Honeymoon, Part One

We arrived on St. Kitts late at night, so we could not get a good view of our surroundings. We did hang out at the deck of our villa at the Marriotts Resort and Casino drinking my first Carib beer while Myla had some red wine. By Monday, we got a rental car, a little pink number, and then hit the grocery store (keep left, always left!) and downtown Basseterre, a crowded little town with little turn-abouts and old buildings. Tuesday was our first adventure: a one day volcano hike. We had an hour long drive to get there but we saw a little more of the western Island. It was a full day of hiking over rocks, through a few layers of rain forests, and reaching the top by lunch-time. The sight of the dormant volcano crater now filled with vegetation was pretty incredible. We saw the highest peak, Mt. Liamuiga at almost 4,000 ft. (see left) as trails of clouds swept over it. Our guide was very nice and we met some folks from Blacksburg, VA.

For dinner, we went to the Monkey Bar which is a place on the Caribbean side (St. Kitts Marriott is on the Atlantic side). Myla had snapper and I had seafood pasta. Her snapper was one of the best seafood meals I tried in a long time. I won’t complain about my meal, either.

We went on a half-day hike through the rain forest on Wednesday. The guide was nice enough but he was a walking advertisement for himself as the best guide ever. Yeah, we bought the tickets so were pretty captive audience, so let us move on, shall we? The best part of the hike was a swing that we had a chance to try out and we met a couple from Alexandria VA. We hit the beach to snorkel a little east on South Friar’s beach.

--Bryan Craig