St. Kitts

On Friday, we took a field trip to St. Kitts. It made for a fun day.

The two islands of St. Kitts and Nevis are incredibly different. St. Kitts is much larger than Nevis. It's more touristy (the day we were in St. Kitts there was a cruise ship docked). St. Kitts has fast food restaurants and is much more globalized, while Nevis still feels authentic.

We took a ferry over to St. Kitts in the morning. At the southern end of the island, the land is really thin, so we stopped and took some awesome pictures with the ocean on both sides of it.

St. Kitts

Our next stop was a quick one, where we looked at some rocks with petroglyphs. There was a guy with a monkey named Timmy there, too. So I got to hold a monkey.

Me and Timmy

We stopped at this place that dyed fabrics. First they put wax on the fabric, and then they would dye it and repeat the process to make different shapes and designs. They had some gorgeous pieces. The place also had amazing gardens and bright colored flowers. There was also this huge 300 year old tree that was crazy. It had thick vines hanging down from it; it was pretty cool.

My favorite stop of the day was at Brimstone Hill, this amazing 17th century fort. It looked like something straight out of Pirates of the Caribbean. It's one of the best preserved forts in the Americas, according to Wiki. But it was really cool to see, with all the cannons still there. I can't even imagine the engineering that went into the construction. And how intense it would be to fight a battle from the fort. It made for a fun afternoon; I'm glad we got to see it.

The fort

Then we stopped at a place called The Black Rocks. It was gorgeous. It was formed by massive lava flow millions of years ago, and it's now cliffs right on the coast of the island. The water was so blue and there were these monstrous black rocks. I also got to try pure sugar cane, which was delicious. We stopped at a small rum factory, but they had finished bottling for the day, so it wasn't all that interesting. Unfortunately, no free samples. We also drove by an old leper colony, which was the last one to close in the Caribbean in the 1980s.

Black Rocks

We went into Basseterre, the capital of the country, for a chance to explore and shop. It was pretty touristy, especially with the cruise ship there. But we did stop for a fantastic dinner. I had conch fritters and a pina colada. Overall it was a really fun day and I'm glad we got to explore the country more.