St. Kitts

To be honest, I had never heard of St. Kitts before we booked our Eastern caribbean cruise, and I didn’t find too much information that made me excited to visit when I was planning our day trip. Imagine my surprise when I woke up in the morning and came outside to this beautiful view:

St. Kitts is BEAUTIFUL. The green mountains contrasting with the beautiful blue water is really something that takes your breath away. My pictures really don’t do it justice.

We got off the boat in the morning with very little idea of what we actually wanted to do. After a day of beach hopping in St. Maarten, we knew we preferred to choose one place to visit and stick with it. I had two options planned – we were either going to climb Mount Liamuiga, or relax on South Friar’s Beach. After reading a lot of reviews about Mt. Liamuiga, I decided against it. Apparently it’s a really tough 2 hour hike, but people say the view is worth it. To us, relaxing on the beach just sounded so much more appealing that day.

We headed towards a taxi with every intention of going to South Friars Beach, but after listening to what the locals had to say at the port, we were convinced that Cockleshell Beach was a better option. I’m so glad we changed our minds! South Friars Bay is a whole lot closer to the cruise terminal in Basseterre (the capital), but Cockleshell Beach is worth the drive. The beach is 2 miles long, so even though there was a pretty good crowd there, the beach felt empty.

Once I got used to having to ride in a car on the wrong side of the road, the drive was actually one of my favorite parts of the trip.  We got to see a lot more of the island than I originally expected we would. Our driver was awesome – he doubled as a tour guide and had lots of stories to tell and random facts about everything we passed. He even stopped at one point during the drive to let us take a picture of where the Atlantic Ocean meets the Caribbean Sea on the island!

When we arrived at the beach, there were a lot of different beach shacks for us to rent chairs and umbrellas from; we walked up and down the whole beach, then chose No Limit Beach Bar. Their sign says all you need to know:

The cheap beer that the sign references is Carib, a locally brewed beer. It was good! Better than my Bud Light that I normally drink on the beach anyway…

The bar had a really laid-back, chill vibe that you expect from the Caribbean. We loved it, and I guess a lot of other people do too because there are names signed all over the walls. We made sure to add ours before we left. I really hope Hurricane Irma didn’t destroy it, and we will get to go back one day and see it again!

Unfortunately the weather wasn’t great for a lot of the day. There was a constant drizzle throughout the morning. James, who runs No Limit Beach Bar, informed us that we actually chose a pretty bad time to visit the Caribbean. We are newbies to the Caribbean, so I had no idea that their rainy season starts in June and doesn’t end until hurricane season is over in October. According to him, the best time to visit the Caribbean is December through April. I tucked that information in my back pocket for any future visits there.

The rain did eventually clear up, and we were able to soak up some sun and do some snorkeling before it was time to leave.

I will say one nice thing about Cockleshell Beach was that there seemed to be very few locals trying to sell things to us. The only time we ran into trouble with that was at the port – Bryant couldn’t say no to holding a monkey.

Before re-boarding the cruise ship, we stopped for a bite to eat at Twist Restaurant and Bar, a restaurant at the port. We sat on the balcony and had a pretty good view of all the shops and things to do there. The drinks were great, and the food was good. It was a nice way to unwind and wrap up our day in St. Kitts.

I’ll admit, I didn’t have high expectations for St. Kitts, but I was so pleasantly surprised by the beauty of the island. I’d love to go back there for longer than one day. With that, I’ll leave you with more of our pictures of the island; they showcase it’s beauty way better than I could ever describe it!