St. Kitts was one of the islands that I looked forward to visiting the most. It was the only island in this particular itinerary that I had never been to before. This meant that instead of just going to the beach I also wanted to explore for a while. So, the plan was to get off the ship as early as possible to maximize our time in port.
Our arrival time was 8 AM and we were ready to disembark the moment we were docked. We didn’t have a tour planned so we decided the best course of action would be to do a little shopping and then to find a taxi to take us around the island. We were to finish with a stop at cockleshell beach which seems to be a popular tourist destination.
Although we are not big ticket shoppers (expensive jewelry and such), I did enjoy walking around town checking out souvenirs and knickknacks. Although most of the items were the same as you find all over the Caribbean, they did have some unique items which I had not seen anywhere else. We bought a few things, after we were done shopping it was time to find a taxi. This task wasn’t hard; all that was needed was a short walk back towards the cruise ship and within minutes we had secured the driver for the day.
While driving around the perimeter of the island the view was incredible. St. Kitts has some of the prettiest water you will find in the Caribbean. Also the view of Nevis seems as if it was something that came out of the imagination of a great artist rather than real-life. Our taxi driver was very knowledgeable on the island and filled us in on history and the culture of the island.
One of the things that were more evident on this island and then most of the others I visited the level of poverty. Once you get out and start seeing the real St. Kitts you become very aware of how poor the island is. Our driver explained to us how the island is in a transitional period in regards to the economy. St. Kitts has been in the sugarcane business for hundreds of years and is now transitioning to a more tourism-based economy, there’s still much work to do. The roads are in terrible shape and the way it was explained to us they won’t get better anytime soon (they were just redone a couple of years ago). With this in mind I encourage all visitors to do what they can to help the people of St. Kitts (don’t haggle them to the point of bleeding them dry if you can help it).
Once our tour was done we were dropped off at cockleshell beach which is a popular tourist destination. There are two main areas where tourists are dropped one being the Reggae Beach bar and the other being Lion’s restaurant. We chose to be dropped at Lions Rock beach bar which gets its name from the owner who actually resembles a lion with his long gray beard and gray Rastafarian dreadlocks. I was told they had the best barbecued ribs in the Caribbean. Although I am a sucker for ribs the seafood in the Caribbean is so good I never want to pass up an opportunity to have some. The Chicken that my girlfriend ordered was also very good. The beach itself was not nearly as picturesque as what I had imagined. There was sea grass everywhere and it was a bit rocky so I would recommend water shoes. I didn’t do any snorkeling but was told it wasn’t bad. After a couple of hours on cockleshell we headed back to the ship. Finding a taxi was no problem, all we did was walk towards the parking area and there were quite a few coming back to pick up groups.
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