We Have the Caribbean to Ourselves

We’ve now been in the Caribbean for Chapter 2 of our adventure for a month and are behind on our blogs. That’s because we’ve taken advantage of having the Caribbean to ourselves since leaving St. Martin.

Our first anchorage in St. Kitts on May 22nd was at Port Zante in Basseterre. Port Zante is where all of the cruise ships come in. There’s a billboard in town that touts 40,000 cruise passengers visited St. Kitts in the month of November. There are only 50,000 people living here so we can’t imagine all of those people here. Everything is set up for cruise passengers; boutique booths, little bars on the beach, beach chairs, wave runners and umbrellas. But it’s hurricane season now, so the cruise ships aren’t here. There’s hardly anyone there. We had the place to ourselves.…except for the 70,000 monkeys who roam everywhere.

In fact, it was so slow, when we checked into immigration, the immigration officer had gone of to the supermarket. So we waited in the huge cruise ship area for her to finish her shopping. Ah - Caribbean life.

Frigate Bay was our second anchorage where we were the only catamaran in the bay. There were a smattering of vacationers in the little hotel on the beach, and it was fairly quiet, except for Mr. X’s Shiggity Shack that attracts all of the locals along with tourists.

We walked over to the Marriott on the Atlantic side of the island and spent the afternoon at the beach bar watching the huge waves crash against rocks and talking to one of the students from the Ross Veternarian School. She loved going to school there. And who wouldn’t? Her mom was visiting from Virginia Beach and they were hanging out before one of her finals drinking Miami Vices and Ting Stings.

Joe told you all about Buddy who we met in Whitehouse Bay, our final anchorage on St. Kitts. He was the only person there so no wonder he adopted us for the day.

We enjoyed the quiet at night before we sailed to Pinnys Beach on Nevis the next day. Normally busy with beach bar partiers, we spent the afternoon at the famous Sunshines before we walked down to the Four Seasons to their very cool dock. It goes out for ever with a bar at the end.

Nevis is where Hamilton was born so we had to go to the Hamilton Museum in Charlestown, Nevis the next day. Charlestown was hopping with locals on that Friday afternoon, but we were the only tourists in town.

Our plan had been to make the passage to Guadeloupe early the next morning, but after a discussion we decided to do another overnight passage. Even though we don’t prefer sailing at night, we knew that it would be at least 14 hours and we did NOT want to end up arriving in the dark. So we left at 545pm which was a good idea, because it did NOT take 14 hours, it was 16 1/2 hours and we had another middle-of-the-night issue. Captain Joe came to the rescue again.

This is where the cruise ships come in. Normally swamped with cruisers.

One of many forts we’ve visited. The British and French fought back and forth for years for most of these islands

The Marriott on the Atlantic side. There were a few people at the pool, but no one was on the beach.

This photo was taken by the bartender on the Four Seasons doc who very politely said, “this dockis for Hyatt guests only, but I’ll take your photo,” implying, then you can move on from here. She was trained well. No riff raff on the Hyatt dock.

Sunshines on a quiet afternoon. No belly shots going on here.

Our tour with Joseph who connected with my Joseph. He’d get so excited about everything. “Marge! There’s Robert Redford’s compound!” “Joe! See all those monkeys!”