It's not easy keeping up with writing blogs, especially when you're 1800 miles and 3 months away from the subject.
In St. Barts we decided to continue south instead of east to Barbuda. We figured we'd visit Antigua and Barbuda on the way back up north, later in the spring. So St. Kitts was next:
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| Sailing past the Brimstone Hill Fortress |
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| Basseterre |
We anchored a few nites in the busy and historic city of Basseterre. The efficient local "bus" system makes it easy to get places, so we hopped on one to take us to the Brimstone Hill Fortress. Unfortunately the bus takes you to the entrance to the Fortress grounds which is well below it. Fortunately the first tourists in a passing rental car saw our plight and gave us a ride up and later back down the hill.
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| "I have to walk up there?" |
The views and the grounds are spectacular:
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| The bloggers, with St. Eustatius and Saba in the background |
We heard about the Green Velvet Monkeys that were brought by the British, and now are reported to outnumber people on St. Kitts, and we were happy to be greeted by a few while leaving the fort.
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We walked along the main road down to Old Road Town, then up the hill to Romney Manor.
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| Along the road to Romney Manor |
The manor was once owned by the great, great, great grandfather of Thomas Jefferson, and Lord Romney in 1834 was one of the early slave emancipators:
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| 350 year old saman tree at Romney Manor |
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| Grounds of Romney Manor |
Another oasis in the otherwise bustling city of Basseterre was the Palms Court Gardens. The property consists of a single guest house, but the highlight is a beautiful, large infinity pool and surrounding gardens. A great place to relax, swim, and have lunch
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| View of Basseterre from the Palms Court pool |
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| Guest House |
The next night we moved south to White House Bay, near the Great Salt Pond. We noticed activity at the beach bar, so took the dinghy ashore to enjoy it. A well dressed host in all whites greeted us at the dock, only to inform us that they'd love to have us "any other night" because on this night they were hosting a private party for guests of the newly opened super yacht marina around the corner in the Great Salt Pond. Oh well. . . . We did explore the marina, called Christopher Harbour Marina, and lo and behold it was indeed a super yacht facility--a few of the St. Barts Bucket Regatta boats were there! Then we pushed our tails back between our legs and returned to our little mother ship for a quiet nite to ourselves.
Before we got to our next island, we passed by Nevis and then Montserrat. One of my former work partners weathered a hurricane while vacationing there a number of years back, and I was curious about the status of the resort after impact by such a huge force of nature. No signs of any ill effects when we passed by. The same could not be said of Montserrat. The island was devastated by a series of recent volcanic eruptions, and the lava fields were enormous:
Next stop, Guadeloupe!
