St. Kitts and Nevis are beautiful islands with some French language and lots of British history. Today's Excursion was My Islandtours by Javin. There were a total of 12 of us on his tour.
Our main form of transportation was an open air jeep with a roof covering. We toured past sites in town then stopped at an abandoned cotton mill.
We hiked on the very scenic black rocks. Most people take pictures of the rocks - we hiked ON them! (Hiking not recommended without a guide!). We stopped at a field of sugar cane where Chad cut down a two canes - one for the group and one for our family for a tip! We were to have stopped longer, but we were running out of time and we really wanted a sugar cane!
We then went on a hike into the rainforest, where, appropriately, it was raining! In the Gahut Cayon, we scrambled over rocks and saw bamboo that grows 12 - 24" each DAY! At the end of our hike we had a snack of coconut bread (yum!), raisin pastry or a scone along with some mango juice.
We then travelled to the southeast peninsula - where it is developed for tourists. Here we had a beautiful vista where you can see the Atlantic Ocean on one side and the Caribbean Sea on the other. Stunning view with the island of Nevis in the background.
We stopped at Whitehouse Bay to snorkel. This has clearly been a rustic tour (our choice) as there were no amenities in sight to change into bathing suits. Good thing we are practiced at camping in the great outdoors! With having to get contact lenses in too, I was the last to enter the water. And that is all i did. Enter. Then scramble out. The waves were so fierce they knocked me off my feet and slammed me into the closest rocks. I quickly decided I needed some expert guidance to help me determine how best to enter the water and the experts were all 100 metres off shore already in the water. So I sat on the dock of sorts and saw the whole snorkelling group turn around to return. As the first snorkellers returned, I learned visibility was so poor they couldn't see the wreck below.
So we all piled into the van in our wet swimwear and drove for a few minutes to Cockelshell Beach. I quickly found a lounge chair under some shade and the kids swam out to large trampolines in the water. Trampolines are hard enough to climb onto with a ladder. These trampolines did not have ladders so it took a lot of core work to clamber up on them! J went for a snorkel and spotted two rays and some interesting starfish. The very last treat of the tour was to eat some sugar cane that had been cut earlier in the day.
At the end of the day when talking about what we thought of his tour, J summarized it well in that we did a whole variety of activities without doing one activity long enough to truly appreciate the experience. I would have cut out the abandoned cotton mill and hiked into the rainforest further. The black rocks were probably my favourite.
We raced back to the ship by 5:15 (all aboard call was for 5:30) to the sounds of the Royal Caribbean ship "Independence of the Seas" playing very loud party music. It was echoing off the two ships side by side. I told J, now there is a reason not to take a Royal Caribbean cruise! That volume of music would drive me crazy for 20 days! It was fun to be so close to the other ship and really study it. From our stateroom balcony you could clearly see their balcony rooms. There Lido deck was lined with people singing and waving. For interest sake, I ran up to our lido deck to view from that angle. You could hear there cruise director making comments over the loudspeaker like "Hey Princess, what time does your skating rink open? Wait, that's right, you don't have a skating rink!"
So RC is a cruise line known for its amenities on the ship. They have a Flo Rider-which is something like a wave simulator and a bit of a water park on their ships. We contemplated taking an RC cruise but because they are such big ships they can't get into many ports and they tend to offer 7 day cruises, not 10 day trips.
With all the excitement of comparing ships, I was 10 minutes late for dinner. Cesar, our waiter from Mexico, told us he worked for RC for a year and in his opinion RC didn't treat crew as well as princess does. On RC, crew are expected to buy their flight to the the port to begin their contract. Princess flies their crew to wherever they begin work. It was interesting to hear his perspective.
After dinner, we headed right upstairs to MUTS to watch the 2012 version of Total Recall with Colin Farrell and Kate Beckinsale. I declined the offer of pizza, milk and cookies bit couldn't resist a small bag of popcorn!
Tomorrow, we are in St Thomas as we are coming near the end of our glorious cruise!
Photo 1: Our Family on black rocks
Photo 2: RC Independence of the Seas on the left and Emerald Princess on the right.
Photo 3: R & P with the Atlantic on the left and the Caribbean on the right.
Photo 4: R & P playing at Cockelshell Beach! (Which I later learned had free WiFi in the restaurant!
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