THE COLORS OF ST. KITTS AND NEVIS

What do I love the most about traveling to the islands of the Caribbean? The colors. The third stop on our recent Carnival Liberty cruise was St. Kitts. This island, and its sister island of Nevis, are an endless rainbow of colors that make you just keep snapping the shutter button.

Cruising into the port of Basseterre gives a view of the pastel-colored buildings of the town and the lush green of Mount Liamuiga in the background.

The turquoise blue of the Caribbean water and cerulean blue of the sky on Pinney's Beach on Nevis...

The white of cattle egrets nesting in bushes along the side of the road...

The orange and red colors in the plants that grow on the island like this Bird of Paradise...

The sunshine yellow of the Welcome Center of the cruise port...

On the islands of St. Kitts and Nevis, color abounds everywhere and on everything...

Thank you for visiting,

A Great Europe Trip Planner 

All photos were taken by my husband and me during our visits to St. Kitts.

DOCK IN ST. KITTS; VISIT HER SISTER.

Our fourth port stop on our upcoming cruise is St. Kitts, an island we visited on our cruise last year. You can read about our visit to the Clay Villa Plantation here.

Since we toured most of St. Kitts during our shore excursion last year (the visit to Clay Villa Plantation also included a stop at a beach)...

we decided to visit St. Kitts' sister island of Nevis this cruise. Here you can see Nevis in the distance...

The island of Nevis is actually the other half of the country whose official name is the Federation of Saint Christopher and Nevis, a two-island country in the West Indies.
© www.worldatlas.com

We've chosen as our shore excursion: Catamaran Fan-ta-sea & Nevis Beach Break. We did toy with the thought of taking the water taxi from the St. Kitts cruise port at the capital city of Basseterre over to Nevis, but the timetable showed the taxis were so infrequent that we would be cutting the time too close for comfort getting back to the ship. This is one reason I recommend just booking an excursion through the cruise line: you will never be left behind.

The excursion begins by boarding a catamaran like this...
© www.carnival.com

which will sail from the cruise dock down the coastline of St. Kitts. The boat will stop in a secluded cove where we will be able to snorkel for about an hour, hopefully seeing shipwrecks, schools of colorful fishes and turtles.

Afterwards our excursion continues with the boat crossing The Narrows, the 2-mile stretch of water that separates the two islands...seen in the photo below.
© Wikimedia Commons

Our destination is Pinney's Beach, a 3-mile-long stretch of smooth, soft, sugar-fine sand, with a beautiful backdrop of swaying palm trees and the majestic Mount Nevis. From Pinney's Beach we'll have marvelous views of St. Kitts.
© www.explorenevis.com

Lunch and an open bar, with rum punch and Carib Beer, is included in the price of the excursion. From the reviews I have read we spend approximately an hour or so on one of the prettiest beaches on Nevis.

I'm hopeful for a relaxing catamaran ride to yet another new island with many gorgeous views of the beautiful Caribbean and two beautiful islands of St. Kitts and Nevis.

Thank you for visiting,

A Great Europe Trip Planner
 

Unless noted, photos were taken by my husband and me during our Caribbean cruise in May, 2014. 

CLAY VILLA PLANTATION, ST. KITTS

The following day we cruised into the port of Basseterre on the beautiful island of St. Kitts. In the photo below you can see the now-dormant, volcanic peaks of the island.

Several of our group chose the shore excursion that included a tour of the Clay Villa Plantation and Gardens, an historic, 10-acre property that dates back to 1763. It is the only plantation on the island never to profit from slavery. (NOTE: Unfortunately I don't see this excursion currently offered by Royal Caribbean.)

The tour began with an historic overview of the house and plantation by the owner's husband:

As we walked up towards the plantation house, we walked past some of the beautiful native, tropical foliage...

 










































I love the statues and whimsical figurines that are scattered all around the gardens...

We were able to tour the house even though it is actually the family's home...look at those beautiful flowers!

Turn 180 degrees and look at the view of the blue Caribbean from the house!

Not a bad view from your front door...

Beautiful period furniture still decorates the home...the most beautiful part of the interior of the plantation house is the original 17th-century wood floor which is polished FOUR TIMES A DAY.

Clay Villa Plantation takes in and rehabilitates injured birds and monkeys. Here is a rescued lovebird...

and rescued vervet monkeys...

We really enjoyed our visit to Clay Villa Plantation!

Our next port stop was San Juan, Puerto Rico. I'll show you great photos of my walk through the old town in the next blog post.

Thank you for visiting,

A Great Europe Trip Planner 

All photos in this post were taken by my husband and me during our Caribbean cruise in May, 2014.