Golden Rock Inn, Nevis - January 2

Golden Rock Inn, Nevis
January 2

We spent the next couple of days anchored off of Oualie Beach. Tuesday was a day of relaxing on the boat and hanging out on the beach. On Wednesday, we took the dingy to shore and got a taxi to the Golden Rock Inn which is a beautiful old colonial estate set high up in the mountains that dates back to 1801. The Golden Rock Inn has beautiful gardens and portions of the old stone walls of some of the historic buildings with walkways circling the grounds. We spent a while walking throughout the gardens where there are amazing views of the surrounding islands and later had lunch at their gorgeous cliff side restaurant. They also have a beautiful swimming pool where we spent some time after lunch swimming and lounging. After a relaxing day at the Golden Rock Inn, we headed back to the boat and sailed back to St. Kitts, anchoring off Reggae Beach for the night which was a much calmer anchorage than Oualie Beach.  

Emma lounging on Oualie Beach

Golden Rock Inn

New Years Eve at Sunshine's, Nevis

December 31

New Year's Eve at Sunshine's in Nevis

Monday was New Year's Eve, where we had reservations at Sunshines for the NYE party, so we left White House Bay and sailed over to Nevis. We picked up a mooring ball right off the beach, and took the dingy to shore for some beach time and to play horse shoes. Later that night after naps and showers, we headed back to Sunshines for dinner and the party. We had a blast dancing and hanging out by the bonfire. The bar next door to Sunshines (Chevy's) also had a bonfire, and the two bars seemed to be competing for the biggest fire. Chevy's bonfire ultimately ended up burning a portion of a tree. We went back to the boat just before midnight, just in time to see the Four Season's fire works display from the nets of our boat.

Criss & Amber with Sunshine

Criss, Amber, & Emma Arrive in St. Kitts!

Back to St. Kitts – Criss, Amber, & Emma Arrive!

December 29 - 30

The next day, we headed back to St. Kitts and anchored just off of Reggae Beach where we snorkeled and went to shore to enjoy the beach and met some cool people. We stayed for Reggae Beach's famous Friday-night dinner with the beach bonfire. The dinner was really great with lobster, fish, shrimp, and ribs. I think Gene was a little disappointed in the size of the bonfire (in his standards, the bonfire needs to be at least as tall as he is!).

On Saturday morning, we woke up early and sailed over to the marina at Port Zante to get the boat cleaned and ready for our good friends that arrived later that day – Criss (one of Gene's fraternity brothers from GT), Amber (Criss's wife from Shanghai), and Emma (their adorable 2-year old daughter). We spent Saturday night in the marina, and left Sunday morning to head out to sea for a day of sailing and fishing. We sailed up and down the west coast of St. Kitts for the majority of the day, but unfortunately all we caught was a barracuda. We decided to anchor in White House Bay so everyone could get in the water and snorkel around the reef. Emma loved the water and was really cute in her little red life jacket.  We had the most beautiful sunset of the trip so far that night in White House Bay.

  

Biking Around Nevis, December 27

Nevis

After spending almost a week in White House Bay, we were ready to move on to another anchorage. We decided to check out the island of Nevis which is about a mile from the southern end of St. Kitts. We anchored in Oualie Bay (pronounced “Wally Bay”) for a couple of nights where there was a dingy dock at Oualie Beach, enabling us to get ashore and explore the island.

Bike Ride Around Nevis

We spent one day biking around the entire island of Nevis. This was a great way for us to get our bearings on the island and to see all of the towns and the views from each coast. Wild goats and monkeys roam the island, and they'd scurry out of our way as we got close to them with our bikes. We stopped at several viewpoints along the Eastern and SE coast where we could see Antigua and Montserrat. We stopped at the Nevis Museum in Charlestown to learn a bit about the history of the island – we never knew that Alexander Hamilton was born in Nevis! We stopped for lunch at the popular restaurant area of Pinney's Beach at a place called Lime where we had a great time meeting the staff and chatting with them. One of them thought that Gene looked like a shorter version of one of the NFL quarterbacks – he loved that! Sunshines is probably the most popular of the restaurant/bars in this area, and they have a huge New Years Eve party every year with a big bon fire on the beach. We made our reservations for a table for New Years. Further along our bike ride, we stopped at one of the little local produce stores and stocked up on some locally grown star fruit, green beans, and sweet potatoes. Although we got rained on, we had a really great time biking around the island, and we only had to walk our bikes up one hill! 

