretty beat-up and well-used, too. I assume it's difficult to get a car repaired or replaced on an island like this. I didn’t see anybody riding a bicycle on Saba, which isn’t too surprising as everything  in town is easily accessible on foot and the hills are quite steep. But I wouldn't even want to ride an ebike here because the road is not very safe for cycling. I would love to see what this island would be like proper safe Dutch-style road design,  but we all know that's not going to happen. At this point in the climb  we’re entering the cloud forest. As humid air is forced upwards by the steep  slope of the mountain, the water condenses, and so the top of Mount Scenery is  almost always covered by clouds. Here is one of the rare times I  managed to catch it when it was clear. But there is a great view of The Bottom from up  here, if you can catch a break in the clouds. The Bottom is the largest town on Saba,  but it’s still not a very big town and you can easily walk from one end to the other. Despite its name, The Bottom is not actually at the bottom of the island. It was originally called De Botte by Dutch colonists, which means  “the bowl”, because its location is like a bowl between mountains. Which makes more sense. We were there during their King’s Day celebration, where they opened one street to  people and lined it with tents. It was funny to see people  celebrating Dutch King’s Day, While barbecuing and listening to Caribbean music. Saba is an interesting place. Sometimes it feels American, sometimes it  feels Caribbean, and sometimes it feels Dutch. And the banks are Canadian Whew. This is a good time to stop for some water. This hiking trail is in Mount Scenery  Nature Park, which became an official Dutch national park in 2019. The mountain  we are climbing is a dormant volcano.

The last eruption happened shortly before the  first European settlements in the early 1600s, but it could become active again. Because this island is effectively a volcano, Saba doesn’t have the sandy beaches  found on other islands in the Caribbean. The coastline is mostly rocky  cliffs over 100 metres tall. This made the island a favourite  hideout for pirates in the 1600s. Like most tourists, we  arrived in Saba by airplane. And this photo I took through  the cockpit window makes it look like we’re flying straight into a mountain. The airport on Saba has the shortest commercial runway in the world, at only 400 metres long. And it immediately drops off of a cliff and into the sea at the end, which limits  what type of planes can land on Saba, It’s mostly serviced by Twin Otter propeller  planes, made by the Canadian company De Havilland. These types of planes are designed  for use in extreme environments, This one literally has skis on it and flies  to Antarctica. How freak’n cool is that? We arrived by plane, and  the landing was, uh, quick. It would’ve been fun to fly out  of Saba too, but we left by ferry. Which was fine. There was lots of space and it didn’t rock around too much. But if you do need them, the barf bags were much fancier than what you find on a typical airplane. The ferry was on time and the trip took about an hour and fifteen minutes to get to Sint Maarten. The airport on Sint Maarten is famous as well, but for totally different reasons. Outside of the airport on Saba is this solar farm that was completed in 2019. And the solar panels  were designed to withstand a category 4 hurricane. There are two solar parks with  batteries on Saba that provide 40 percent of the island’s electricity, With the rest being generated mostly by diesel generators. Saba Electric has more solar parks under construction and plans to  stop using fossil fuels entirely by 2030. As you might expect, tourism is the largest sector  of the Saban economy, but mass tourism has not yet come to Saba, which is why the island is referred  to as the "Unspoiled Queen" of the Caribbean. Apparently there are some great  diving locations here, too. Though I didn’t have a chance to do any  diving, as I mostly just came here to hike this mountain for your entertainment. Once we get into the cloud forest, the steps start getting a little bit steeper. Ah, finally.   A railing. I guess this part of the hike complies with EU safety standards. But seriously,  the railing, while not really necessary, does make the stairs less of a chore. After a lot more stairs we finally get to this bench. And it’s possible to see the communications tower at the top of Mount Scenery for the first time. This tower was originally built in the 1970s as a microwave relay station to nearby islands,  but it was aging and needed to be replaced. So a few weeks before we arrived, the  Dutch Ministry of Defense started a project to replace the tower, which we only  learned about after arriving on the island. The project involves dismantling the tower, By workers who have to make this climb every morning. And then a helicopter is used to pick up the pieces of the tower. And deliver them to this ship, moored