St. Kitts & Nevis

- May 30, 2022

Thursday 12^th May, White House Bay, St. Kitts.

We've suddenly gotten to the pointy end of the season and with flights booked out of Curaçao in late June we've picked up the pace a bit with our travelling and hence I've fallen completely behind with the blog. Boom, boom, boom we're hitting every island in full on fast tourist mode. Dominica – bam! Guadeloupe – bam! Montserrat – bam! Nevis – bam! Kitts – about to be bam! Next stop Statia – bam! So I'll just try to organise the blog as best as possible and not let it get too confused.

So we're in St. Kitts & Nevis (nee-viss). Two former British colonies that banded together in the 80s to become an independent federation. “Is this your first time in The Federation?” the immigration officer asked me as we checked in making me feel like I was in Star Wars. We spent a couple of delightful days in Nevis and just this morning had a short sail up to Kitts. We've anchored in a spot with nothing going on other than a failed (or maybe it's just in its early days) marina and residential development so I've finally got an afternoon with no distractions - there is literally nothing ashore.

One very impressive marina office and absolutely nothing else.

Nevis

A lovely little island, population 11,000, with a gorgeous little capital of Charlestown, population 1500. We sailed up from Montserrat with our day old antigen tests and dashed ashore to check in before the office closed so that we wouldn't have to have the awkward argument the next day about the test being too old even though we had arrived within 24 hours of the test. And we just made it – the port office and immigration checked us in but the customs “system” had been turned off for the day. The customs officer did say we could roam free ashore and return the next morning to formally check in. Yay, the final tricky need-a-covid-test island had been infiltrated!

The nervous wait to find out if you'll be let in or not.....

Charlestown. A fabulous town. Definitely the prettiest and best preserved old Caribbean capital we've been to. It must have been wealthy enough back in the day to build an impressive town, poor enough over a period of time not to have torn everything down and replaced it with modern monstrosities and wealthy enough now to maintain/refurbish the old buildings. And the pace of life here is certainly not frenetic.

The Square. Top people watching site and public transport hub.

The police station.

Strong contender for the best street name ever.

There's not a lot to do, we strolled around, had a coffee (they even had a decent coffee shop!, unheard of.) and visited the museum which is located in the birthplace of local boy made good Alexander Hamilton (of both US founding father and hit musical fame). Nevis was a very prosperous sugar producing island and the centre of the British West Indies colonies. It was also the arrival and sales/distribution point for the ships of enslaved people from West Africa to the leeward islands. So that explains the sufficient wealth and importance for having such a lovely town built in the first place. A more recent claim to fame is that one of the Spice Girls' father is from Nevis (maybe Scary, don't know my Spice Girls very well). And it has a medical school, of course, as you do (unless you're Dominica or Montserrat!).

Birthplace of Alexander Hamilton

St. Kitts

We hired a scooter for a day of let's-see-everything-there-is-to-see-like-we're-cruise-ship-tourists. First up we found Tourist Central around Frigate Bay: chock-a-block with resorts, restaurants and even a golf course. Then the capital, Basseterre (same name as Guadeloupe's capital, just to confuse everyone), which is a perfectly fine town with a really big tourist shopping area right off the cruise ship terminal. Thankfully there were no ships in while we were there. Then we drove up the coast past a medical school and a vet school to the crowning glory of the fabulous Brimstone Hill Fortress. A brilliantly restored fort in a genius setting on top of a small and perfectly shaped little volcanic hill. Then we went to see the “Black Rocks” coastal volcanic rock formation. There were lots of souvenir stalls, a bar/restaurant, some goats and chickens, a very large and impressive viewing deck and some very underwhelming black rocks. It was like the Holy Stone of Clonrichert in Father Ted. Then we continued our scooter circumnavigation of the island, past a second medical school, and back to our quiet, undeveloped corner of the island.

Brimstone Hill.

We had to check out from Basseterre so we sailed up with the intention of spending our last night anchored there. It turns out that the harbour in Basseterre is officially The Worst Anchorage in the World. It's completely unsheltered, just like being anchored in the middle of the ocean. We made a mad dash ashore (I still can't believe we somehow managed to to launch the dinghy and get safely off Gráinne while she rolled and bobbed like crazy), checked out, did a hit and run at KFC (Karl's finally Big Macced out), spent the last of our Eastern Caribbean dollars, dashed back to the boat and sailed straight back to White House Bay still shaking.