Sailing to Nevis

 Biking around the island

Lunch stop at Lime

 Wild goats

Kayaking & Diving St. Kitts, Christmas Day

December 25

On Christmas Day, we spent our day relaxing in our anchorage of White House Bay. We finally got the kayak into the water and kayaked along the coast down to Friar's Bay and the Shipwreck beach bar exploring the caves that are dug into the sides of the rocky shoreline. Later in the day we went for a dive in White House Bay to search for lobsters which we were hopeful to have for dinner that night. The bay is a popular snorkeling and diving area probably thoroughly hunted every day, so it was very hard to find lobster, but Gene was able to find one which was perfect for dinner that night!

Caves

Kat kayaking around South Friar Bay

Spotted Eagle Ray

The Reef at White House Bay

Biking Around Southern St. Kitts - Christmas Eve

St. Kitts

December 24

On Christmas Eve, we took our bikes ashore to the marina dock at Christophe Harbor which is currently being developed within Ballast Bay. Christophe Harbor is slated to be one of the luxurious hot spots for mega-yachts in the Caribbean. Construction has been underway for a few years, and will include a 300-berth marina for yachts ranging from 100 to 500 ft in length, a 18-hole Tom Fazio golf course, and a beachfront village with condos, villas, huge houses, and the Beach Pavilion pool / restaurant area. Gene and I managed to get approval from the security team to ride around the village on our bikes and check out the properties, most of which are undeveloped lots for sale, but also a number of gorgeous beachfront houses and the Beach Pavilion. After exploring the Christohpe Harbor area, we rode our bikes to the southern coast of St. Kitts to Cockleshell Bay which is home to a few beach bars. We walked up and down the beach stopping for drinks in Spice Mill and Reggae Beach bars. Reggae Beach is the most lively of the beach bars and seems to attract a lot of business from the incoming cruise ships or the guests of the Marriott. They also are famous for their Friday night bonfire and dinner buffet which we had the pleasure of experiencing later in the week. We saw a bunch of monkeys running along the road during our bike ride – Gene was very tempted to take one back to the boat as our pet. After our bike ride, we returned to the boat for snorkeling and sunset drinks, and eventually cooked dinner. Later in the evening, we took the dingy to shore for a little Christmas Even beach fire (very little fire by Gene's standards since we're probably not allowed to build massive beach fires in St. Kitts!).

View of Christophe Harbor Development

Monkey on the southern end of St. Kitts

 Old Sugar Mill Ruins

Christmas Eve Beach Fire

White House Bay, St. Kitts

White House Bay Anchorage

December 21 - 26

After checking into customs in Basseterre, we spent a couple of days doing laundry, provisioning, and finishing some repairs on the boat. We found a beautiful calm anchorage in White House Bay where we camped out for the week of Christmas. We relaxed on the boat for the first couple of days and snorkeled around the anchorage. White House Bay is home to a beautiful reef that lies close to the shore, and many of the St. Kitts snorkeling tour boats make a stop here with their tourists. Gene found an old cannon from the 1700s which was originally part of the Brimstone Hill fortress on the northern part of St. Kitts. Unfortunately for the reefs, we saw a number of lion fish – these fish are non-native poisonous fish.

St. Kitts & Nevis islands are home to wild monkeys which mainly hang out on the southern end of St. Kitts (near our anchorage) since it's less populated on this side of the island. We could see monkeys running along the shore of White House Bay and hanging around the bushes just off the road.that are destroying the reef all throughout the Caribbean and they don't have any predators (aside from humans who catch them and cook them up).

Approaching St. Kitts

Kalalau anchored in White House Bay

Gene snorkling around the anchorage

Lion Fish