offshore. This is quite a complicated operation, and  complicated further by the fact that the helicopter pilot needs to see what he’s doing. So we would occasionally see them quickly fly up to the top of the mountain whenever  there was a break in the clouds. And apparently that’s happening right now, because here comes the helicopter. This is a Sikorsky S-64F Skycrane and  they’re really interesting machines so it’s great to see one of them up close. Each one of these helicopters is given a unique name. This one is called  “Camille” and it was built in 1970. The Skycrane named “Olga” was used in the  construction of the CN Tower in Toronto in 1975. I love helicopters and I wanted to become a  helicopter pilot when I was young, but it’s horrendously expensive to get a helicopter pilot’s  license so I only ever took one trial lesson. Back on Saba, the helicopter makes it to the  tower, but the clouds roll in again. It looks like they might be trying to push away the clouds  with the helicopter blades, but it’s not working. And after a few minutes of trying they  abort and head back to the airport. And once again it’s quiet on the hiking  trail. The path now goes down hill, but there’s a sign here showing that it’s  this way to the highest point, so let’s go! The ground here is really slippery, so I’m glad  there’s a railing. But once we get to the bottom, there’s a sign saying that the path  is closed, and workers are turning people back if they go through. We heard that the wind from the

helicopter had knocked down some trees  and it was unsafe to go along this route while the helicopter was operating. There is another hiking trail here called the Elfin forest trail which looks nice, But we’re trying to get to the top so let’s turn around and head back up the hill, To take the alternate route. The first part of this trail has muddy  wooden stairs, with some wire mesh on them to make them slightly less slippery.   But you really have to watch your step. But then we get to this part which is just a  path of wet mud with some boards dropped down to make it slightly easier to walk on. And it just gets worse from here. There are a few sections along the  way that require some climbing. But it’s not too difficult and  some parts have ropes to help. And finally, after one more flight of  wooden stairs, we make it to the peak. There's a concrete post here  to mark the highest point. And if you wait for a break in the clouds you can get a fantastic view from up here! I knew the islands in this region were close  together, but it still surprised me how easy it was to see one island from another. This is Saba, as seen from the shore of Sint Maarten. And this is Statia seen from Saba. But back up on the peak you can see the tower  that they’re dismantling. And if you look really carefully to the left of that, you can see... the actual highest point in the Netherlands that we can’t get to because  of the helicopter. Damn it. Clearly I’m going to have to come back  to Saba and try it again some time. Of course that next trip would be a lot easier  if they at least had some public transit. But one thing that did make my trip easy  was having reliable mobile phone service. Which is why I was glad to have  Saily, the sponsor of this video. Saily lets you buy an affordable  data plan on your phone, so you can save money on expensive roaming fees. I find it an absolute necessity to have a good data connection on my phone when I travel.   In case I need to, maybe, text someone for help when I slip and fall while hiking. Back in the olden days, I used to have to find a local shop and buy a pay-as-you-go SIM  card, which wasn’t always easy in a new country. But with Saily you just choose your plan and  install your eSIM in the app before you leave, And a few minutes after you arrive  your eSIM automatically activates and you’ve got a high-speed data connection. Saily offers affordable eSIM plans for over 160 countries, as well as 8 different regions.   This was incredibly convenient for my trip because Saily had a single eSIM package for the  Caribbean. Which included Saba as well as all of the other islands I visited. Which was great  because if I had to get a different SIM for each island it would've been much more expensive. Saily lets you choose how much data you want to buy, so you can choose the right  amount for the length of your trip. And I also like that I only have to install the  Saily eSIM once and it works for every country. Which is going to be incredibly useful next month  when I’m filming six new episodes of Day Pass across multiple countries in Asia. I can tell you from experience that having a reliable and fast internet  connection makes travelling so much easier, so if you’re planning to travel, I  strongly recommend you try out Saily. Just follow the link below to  download the Saily app and use the code “notjustbikes” at checkout  to get 15% off a Saily eSIM data plan. Thanks so much for watching, and thanks  to Saily for sponsoring this video.