Small and beautiful Nevis

With a couple of very windy days forecasted we decided we did not want to get stuck on Antigua and we needed to get going to Nevis.  We still had a breezy sail with between 25-30 knots but as this was from behind it was not too much of a challenge and the sun was shining as the seas slowly increased. The best part of the day was the volume of sea birds that came over to say hello, we have now established these were brown bobbies and masked bobbies – they are very large and inquisitive plus the large frigate birds which were now familiar with seeing – shame it is difficult to get a good photo with the boat sailing and the bird flying!

Yep Frigate bird in distance - they are impressive, really!

We passed Redonda, an uninhabited island off Antigua.

Redonda

The sail to Nevis was around 40 miles and as were not able to see the island until we were 20 miles off the excitement grew and then she emerged from the clouds.

Looks a bit cloudy over there!

Volcano on Nevis looks quite impressive

Nevis is only 36sq miles and is dominated by a large dormant volcano and there is one main road which runs around the base.  Nevis and St Kitts are classed as a single nation in the British Commonwealth and the main language spoken is English which makes it such an easy island to visit.  The main anchorage on Nevis is along a beautiful sandy beach with the volcano towering over you, which looked much nice in the morning sunshine than the cloudy evening when we arrived!

Charlestown is the capital which was actually quite lively with the locals, especially first thing in the morning and over lunch when many seem to congregate.

Everytime you step ashore you are asked if you would like a taxi tour but we like to be independent so we hired a quad bike to whizz around the island for the day.  We first headed north and had a great view of St Kitts across the narrows.

St Kitts across the Narrows

Then onto the Nisbit plantation  - Fanny Nisbet was married to Horatio Nelson in 1787.  The plantation is now a hotel, there is the main wooden plantation house which is now the restaurant and then the grounds are full of individual bungalows, it is all very posh but they didn’t seem too worried about us having a nose around. 

The bar in the plantation house

The grounds

It all backs onto a lovely Atlantic facing windy beach.

Mark enjoying the windy beach

Next stop was the Golden Rock Plantation Inn, the buildings here were made from lava stone back in the 1800’s but now it is a funky hotel, again will small bungalows dotted around it tropical gardens.

Old lava stone building

From here we were able to walk out into the rain forest in search of the Green Velvet monkeys that inhabit the forest, unfortunately they were not to be found even after walking for hours but we  did enjoy the walk and these is a pretty good view point.

Cool view

Spot the monkey - shame he is ours and not the Green Velvet monkey

Amanda in the undergrowth

Mark being artistic!

By the time we returned to the hotel it was filling up with people having lunch – we were jealous but we did stop for a quick drink surrounded by the giant lizards.

Giant lizard sunning himself

Some of the funky decor in the bar of the Golden Rock

Next was our lunch stop at Windward beach, it was a bumpy ride down to the beach on the quad and it was windy! But just a quick stop to devour our picnic and back on the road.

Big rolling Atlantic wave

Hold on tight Mark is it going to be scary!

Next stop was the Hermitage which is another old plantation house and at over 260 years old is said to be the oldest wooden house in the Caribbean.  The manager of this location was so kind, she showed us round and explained the history and made us feel very welcome.  The individual wooden lodges where the guest were looked beautiful and would make a fantastic place to stay.

The interior of the main house

The outside of the old Plantation house

There was also a lovely little gift shop where Glynes and Robyn made you feel more than welcome and just wanted to here about what we were doing – very nice.

Next stop was yes another plantation house, Montpellier, this hosted the Nelson wedding and has supposedly been visited by the rich and famous including Princess Diana.

Beautiful gardens of Montpellier plantation house

Another love place to stay/visit

Short stop as had enough of the sun by this time and headed to the Lime beach bar to finish the day, mmmm rum punch and a beer or two!

The remainder of our time was spent relaxing on the boat with the occasional swim, ahhh lovely.