Cruise Day 6 - St. Kitts

After feeling carsick after a long tour day in St. Lucia the day before, I wasn't so sure about going through with our next tour in St. Kitts. We were going to make a decision the morning of, well I woke up feeling great so we decided to go with it! It was a much shorter tour, and once I saw that we were in an actual mini bus rather than just a 12 passenger van, I felt better about that too. Also, Tyler was able to recruit a few other people to join our group because there were some empty seats. He worked a deal with the driver and while waiting for all the people to board, he met some people with no plans that day. This was able to knock about $50 off our tour price which - made it even that more enjoyable for Tyler haha.

In our initial planning for St. Kitts, I really wanted to visit Nevis. St. Kitts and Nevis are two neighboring islands that are actually the same country. My parents visited this resort in Nevis back when I was young and it was their first big trip away from Paige, Michael and I. I remember them coming home and seeing pictures and hearing about how amazing the Caribbean was, I always wanted to go there some day! But with a little research, although Nevis is only 2 miles away, it would have taken a long time to travel via taxi and via boat just to make it over there. And then the hotel was not so cheap if we wanted to get a day pass there, so we opted not to go but just seeing it was fun :)

We booked a tour that would take us to two really neat historic places on the island, the first was Romney Manor. It was a beautiful garden with grounds and ruins from the estate of Sam Jefferson, one of Thomas Jefferson's great grandfathers. We both loved the huge beautiful tree that was over 350 years old.

The one thing a little random about our tour, was the guide - he was a character, totally likeable guy but he was totally into botany and stopped to show us every plant and flower. We learned a lot but it was getting a little old after a while... A couple times he stopped to pick flowers for the ladies on the bus, then handed out some leftovers to some ladies we saw at later stops. Quite a character for sure, he'd honk and wave at people walking by, we thought he knew them, turns out he was totally just flirting.

Roosevelt our tour guide, at the start of a botany lesson :)

The next landmark (and honestly the main reason Tyler wanted this tour) was Brimstone Fortress. At the top of one of the tallest hills in St. Kitts is a fortress used as a lookout from the 1700s. The views were incredible from up there!

At the bottom of the fortress, looking up to the main structure above

View from the tippy top!

amazing views

The whole east side of the island is a rain forest, completely green and tropical, but the popular beaches are all on the west side of the island, which overlooks to Nevis. Tyler and I both agreed that the west side reminded us of Southern California coast - a little more dry but then hills and cliffs drop off the a beautiful beach. Our tour guide drove us back over to the west side and dropped most of the tour group off at a beach for the rest of the afternoon.

View from the cliffs on east side, before we drove down to the beach

 We weren't really sure where he was dropping us off, but it was a really fancy Carambola Beach Club. It served nice but overpriced drinks and food which we had none of but enjoyed the fancy lounge and access to the beach. We brought our snorkel gear, just in case, and I'm so glad we did because there was a great reef just off the beach. We ran into some friends on the beach and left our stuff with them at their cabana and took a walk down the beach for a while before getting in the water and snorkeling all the way back. I saw about 7 starfish, lots of sea urchins, cool coral and plenty of colorful fish.

Nevis is behind us, over my left shoulder

We then chilled in the shade for an hour or so until we got picked up. I brought my book, "The Hotel on the Corner of Bitter & Sweet" for my cruise read. Tyler brought "The Start-up of You."

It was really a great day and just as all the other days had been, perfect weather!! Roosevelt had brought some local fruit for us to eat in the bus, and I had brought some snacks from the ship. But at one of our stops I had to break down and buy some SunChips because sorry they just sounded so good. But other than that, we never once paid for food or drinks that week! We got back to the cruise terminal and got right back on the ship for a late lunch! We were able to facetime with the kids who were getting excited for Grandpa to make it to Connecticut that night :)