Everything is $2 on St. Kitts

The isthmus with Nevis in the background.

This weekend I took a vacation across the channel to St. Kitts. We left on Friday afternoon and snagged a ride over with a local fisherman (named Fisher), who makes the trip every few weeks to “trade.” The boat was actually STENAPA’s old marine patrol boat, which made us a bit nervous since anything that’s not good enough for the park, has to be on death’s doorstep. He has “In God We Trust” painted on the side, and to confirm our worst fears, just as we pushed off from the dock he said a prayer for safe passage.

Let’s just start by saying it was wet. I had been contemplating wearing real clothes, and it was a good decision to just wear my trunks and rash guard. As soon as we rounded the south point and hit the Atlantic we were soaked. The swells weren’t even that bad, maybe three feet? But it was just wave after wave over the side. On the dock beforehand, we had met a couple other people from Statia and so we spent the ride laughing about how badly we were getting pummeled by the waves. We might as well have been sitting on the shore right where they were breaking. Somehow we held on to the boat and no one got swept overboard because  even with lifejackets it would have been interesting snagging them in the swells. Finally, just as we pulled up along the shore, dolphins started playing in the wake and near the bow.

The "Circus" in central Basseterre.

Once we made it to St. Kitts we had to wait for customs to show up. On a lot of these islands people pull up at random docks around the coast and call up customs on their phone to let them know they’ve landed. We stopped at a random dock on the northwest coast, about a half an hour from Basseterre, the main city and capital. Once they showed up, and we showed we weren’t carrying any narcotics, we hopped on a bus and headed into town.

During the week, I had emailed a few people on couchsurfing and ended up finding a guy named Otava who was happy to have us crash with him for the weekend. It was just Mike and I, so we said goodbye to the others and hopped on the bus (van) to head south to meet him. I called him and he ended up just hopping on with us a little farther down the coast on his way home. We eventually made it to his house after picking up his car from a friend who had been borrowing it.

Otava is about 28 or 29, and went to school in Alabama. He’s a world traveler who has been to ten or fifteen countries, and he works for the St. Kitts Carib brewery as an accountant. He lives with his mom, brother, sister, and her two children. We stayed in the guest room downstairs and only ever really saw his brother and nephew. Who knows where the others were.

Wandering around Brimstone Hill Fort.

Let me just say that Mike and I spent a lot of the weekend talking about how great people can be. It’s really encouraging that complete strangers are willing to open up their homes to travelers and offer them a local experience. We could have stayed at the Marriott resort along with all the hordes of tourists and cruise-ship-ees, but instead, we stayed with a local family that wanted us to see the St. Kitts they know.

Otava was the best host you could ever hope for. It was even his first time hosting and he still went out of his way to show us the island. On Saturday, he drove us all the way around the island. We started out going to Romney Manor, an old plantation, to quickly see the gardens, before flying off to Brimstone Hill Fort. It was a British stronghold that was only ever taken once, by the French, after a long siege. It was eventually returned, by the Treaty of Versailles, in 1783, but still has a long history of protecting one of the main British territories in the Caribbean. St. Kitts was the first permanent British colony here, and was the base for numerous other expeditions to colonize other nearby islands.

After that we were feeling peckish, so we pulled over for jerk chicken and a beer on the side of the road ($4), and then kept moving north towards Willet’s Bay. Mike’s last name is Willets so it seemed appropriate to make a pilgrimage to what turned out to be quite a beautiful little cove. We wandered along the sand and picked up beach glass for a bit before hopping back in the car and continuing on to Black Rocks, a volcanic lava flow on the north end that was quite stunning.

Mike Willets at Willetts Bay

Finally, we drove back south to Ottley Plantation, which is now a trendy resort way beyond our price range. We opted out of getting a drink and instead wandered the grounds and old plantation house before picking fresh mangos and wax apples off the trees in the backyard. The maids in the resort were laughing when they saw us, and ended up running off to fill a bag from their personal stash of perfectly ripe ones. Once again, locals taking care of us all.

