St Kitts

St Kitts, along with its neighbour Nevis, has been known as the "Crown Jewels of the Caribbean" so we were looking forward to visiting this island. We docked at Basseterre, the capital, and once off the ship we joined a trip to the Romney Gardens, the Caribelle Batik Studios and a walk deep in the cool rainforest.






Romney Gardens had some magnificent plants and trees.



Winston was our guide for the day, he was excellent.



He explained how the island was abundant with food (especially when all the mangoes ripened, far too many for the islanders to eat)

This was the first piece of Batik work made here at the Caribelle Studio, there were some nice items for sale and I bought myself a tiny box which was covered in batik.








Look at this enormous tree, its amazing, it must be thousands of years old. The "Tree" on the bottom left is actually a branch, it seemed to go on forever.



Lizzy



The shells from the fruit of this tree are dried out and filled with rice or beans to make marraccas.



These, believe it or not, are going to be avocado fruits.



"Stinky Toe".

When Winston picked it up we were nearly sick at the smell, when he then started to eat it we practically fainted, OMG OMG



No guesses as to why this rainforest tree is called the Monkey No Climb Tree



The Monkeynoclimb tree is also known as the Monkey Pistol because this seed pod from it (looks like a wooden satsuma) explodes like dynamite sending the seed pods flying. Winston was wearing one of the dried, painted and varnished seeds as a name badge.




We expected the rainforest to be damp and humid with leaves dripping with moisture but it was in fact very dry due to no rain for several days,but luckily for us there was a running stream and as long as there is moving water there will be no mozzies to bite us (YIPPEE) so we were "safe".

We saw monkeys playing in the trees here.



Massive tree roots...



Hundreds of tree roots...



Winston playing at "TARZAN" swinging on a tree root...



Winston plucked a fern, put it onto his arm and pressed it down.... HEY PRESTO a tattoo!
(It didn't look half as effective on our white skin though!)



RUM!! "Cheers m'dears"

This was the best lunch/refreshments stop ever... Mango juice, guava juice, guava juice with rum, bananas, banana cake, coconut and banana chips...all delicious!




Time to head back to the ship and it was a nice ride back, they took us through the main square or "Circus" as it's called.






So many people have told us how beautiful this island is so I would have liked to have had time to see a beach, but Sea Princess has a tight schedule so we used the last hour NOT buying any island rum. However much of a BARGAIN it was. I won that argument ha ha (argument?? jokin!)



The ship crew were setting up Movies under the Stars when we returned - sunbeds become cushioned and blanketted, and it was "full" when we walked past later on. (Even though we could have watched from anywhere else on deck there were loads of undressed sunbeds!)

The big screen also showed Premiership football matches (7am for the Saturday lunchtime game!) and no doubt the Royal Wedding too.



The sunsets were beautiful, far more spectacular than these photos...






Dress code for tonight was Smart/casual so I wore my Gibraltar dress, you know, the one I bought when on the Gibaltar cruise...