the double rainbows of st. kitts

Right away, St. Kitts was far more visually appealing than St. Croix had been. It looked cleaner, more developed, and more colorful, particularly the buildings and homes. There were also green mountains in the middle of the island.

We had an excursion planned for the morning, so we got off the ship first thing and assembled on the pier. Unfortunately, it started raining really hard right as we started the short walk to our transportation, which was an open people-mover kind of vehicle. It had clear plastic drapes on either side, and these were pulled down to protect us from the rain. Under normal circumstances this would have been fine, but the appearance of the first double rainbow I've ever seen in my life made it unfortunate, because the plastic was too opaque to attempt taking pictures. Bummer. We ended up seeing another set of double rainbows shortly thereafter, which was pretty amazing. Two sets in less than one hour, and then to top it off, we literally drove through the end of another rainbow as we made our way to our destination. It was a morning of firsts.

Our first stop was a botanical garden, which had an interesting assortment of tropical plants.









After a short walk through the garden, we were taken to a shop where we saw a demonstration of caribel batik, which is kind of like the Caribbean equivalent of tie-dyeing. I liked the colors and the depictions of laid back island scenes, so we bought a couple pieces of batik cloth which we'll have framed at some point.

We were next taken near an old sugar mill, and then into a rainforest.







We walked in the rainforest for over an hour, occasionally stopping to look at an interesting plant, vines or whatever.

A fungus growing on a tree:


The bark of a tree:


Spikes on a certain type of palm:


Our tour guide talking about the pod of a tree that "smells bad, but the inside tastes good":


Typical rainforest:


Many of the hanging vines are so strong, people can swing on them:


When we were done in the rainforest, we were served refreshments which had been made by our tour guide's wife. Kind of weird, but they were pretty good--banana bread, raisin biscotti.

We had seen a couple of monkeys in the forest, but I was never able to get a picture of one. These caged monkeys outside the sugar mill will have to suffice:



The view from where we ate our refreshments:


When we were done there, we were taken back to town. Becca and I decided to wander around for a while. Things were pretty nice and fairly touristy by the pier, but the situation got a lot sketchier the further away from the pier we got. We wandered by some food stalls, made our way through an open air market (it was pretty dead), and then walked around a grocery store for a while to see what interesting things we could find. It smelled pretty bad inside--frozen meat and fish smell--and a lot of what was inside came from the US, so it wasn't terribly different.

The smells coming out of one of the stalls we had passed were pretty decent, so we decided to go back there and sample the food. The stall was manned by an older Rastafarian dude with long dreads. I asked what he had, and he said it was "good vegetarian food" (standard for Rastafarians, apparently). Since there were multiple pots, I asked him what he recommended, to which he sarcastically replied "some good vegetarian food". I don't mind a bit of sass with my meals, so I agreed, and we got a box of stew with beans, rice, and lentils, topped off with lettuce, tomatoes and cucumbers. It turned out to be a lot blander than I was expecting, and also had been flavored with coconut milk, which was interesting and unexpected. It was good, and I'm glad we tried it out. Here's a photo of Becca pounding some:



We were pretty tired after that, so we went back and took a nap. Afterward, we wandered around the top of the ship so I could get some photos. The weather had cleared up quite a bit, so I got some decent photos of St. Kitts and Nevis, its sister island.













Nevis is in the distance, with its peak covered by clouds:


As was the usual on this cruise, we had dinner in the sit-down restaurant. I was trying to have a lighter dinner, so I had a cod fritter, Asian consomme and grilled wahoo fish for dinner. It was all pretty decent, if a bit more seafood than I would typically like.

In an unfortunate twist of fate, I had to join a conference call while we were at sea later that evening. I somehow got a cellular signal that was land-based, but I'm sure the call will still cost my employer a fortune. It sucked that I had to do this while on vacation, but one small benefit did some out of the call. It's this photo:



It doesn't really look like it, but it's the moon. I noticed that the moon was coming out from behind the clouds toward the end of the call, so I pulled out my camera, put on my macro lens, cranked up the ISO to 12,800, and took this photo. If you look at the bottom of the photo, you can see there's an island there. It couldn't be seen with the naked eye, but my camera caught it. I guess that's where the cellphone signal was coming from. Cool.

All in all, St. Kitts was pretty decent, and a way better place to visit than St. Croix. I'm sure we only scratched the surface, but what we saw was OK. I'll give St. Kitts a B-.