So I spent last week on St. Kitts.  St. Kitts was (is still, technically) a sugar island and a British colony that got bounced between the British and the French a bit, but it seems that the British won since everyone drives on the wrong side of the road.  Now the island is independent, and the nation is actually composed of two islands, St. Kitts and a smaller island called Nevis.  St. Kitts is also bordered by the Atlantic on one side and the Caribbean on the other, so the island has a different feel depending on which side you’re currently visiting.  The Marriott at which my parents have their timeshare is on the Atlantic side, but we spent a lot of time at various beaches on the Caribbean side.

So you can see, St. Kitts is sort of shaped like a chicken drumstick or a fish.  Here’s a photo of the view of the isthmus, as seen from the crest of a hill.  The Atlantic is on the left and the Caribbean is on the right.

So that’s cool, right?

On the Sunday of our trip we took a long, bumpy (roads in St. Kitts, not so great) drive out to the southern point of the island to visit Cockleshell Beach, a lovely beach on the Caribbean side with great views of Nevis.  Most of the beaches have beach shack restaurants on them, and many of these restaurants supply chairs and umbrellas for a small rental fee (or not, depending on whether or not it is a cruise ship day).  The drive down to Cockleshell includes going through numerous hills, past the construction sites of several large, multi-million dollar vacation homes, and around St. Kitts’ inland salt lake.  Very scenic but, again, very bumpy, so I was happy to arrive at Cockleshell Beach.  We grabbed chaises in the shade and spread out for a lovely day by the sea.

That land mass hidden in clouds off in the distance is Nevis.

Reggae Beach Bar, the restaurant by which we were situated, has a few animals on their premises, including rescued orphaned green monkeys, a goat, and Wilbur, the giant and famous St. Kitts pig.

Giant pig, see?

Since it was Mother’s Day, a number of Kittitian families also came out to the beach.  One particularly large group seemed composed of a few different families (and a few weed smokers), and they had this adorable toddler who would periodically run around our chairs and steal our empty water bottles for playing.  He also briefly borrowed my mom’s visor, and nearly ran off with my dad’s cell phone.  Oh and one point he slapped me on the boob, which was sort of funny and sort of weird but, whatever, kids.

We spent most of the day at the beach, reading and relaxing and occasionally swimming.  We had lunch at the Reggae Beach Bar, but I’ll tell you about that in a future post.

Monday we had a relaxed pool day at the hotel, but we set out to another beach on Tuesday.  The isthmus I showed you in the first picture has some lovely beaches, and the beach on the Caribbean side is South Friar’s Beach.  Carambola, a brand new swanky beach club and restaurant opened on South Friar’s in December,  and we decided to check it out.  Carambola, by the way,  is the fancy, official name for a starfruit.  You learn something new every day!

So that’s Carambola, doesn’t it look lovely?  There are tons of sturdy wooden chaises on which you can throw cushions, and also beach beds, and also these big beach chairs, but I mostly stuck to my chaise under the umbrella.   The beach is a long stretch, and if you walk toward the other end you start seeing black sand (St. Kitts is a volcanic island).  Unfortunately when I took my walk down the beach I did not bring my camera, so no photos of the black sand, but trust me, it is there, and quite pretty and glittery!  We went to Carambola on Thursday as well.

Ah, the Caribbean, how I miss you.

Here’s a sneak peek picture from my future post on the island tour we took–it is of the Atlantic and the Caribbean meeting, that white line in the distance is where the two bodies of water meet.  How crazy is it that there is a literal barrier!