ST. CROIX AND ST. KITTS

Have I mentioned before that I LOVE cruising? I could do this every day if the rest of my family were on board and I didn't need an income. This is a picture of our ship, the Summit, when it was docked in St. Croix. St. Croix was the first island that we visited. We woke up Sunday morning and there we were...docked in St. Croix. The ship sails mostly at night and then you just wake up to a new destination. I love sleeping on the ship. The rocking motion is fantastic and puts you to sleep just like a baby. It was a smaller ship which means that you feel the rocking motion more, while you sleep and when you are awake and trying to navigate around the boat. I love the feeling and luckily, neither Walt nor I, get seasick.

This is the island of St. Croix and the view that we woke up to. I love islands and wonder why I don't live on one. It is something that I have been fascinated with even when I was a kid and I feel very, very fortunate that I have been able to visit some of the islands in the Caribbean. I still want to make it Hawaii someday though....I know....I sound really greedy.
We didn't book a shore excursion in St. Croix and instead, just decided to wing it on our own. We spent the morning just looking around at the nearby shops and just enjoying the sights and smells of the island. There is a definite smell to the islands. It is a blend of the spices, the vegetation, and the surroundings, including the people. It is a good smell and it is compounded by the heat in the air. It was hot and muggy here. There was some big celebration in the middle of the island and so most of the vendors were there so the shopping was very limited, but still enjoyable. One of the things that became apparent as we shopped and talked with locals is that liquor is very cheap on the islands. Unfortunately one of the vendors said that it makes for a lot of alcoholics...especially men and some of them just sit around and talk and drink and waste their lives. We bought a few things, mainly cheap jewelry and then headed to the beach.
We hung out with this motley crew in St. Croix. Many of our group took a bus over to the other side of the island where the shopping was supposed to be great. We decided to stay behind and just hang out. It turned out that they were disappointed in the other side of the island....at least for shopping. It was a Sunday and most of the shops were either closed or they had gone to the celebration in the middle of the island too.
And here is a picture of this fat couple. Who are they anyway???
And look at this cute couple. Look how cute Annette is. There she is trying to be all sexy. After looking around for a few hours, we went back to the ship and ate some lunch and then headed to a nearby beach. It was a fun, relaxing afternoon. The beach was a little rocky but the water was so fun to play in. My friends, Joann and Dave, had never snorkeled and Dennis took Joann out in the water and worked with her for the entire time, teaching her how to do it. She loved it even though she is a non-swimmer. Thanks Dennis. I ended up just full of sand though...but so worth it.
We sailed to St. Kitts that night and this is the view when we woke up. It was actually a double rainbow which is hard to see in this picture. I loved St. Kitts.
When we got off the boat, this is the little "town" that we walked into. It was so cute.
We all gathered waiting for our tour guide to come. We were waiting to go on an island tour. We actually did this on all of the islands except St. Croix and I wish that we would have done that there too. It was fun to drive around each of the islands and see what they really look like away from the docks. I was surprised at how poor most of the people live. I guess in my mind, you have to be rich to live on an island, but the vast majority, I think, are very poor. Minimum wage on most of these islands was two dollars an hour and for all of the islands except Tobago, the gas was around six dollars per gallon. Now I realize that you don't have very far to drive on an island, but that is still a lot of money.
We finally met our tour guide and got ready to jump on these open air buses. I loved it. Driving around was so fun and like I said, the smell of these islands was fantastic so I was glad that we were in an open air bus. This was Big Bob's Banana Bus....or Big somebody.
Just a glimpse of one of the houses on the islands.
Beautiful views. I was surprised in talking with one of the tour guides that locals don't frequent the beaches that much. They said that since they grew up with a beach surrounding them, they don't get all that excited about it. That seems hard to believe. I would love to go to the beach everyday, especially a warm Caribbean one.
The water in the Caribbean is the most magnificent turquoise blue color. After touring this island, we again headed to the beach. We made a few stops along the way and visited the tour guides "friends", vendors who wanted us to buy everything from jewelry to coconut bird feeders, to spices, to t-shirts, etc. The interesting thing is that they all said, "This is unique to our island. It was made by a man that lives up the road. You won't find it anywhere else." And lo and behold, we found the same stuff on all of the islands. I did love all of the things that were made from coconuts though. I bought several pieces of jewelry that were made from coconuts and I love them and wish that I had bought more. It was on this island where we all tasted freshly cut sugar cane (which I loved...no big surprise) and coconut milk, straight from the coconut....nasty. I think it was also this island where there were monkeys everywhere and they said that there are three monkeys for every person on the island, and they are quite a nuisance to the islanders.
At the end of the day, we headed back into the little "town" and shopped. The shopping there was fun but everything started to look the same in each shop. We got Walt another Hawaiian shirt and I got a St. Kitt's dress that I hopefully won't look too awful in this summer. I loved St. Kitts and wouldn't mind visiting there again sometime.