We flew into St Kitts on a non-stop American Airlines flight from Miami. The schedule is very favorable since you arrive in St Kitts by mid afternoon. Recently, non-stop air service has been added from New York and Atlanta, making St Kitts an easy to get to escape from North America. Upon arrival, we rented a car from Thrifty. They are one of the few rental agencies located at the airport. They also have a downtown office in Basseterre. After going through customs, claiming our bags and renting our car, we were ready to hit the road and find our hotel.


Accommodations

Our accommodations for the week was the Frigate Bay Resort. I use the term resort a bit loosely since there are only 60 some odd rooms on the hillside property. It's located on the small neck of land that connects the southern peninsula with the rest of St Kitts. Frigate Bay Beach is located just below the property, only a 3-4 minute walk away. The rooms are laid out in 5 - 3 story buildings aligned in a row on a hillside above Frigate Bay. A large pool and bar area are framed out by Jasmine's, the hotel restaurant on the opposite side of the pool. We opted for a poolside room with a kitchenette.


Beaches

One of the main reasons for visiting St Kitts or any other Caribbean island for that matter is to visit the beautiful beaches. Most of the islands beaches are located on the south peninsula. There are several beaches here, each with a very distinct personality. We visited all of them and found them to be quite nice. They are certainly not world class by any stretch, nor are they the best beaches we ever visited by any stretch but the were nice nonetheless.

One thing that did bother me was the constant presence of trash. Nothing big mind you but just a cup or can here or there. It all adds up though. The locals would do well to have a cleanup day or at least put out some garbage barrels. I picked up several cans and cups while I was snorkeling. I even pulled out an entire chase cushion that somehow blew into the water at Cockleshell beach. It took some strength to pull it out.

Here is a quick overview of the beaches that we visited.


Turtle Beach

I had heard so much about how beautiful this beach is, I was really anxious to see it. It's located way out on the peninsula. You have to take the Kennedy Simmonds Highway to get there and it's about a 10 minute drive from Frigate Bay. Before the highway was built, the only access was by boat. The beach here is much narrower than I thought it would be. There is allot of housing construction going on there right now so I'm wondering how it will be before the beach is closed off to visitors. Personally, I didn't care for it that much. Too much noise to really enjoy the scenery and sound of the waves.


Cockleshell Beach

Cockleshell is sort of evolving into the new hot beach that everyone enjoys visiting. There are a couple of places to eat there and there is a beautiful view of Nevis to the south. The water is perfect for swimming and there is even some decent snorkeling to the far right side of the beach.If you are looking to find a relaxing beach with fun and activities, this is the one you are looking for.


Banana Beach

Banana Bay is located adjacent to Cockleshell Beach but it is less visited and less crowded. Really none of the beaches on St Kitts are actually crowded, except possibly for Frigate Bay Beach at night. If you decide to visit here for a day, don't expect to see anyone else. Take a picnic lunch and relax. For us, it was the perfect place to hang out.


White House Beach

White House Beach is not really a beach in the traditional sense of the word. It's rocky and you cant really sunbathe or walk the beach. There is some decent snorkeling to be had. There a 2 markers in the water that direct you to 2 wreck sites. One was an old iron ship while the other was wood.Not much is left of the wooden craft but the hull and corkscrew of the iron boat can still be seen in about 10-12 feet of water. It's about the best snorkeling we found on the island. It was decent but not great. There are not allot of large reefs or reef fish in the waters near the coast. It looks like the area has been thoroughly fished over the years.


North Friar's Beach

This wide Atlantic coast beach has some of the roughest and most exciting waves you'll see on the island. It's not safe for swimming but its very beautiful to visit and sunbathe there. If you walk to the north end of the beach and hike around the rock outcropping, you find a small cove where you can have the most private beach on the island. There are rarely people on any part of North Friars Beach.We saw only a handful the entire week. Most of the time, the beach is deserted.


South Friars Beach

This narrow beach has a few beach bars including the Ship Wreck. We didn't do any snorkeling there but they do advertise the presence of a reef just off the pier near the Ship Wreck Bar.The waters are clam for swimming but the beach is really narrow. There's quite a bit of construction going on at the north end of the beach .If you want to find the island's green monkeys, you can find them here. The Ship Wreck bar set them up a little tree house and they feed them sugar cane and other veggies.


