Welcome Home to St. Kitts – July 9-16, 2023

Now that Covid is under control and not causing havoc, we scheduled a return trip to our beloved St. Kitts and invited Jim’s sister, Carol and her life partner, Paul. Carol has been there before, but Paul has not, so it was fun watching him experience it for the first time.

The first new experience was getting off the plane from the back and actually walking on the tarmac rather than through a ramp into the airport.

A lot has changed since 2016. The first big change was we used to have to stop IGA Market on the way from the Airport for groceries. Now there is a market right across the street from the resort, so cab fare just got cheaper. The second change was only temporary but still different. The ocean was putting out lots of seaweed and as hard as the resort tried to keep ahead of it, it still made going in the water uncomfortable. We opted for the “concrete” ocean instead.

It was incredibly windy all week which didn’t do anything for your hair style, but it made the temperature very bearable. In fact, it was very comfortable most of the time with this constant breeze coming off the ocean.

Of course, we participated in some of the resort activities including the water golf. The hole floats in the pool and is constantly moving. Wouldn’t you know it, Paul won first prize. I guess all those golfing trips he and Carol go on did more than just provide fellowship.

In October 2022, a new tour came available that sounded like fun and turned out to be one of the highlights of our week. We went by old army truck up into the mountain and rain forest to visit an organic coffee farm. The trip through the rain forest lasted 1 1/2 hours with lots of beautiful scenery and a very bumpy dirt road at the end.

When we arrived, we were treated to a “snack” of all kinds of local foods prepared right there with much of it locally grown on the farm.

Once we were fed and watered, the walking tour began. The farm is about 25 acres filled with organic coffee plants and every other kind of tropical plant you can imagine including bananas, plantains, okra, herbs, lemons, pineapples, papaya and mangos. We were allowed to taste the coffee fruit right off the bushes. The fruit part tasted sweet, like honey and our guide told us that makes the best coffee when the bean is sweet.

Of course, every trip to anywhere includes a visit to the tourist trap shopping areas and being a cruise ship port, St. Kitts is no different. We did, however, wait for a day when no cruise ships were in port, and it paid off with dividends. Bargains galore! Would you believe $5 baseball caps.

No trip to St. Kitts is complete unless to go to Timothy Hill and take a picture of the island with the Atlantic Ocean on one side and the Carribean on the other side.

Since Carol and I were having our birthdays fall within this week, the guys made special arrangements for a big deal celebration. We were picked up and transported to Reggae Beach where we board a speed boat to take us to the sister island of Nevis. On Nevis, there was a taxi/guide waiting to give us a tour of the island and then take us to a place named Bananas for appetizers on a deck above the tree tops to watch the sunset.

At the appointed time, we got back to our driver who took us to our dinner reservation at Golden Rock which is an old sugar plantation from 1856 for a spectacular dinner nestled in the tropical hills of Nevis.

A special dessert was the perfect end to a perfect celebration.

Then back to the dock to catch the last speedboat to St. Kitts.

It’s hard to cap off a week this great without putting your toes in the Carribean Ocean, so off we went to lunch at the Cafe owned and operated by the organic coffee farm, Liamuaga, and then to the nearby shore.

The only hitch in the entire trip was the return flight to Miami. Heavy rains shut down the airport and we all missed our connecting flights. We stayed overnight and only got delayed one day, but Paul and Carol were stuck in Miami for two days. Fortunately, it was at the airlines expense. Even that experience will not prevent us from going back.