As we were headed back to Basseterre, Otava decided to take a detour to the isthmus that connects the north end to the trendy, pricy, picture-perfect beaches of the south end of the island. The view was stunning and we could see all the way over the Nevis, the island that makes up the other half of the Federation of St. Kitts (Christopher) and Nevis.

We dropped off the two Dutch girls who had been traveling with us for the day, Thialda and Rosan, and headed home, where Mike and I walked into town to get chicken wings, fries, and a Carib at a local joint, Bobsy’s. After our ridiculously delicious protein downing (this weekend was the most I’ve had since I got here), we walked back to Otava’s for a nap and shower before heading out on the town.

Interestingly, the island nightlife has quite the quirks. Despite a medical school, a nursing school, and a veterinary school, all full of locals and American expats, and loads of tourists, the island has very little going on apart from Friday night. Which is a bit wild. As you’d expect, Caribbean islands are big on beach bars and late night parties. But Saturday was amazingly quiet. So we had a drink, sat by the water, and then walked home. Or would have, if we hadn’t hitchhiked back. The guy, Nica?, was great, and decided we should come with him to check out some other places where locals go for their Saturdays. But after poking our heads in, and realizing how exhausted we really were, we decided to head the rest of the way home and get a whole, luxurious seven hour sleep. 

Brimstone Hill Fort

Sunday, we felt refreshed enough to pack our bags and get going, saying goodbye to Otava on our way to the bus stop. But once again, he came through for us like a champ, and ended up driving us over to the Marriott where we were beach-crashing for the day. Our friends from the boat, Leon and Marta (Dutch and Spanish), were having a date weekend away from the schools here on Statia where he teaches, and decided to invite us to hang out on the beach with them Sunday. We dropped our bags in their room and went to get breakfast at a coffee shop down the road with Otava while they went to play tennis.

We ran into the girls again, more like caught them, since they were trying to stealthily eat half a cake for breakfast, and sat and chatted till they had to head back to where they were staying to check out. It was beach time then, so we walked back down to the resort to steal their chairs. Absolutely beautiful beach, even if it is imported sand, where we spent a few hours sitting watching the waves. I swam out to the break wall for a bit, and went on a couple walks to take pictures, and then hid out in the shade because I was getting a bit red. We found Leon and Marta again in the pool and then wandered around the beach until we had to catch our ride north to meet the boat and head home.

It was quite the trip. Lots of local jerked chicken. Lots of beautiful vistas. And the most friendly, helpful people you could ask for on a weekend get away. To top it off, when we made it home and hitched a ride back to the gardens, the driver decided to drive us the whole twenty minutes back.

Day at the beach.

People will constantly amaze you if you let them. The opposite may be true sometimes as well, but I prefer to remain optimistic. We stayed with someone we didn’t know, caught rides with random strangers, ate food and saw sights we would have never otherwise known about, and had great times that we would have missed during a couple days in a hotel. Hitchhiking and couchsurfing continuously go up in my estimation and they made our weekend perfect.

Going Native

Zeelandia Beach--Where I conduct my turtle patrols.

The wildlife has been annoying me. The other night the roaches sent me over the edge and we went on a killing spree that was satisfying in a worrisome way. Last night a pig got into the garden and started upending the trashcan. It was lucky that all I started chucking were bricks, because for a second I had picked up a machete. Then I realized that I wouldn’t know what to do with a dead 300-pound pig in our kitchen. It was one in the morning and I didn’t feel like hosing down the blood, even if it did mean bacon, all I wanted was to get back in my bed.

I remember getting to India and being a bit shocked by the locals’ attitude towards the dogs. But after a few weeks of watching the feral packs hunt down pigs and goats, and hearing their death screams outside my window, I was happy to join in throwing rocks at them too. My point is, the line between compassion and slaughter is much thinner than you might think. Move to a desert island, even a Caribbean one, and you my find your ‘civilized’ behavior slipping away.