Sand Bank Bay

This Atlantic coast beach was one of my personal favorites. The road to this beach i hard to find so there are hardly any people at this long bay other than a few local fishermen at the far end. The waves are somewhat large and there is a big rip current in the middle of the beach but you can avoid it. The sand is very soft and easy to walk on.You won't find much shade on this beach so wear plenty of sunscreen.


Activities

There's more to St Kitts than just beaches. We took the catamaran trip over to Pinney's Beach on Nevis on day. It was a great trip that we thoroughly enjoyed. We also paid a visit to Brimstone Hill. It's a restored British citadel on top ofa mountain in the northwest part of the island. And we visited Romney Manor, one of the prettiest homes and gardens in the Caribbean. On Thursday night we went to a local football (soccer) game between the first place Village Superstars and Trinity. It was a great match played at the local stadium, Warner Park. See my soccer blog for a full report on our adventures with the island's football scene.


Restaurants

Rock Lobster

We went to this local eater one night and had a very good meal. I ended up getting the steak and Caribbean lobster and my wife had mahi mahi. Both dishes were delicious. We ate outside on the covered patio since the weather was so nice.


Shiggidy Shack

This famous eatery is right on the beach at Frigate Bay. I had the jerk chicken and pork. Fantastic. If you have kids, bring them here. If they get bored, they can just run up and down the beach. You can either sit in the restaurant area or take a table under one of the beach shacks. We did the latter. The sunset was beautiful. This restaurant was right near the Timothy Beach Hotel and just a 6 minute stroll from the Frigate Beach Resort.


The Wharf

We enjoyed this place so much we went there twice. The restaurant is situated right on the water at the north end of Basseterre Bay. The evening lights are a beautiful site and you can even see the lights of Nevis in the distance. There is usually live music that cranks up around 7:30. They have an interesting setup as far as food goes. You order your entre, then go to the food bar and get whatever side dishes you want. They say that 80-90% of the buffet dishes are locally grown. Where ever they come from, everything is full of flavor. The baked plantains were the best I've tasted in years. Fantastic.

Odds and Ends

Money

The local currency is the EC or East Caribbean Dollar. The exchange rate is about 2.7 EC per USD. Most places accept US currency. Take the EC price at 40% and you end up with a pretty close approximation of the USD. Most restaurants include a 10% service charge in the bill so you won't have to add tip.

Driving

Driving is on the left. If you aren't comfortable driving on the left on narrow downtown streets, just take a cab. They are plentiful and most tourists use them as opposed to renting a car like we did. The roads are generally very good though but the beach access roads are little more than dirt trails. Even so, you can navigate them without having to resort to a 4WD vehicle. Watch out for the goats and cows. There are many of them roaming free on the southeast peninsula. It's not unusual to come around a corner to meet a big cow in the middle of the road.

Also, when driving downtown, be careful of one way streets that are not marked. There are many of them. Also, if you decide to go shopping downtown, go in the morning on a day that there is not a cruise ship in port. Parking is much easier to find.

Shopping

There is a surprisingly good shopping district in downtown. The cruise ship port (Port Zante) is like an open air shopping mall. There are some nice shops there but don't restrict your shopping to the port area. Check out the rest of downtown. The area around the Circus and Independence Square is very nice.

Monkeys

They don't have squirells on St Kitts but the do have monkeys.They reside all over the island but the best place to see them is the southeast peninsula. We saw several packs roaming free.They are generally shy but you can get some good photos of them if you are patient. I never had to resort to feeding them.


Conclusion

St Kitts is a beautiful, mountainous island with genuinely friendly people. The beaches are not the best in the Caribbean and neither is the snorkeling. But the friendliness of the people makes the experience top notch. If you take the time to get to know them and their culture you will have a great time here.

St Kitts is forging ahead as an economy based on light industry and tourism as its base.There is also allot of building and development going on in the vacation housing market. At this point the island is surprisingly undeveloped and in many ways, unspoiled. They do need to clean the island up a bit and setup replenishment zones around the surrounding shores to let the fish population recover. Anchor bueys to protect the reefs would also help. They have much to offer on St Kitts, beautiful scenery, friendly people and a plethora of activities. They just need to polish it up a bit to make it a real gem.