One of the things I love the most about going on a cruise is the opportunity to visit multiple countries in a short period of time. You don’t get a long time in each place, but then you also have no pressure to fall in love with every country the cruise stops at. If you do happen to fall in love with a place, you can always put it on your list of places to visit again! St. Kitts was one of those “I want to visit this country again” places for me!
When I opened the curtains in our room as we were pulling into port I squealed to Anson, “You have to see this!” Even though I knew that St. Kitts was mountainous, somehow I had forgotten! What a beautiful view and so different from both Grand Turk and San Juan.
Once again, we had been given the opportunity from Carnival to get off the boat early and we took it! Apparently, we can’t resist being the first ones off the ship. We headed over and were immediately approached by a taxi driver asking if we wanted to go somewhere. We had researched St. Kitts ahead of time and other than hiking the dormant volcano we hadn’t seen too much we really wanted to do in the short time we had there. Anson’s back would’ve made hiking impossible, so we asked to be taken to Cockleshell Beach because the internet said it was where we should go!
The taxis in St. Kitts are all managed by the same company making the prices the same across the board. We headed out with our driver who told us all about the island, it’s history and the cost of housing ($40K US would get us a basic house, he said). We enjoyed the drive and the scenery with our driver showing us hotels, schools, and the airport.
On the way to the beach, we made one stop so that we could take some pictures from a higher vantage point on the island. It was so beautiful to see both the Caribbean Sea and the Atlantic Ocean in the same view. You definitely don’t get to see this every day!
We were dropped off at the beach and were pleased to see that it was pretty empty. An obviously American guy offered to help us find some chairs and an umbrella. When I asked where he was from he said that he was from Oklahoma and that his girlfriend was at the Veterinary School on the island. It seems to be a popular school as he wasn’t the only American working along the beach.
We settled into our loungers right in front of the water with a view of the smaller island of Nevis in front of us. We saw water taxis taking people to and from the island, but we were comfortable just enjoying the beautiful weather.
It wasn’t long before Anson decided that the jet skis we could see looked too inviting and he headed to find out if we could rent them! It didn’t take long before we were each on one flying along the waves! (We rented the jet skis from St. Kitts Water Sports and they were fantastic! Highly recommend!)
We enjoyed a good half hour on the water before having to head back to shore which had become a lot more crowded with people being dropped off. Getting there early definitely paid off!
We stayed on the beach for a few more hours and lucked out in running into Steve and Lisa, our new friends from the ship. We hung out on the beach together and then also managed to get a ride with them back to the ship because we miscalculated our cash and didn’t have quite enough money left! (Thanks for saving us, guys!!)
After we got back to the Carnival’s newest ship, the Vista, we sat on our balcony watching the sun set behind the mountains of St. Kitts. What a gorgeous island full of possible adventures and excitement. This is a place I think I could spend a lot more than a day visiting.
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