St. Kitts and Nevis (Part 2)

On Thursday, we made it home safely from our vacation. A bit more about our time on St. Kitts and Nevis, then I'll move on to the week on Dominica. First, it's official name is the Federation of St. Christopher and Nevis. But it's known as St. Kitts and Nevis. St. Kitts became the first British territory in the West Indies in 1624. The islands got their independence in 1983 from Britain. Christopher Columbus allegedly named St Kitts after himself because he liked it more than any other island he saw. Nevis was also named by him – something about snow capped mountains – because Mount Nevis is always in the clouds, which look like snow. (We took the photo of Mount Nevis here during the hike - definitely in the clouds.) Like most of the islands around here, they are volcanic in origin. While they have mountainous interiors, the outside areas are fairly flat. Sugar cane is the main export, and St Kitts was the last of the Caribbean islands to have a state owned sugar cane company which closed in 2005. Also, I am fairly sure that St. Kitts is the only Caribbean island that has a train on it. It used to help with the sugar cane system but now serves as a scenic 3 hour ride around the island for tourists. As I mentioned in a previous post, together the islands make up one of the smallest country's in the world. Nevis is about the size of St. Thomas - 36 square miles with 15k people on it. St. Kitts is bigger - about 68 sq miles, with about 35k residents. English is the official language; English Creole is common too. There is no US Ambassador to St Kitts and Nevis (or Dominica) - the one on Barbados covers these islands. Tourism is the biggest industry.

The ferry between St Kitts and Nevis is about a 45 minute ride that doesn’t take the shortest route between the two islands. The channel itself is only about 2 miles. There’s actually a swim race between the islands every march, but we missed it both years. We toyed with swimming the route on our own while we were here; taking turns kayaking and swimming. But the water was so uninviting looking – the sea bottom covered with seaweed instead of coral and fish – and dark water instead of pretty turquoise. We had plenty of other things to keep ourselves busy.

As a stamp collector, I like to visit post offices when we travel to other islands. I was surprised to discover that St. Kitts and Nevis have their own stamps. But given the rivalry between the islands (more below), I suppose it is not unexpected. The ones sold on St Kitts all say St Kitts. However, you can use the stamps interchangeably on the two islands. St. Kitts has stamps for tons of international events that they had nothing to do with – 50th anniversary of lunar landing; Nelson Mandela meeting the Pope; Mao Se Tung; D-day and Vjay day with an atomic bomb on it; aids awareness; Prince William’s 21st birthday (okay, it is a former British territory); and their World Cup 2004 soccer stamp is of the German team. Also, some images were very low quality; others very pretty.

Dave and I also collect local beer labels. St Kitts and Nevis has (have?) a few beers they brew on island, but none that are actually unique to the islands: Stag – "the man’s beer"; Skol; and Carib (from Trinidad) and Mackeson. One local drink is "Ting with a Sting" - Ting is a carbonated grapefruit drink like Squirt (I think it's available in the US?), and the "sting" is CSR - Cane Spirit Rothschild, an alcoholic beverage made from the sugar cane, but tastes more like vodka than rum. CSR is made on St. Kitts.

The plantation on Nevis that we stayed at, Golden Rock, was pretty neat (and monkeys nearby - seen here on the hotel's nature walk!). There are only a dozen rooms - little cottages, or you can opt for the sugar mill as your room. The owner, Pam, was very helpful and people renting houses nearby would come to Golden Rock for meals and seek her out like a concierge. We picked up a souvenir based on her suggestion too - she directed us to a local man who does wood carvings, and we brought a carved monkey home with us. Pam told us there is a lot of rivalry between the islands. She explained that one of the owners of the mountain biking/windsurfing shop was eligible to go to some international games and represent the country but St Kitts officials kept him out. Perhaps it was because he was from Nevis, or perhaps because he is Rasta. The Nevisians toy with both theories and are pretty upset about the whole thing.

Plantations-turned-hotels are abundant on Nevis, and we'd heard that Montpelier Plantation was a must-see. We disagree, but we did indulge in their famous lobster salad. It was good, but overpriced. We moved on to St. Kitts that day and tried to do some budget balancing by having a more reasonably priced dinner. We weren’t super hungry so we thought we’d see what we could find at the grocery store, and grab some breakfast items at the same time. After some navigational problems, in which we got to see some neighborhoods on St Kitts – people actually ride bicycles here! – we arrived at 7:15 – and they had just closed for the night. Defeated, we went back to the hotel and grabbed pizza and salad from the shack by the pool. When trying to decide if we wanted the Caesar or tropical salad, I asked the employee what was on the tropical salad:
“cucumber, onion, lettuce, tomato”
“so, what’s tropical about it?”
“usually we put mango on it, but it finished.”
We got the tropical salad. It came with Caesar salad dressing – the only dressing they had. I expect this at an average Caribbean restaurant, but was a little disappointed at the Marriott here. It was only later that I realized there were so many mangos on the island that they couldn’t seriously be out of mangos – they were falling off the trees rotten because they couldn’t be picked fast enough. Oh well. The pizza was very tasty though and we had leftovers for breakfast the next day!

One last thing, while the driving on these two islands was easy enough, the speed limit signs are in miles per hour, but the car’s speedometer is in kilometers per hour. On an island though, these things don't usually matter - you drive however fast seems right, and that's usually below the speed limit for us. Unless you're super familiar with the roads, it's difficult to drive fast, as you have to be ready for potholes, goats, and other road hazards. Just a few more photos on Shutterfly.