On the other hand, with all of this time on our hands we haven’t got much to do besides get in touch with our creative sides. Mine is a seventy-year old man who likes to cook and read all day. Everyone can cook rice, but only a true artist (pronounced artEEst) can truly cook rice. I’ve been perfecting it in a million different ways. Last night was a lentil curry sauce over rice. Delicious. Might have to open an Indian restaurant when I get home. Not like I’m getting ahead of myself or anything.

Having all this time has been nice for my reading too. I just reread the first Game of Thrones book to forget the school year. Now I’m free to dig deeper. I’m reading Reza Aslan’s “No god but God” book on the Islamic Reformation. I saw him speak a couple of years ago with my dad and we agreed he was brilliant.

Besides cooking curry and reading about Islam, my life has taken another major turn. I recently gave up pants. No need for them. I think they’re overrated. Shirts are slowly on their way out too (I really am going native). I just don’t feel like doing laundry. It’s not in the cards for how my weekends are going to go. It takes too long to do by hand, and it costs $2 a pound in town.

So I’ve graduated from pants to board shorts. Single layer, light, airy, and when they get dirty or I finish a beach patrol or I get back from diving, all I have to do is wear them into the shower for a light soaping up. Voila. Laundry done. Shirts are the same. I have a dark blue soccer jersey and a blue and white rash guard that I rotate between. When they get dirty, I just wear them into the shower.

And with that, I’m off to a shower---in my clothes.

Roommates and slow days on Statia

I live with three other people. Andrew and Liv both work here at STENAPA and Mike is a volunteer for the month. All three are English, and I expect that by the time I get home to the States in August I’ll have a proper British accent again.

Andrew has been here since January and works in the National Park. He left a job back home to get more field experience and is completing a study on Red-billed Tropic birds. He’s our resident chef.

Liv has been here since the end of April. She’s a PADI Dive Instructor and worked at a dive shop in Mexico for the last couple years. She works in the Marine Park like me, but her responsibilities have more to do with keeping things in order out on the reef, lionfish eradication and keeping the snorkel club from drowning. She’s pretty lethal with a spear.

Mike just got here last Monday and is taking a bit of a summer holiday before heading back to work. He got bored at uni, took a job at a charity, and is now about to head off to Sandhurst for officer training. He’s been sharing my room since we don’t have a fourth intern right now and it’s a little toasty out in the tents.

Andrew and Mike and I have been on lizard patrol the last few days. As the island parks department we tend to get a lot of strays. Right now we have a Tropic bird and a kestrel chick that someone dropped off at the office. The Tropic bird gets 10 inch sardines for breakfast, and the kestrel gets what we kill for it, or what we cut off the sardines. Yum. S/he is growing pretty quickly and needs a lot of food. We make a sorry lot, though, driving around the island in our truck with a menagerie. The other day we had three people, two birds, 4 water jugs, a garbage can, our groceries, and a hitch-hiker hanging on to the back.

We do a lot of riding in the back. Either to hold down the tires because they’re bald, or because we’re on our way home from the bar and we have 12 people in the truck. We seem to pick up our friends and stray hitchhikers pretty easily. Island rules are pretty lax. There aren’t many laws that are enforced. Driving is kind of wild. The police are semi-non-existent. You leave your keys in the car, not just because no one will steal it, but also because someone else might have to move it down the road so they can get through. There’s a lot of off-roading, mainly because there are no roads.

Things are like that here. Everything is slow and done in its own time. When we went to drop off Amy (last Brit who left), we sat at the airport bar (which was half the airport) and had a beer at 9am because there wasn’t anything else to do and it’s the cheapest thing on the island at $2 a bottle. Security is almost non-existent, and the airport is relatively the same size as my house. There are three flights a day, morning, afternoon and evening. The plane is a 19-seater and the pilot leans out the front door to wipe down the window. Luggage goes on your lap.

We also have to come up with our own entertainment. Liv has convinced me of the benefits of hermit crab racing. You find a bucket of them (they’re about the size of your fist) and take your pick. Choosing a winner is a bit like going to the racetrack, it takes a certain eye. Then you put them in the middle of the circle and see which one crawls out the fastest. Gotta keep ourselves busy here!!!