Statia - Diving and Walking

The sail to Statia was a nice afternoon hop, unfortunately we had to motor up most of St Kitts coastline as we were sheltered but this did us an opportunity to see Brimstone Hill Fortress a huge 18^th century fort which we were disappointed not to have visited.

Green coastline of St Kitts

Brimstone Hill Fortress on the hill!

You can just see the outline of the impressive Fort

You can see Statia from St Kitts and as we pasted the headland we were able to sail the rest of the journey, as you round the headland the most noticeable thing was the tankers lying off shore, there is a large fuel platform out from the island.  We were surprised that the anchorage was quite busy but funny that most of the boats we had just seen in the anchorage at Bassettere but what was most concerning was the swell and the rolling, night 1 of the sleepless nights!

We headed ashore the following morning, along the shoreline are a few small hotels and a restaurant and a couple of dive schools.

Goodbye St Kitts

Hello Statia

The rest of the town is up on the cliffs edge including the fort, we had a look around, you can pretty much see the entire town within 30 minutes.  There are a few pretty old buildings but mainly it is quite rundown with very few houses and a few restaurants.  The island seems to survive due to the fuel/oil plant, with the few tourists that visit mainly doing so due to the diving.

Entrance to Fort

If you look closely you can see Magnum in line with the cannon!

The pretty Old Gin House hotel

Governors House

Quaint council building!

The Quill is the volcano on Statia and is a protected nature reserve, you have to buy a pass to be able to walk in this area and this pays towards the maintenance of the walking trails which are really well signposted and to gain access to the crater there are lots of ropes to help with the climbing, otherwise this would be impossible.  We had a fantastic walk up to the craters edge and then into the actual crater, it demonstrated how unfit we have become! 

Mark admiring the view at the edge of the crater

Amanda camouflaged by huge silk cotton tree

Mark not so camouflaged against the silk cotton tree

Mark hauling himself back up from the crater

 The wildlife is quite cool with quite a few close encounters.

There were 100's of landcrabs, you could here them scurrying off the path as you approached

We saw 2 red belly racing snakes, this one was posing for a photo on a tree, the other was very close to being trode on by Amanda

Wild chickens joined us at the crater rim to share our bananas, cheeky things jumped on our laps

We had a fantastic dive in Statia, I know our experience is still limited but the visibility was amazing, we saw some huge lobster, we saw our first shark and some beautiful Angel fish which we had not seen whilst snorkelling.  The dive school was very professional and cheaper than we would have paid elsewhere in the Caribbean, so all good, thanks to Scubaaqua – http://www.scubaqua.com

We had some nice strolls around the village, the locals and workers were all very friendly, funny that just walking along the road people beep and wave, you feel very welcome.

Magnum at anchor

First graveyard I have seen with a palm tree - lovely old ruins of Church

Pretty house

Church

Enjoying the view of Magnum from the Golden Era hotel - nice cheap veggie burger lunch :)

Our new friends, we said hello and they then followed us around the village

We really loved our stay in Statia it was so unspoilt but it was such a shame that the anchorage was so rolly so we hardly slept and it meant that other passing boats often stayed for only one night but glad we had the time we did.

St Kitts - Short and Sweet

After a bit longer than expected in Nevis we cut short our plans for St Kitts and just had a couple of beach days.  The sail was under 10 miles across the Narrows so we were settled and ready for a swim in Whitehouse Bay by lunchtime. It was a rocky bay so the snorkelling was pretty good although initially a little wary of a stingray which was about 1m across and almost 2m long! And he was looking at us! But enjoyed some of the other fish and kept clear of the jellyfish, the first we had seen since arriving in Caribbean.

Pretty sea fan

Jelly!

What is this caterpillar in the sea

We shared the anchorage with just a couple of other boats but this did include a large power boat which had range of the normal toys but we were quite impressed by the slide from the top deck!

What fun the slide looks

There was a beautiful sunset and we had a peaceful night.

Beautiful sunset

Next day onto Frigate Bay, a sandy beach which looked to be full of locals on a Sunday afternoon although we didn’t venture a shore or actually in the water but there must have been fish as we watched the brown boobies diving around the boat.

Sunday afternoon on local beach with not much going on

Brown booby chasing his dinner

The following morning on Basseterre, the capital of St Kitts, Mark had great delight in letting Amanda helm as the rain poured down around us!

Amanda getting wet!

It had stopped by the time we reach the rolly anchorage, we knew even if we had wanted to stay for the night this was not going to happen you could hardly stand us the rolling was so server.  So we had a quick look around the town, there was a new development of duty free shops selling mainly expensive jewellery and with no cruise ship in I don’t know why they opened and there were only a handful of people.   The main square was quite colonial and busy with locals, we had a quick drink to watch the world go by but then headed to check out.

The vibrant square at Basseterre

Oh if you visit and spot a man on the street with a smoothie cart, have one, delicious and cheap :)

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.