St. Christopher, aka St. Kitts
After the quiet charm of Saba and Statia, we were a little disoriented by the bustling capital city of Basseterre, St. Kitts. We did indeed enjoy a good night’s sleep firmly moored to a pontoon and treated ourselves to breakfast out followed by a pleasant walk through this busy colonial city the next morning.
Missing the cool breezes of the trade winds from being anchored out, that afternoon we moved on to a lovely calm anchorage just off the town of Charleston on Nevis, St. Kitts’ sister island, where we rested for two nights taking advantage of a beautiful beach and the culinary delights of Sunshine’s beach restaurant.
I won’t go into many details about these two islands as we did not have enough time to explore either one properly. Suffice it to say that both islands were first spotted by none other than Christopher Columbus and henceforth were occupied and fought over by some of the usual players of that time ( the French, the British and the Spanish) before becoming British. When they were granted independence in 1967, they were lumped together with Anguilla and told to form a country. Anguilla balked and after several battles was allowed to remain part of Great Britain. Nevis and St. Kitts reluctantly agreed and formed the Federation of ‘St. Christopher and Nevis,’ the smallest sovereign state of the Americas (260 km²/100 sq miles).
Figuring out how to pass through customs. immigration and port officials at each of our port of calls has been like running a new obstacle course in each new country we visit. It took three stops in three different buildings in Basse Terre to clear customs into St. Kitts (and Nevis), which although good exercise for our ‘sea legs,’ took up a fair amount of precious time. We were therefore very happy to see that to clear out of the country in Charleston, Nevis, it was again three stops, but all in the same building. We gave Nevis top marks for efficiency, friendliness and pleasant facilities.
We would’ve liked to spend more time on both Nevis and St. Kitts and read with longing the descriptions of beautiful anchorages, interesting hikes and lovely restored plantations in our guide books, but Guadeloupe beckons, so we put it on our list of ‘must-come--back-tos’ and moved on.
We have one more port of call on this whistle-stop tour--Montserrat.
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