St Kitts

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"We rush slowly here".

The friendly taxi driver reassured us that he had no deadline. Neither had we. St Kitts is on island time. Even in the slow moving traffic in the middle of Basseterre, the island's capital, there was no sign of impatience. The Victorian clock tower stands in the middle of the Circus, the roundabout which marks the town centre. A good proportion of the vehicles creeping past the coconut milk seller under a tree are SUV or minibus taxis, ferrying tourists from hotel or villa to town or beach. All of the drivers are laid back, affable and helpful, showing none of the usual impatience of the European city driver. "Take your time, man." There is no deadline because the clock tower shows 12.16. Permanently.

We're taking our time. It's an easy place to slow down. We're in a Marriott resort complex with all creature comforts on tap. Fellow visitors are mainly American, who have no need to feel they have left their homeland, particularly if they're from Florida. But they're mainly from further north. No need to deprive yourself of familiar stuff. Hershey bars and popcorn In the hotel shop, nachos, pizza and fries in the restaurants. No need to cope with funny money. "We take US dollars". The East Caribbean dollar (also valid) barely gets a look in, even in town. St Kitts is an ex-British colony, but this bit of the island is governed by the Marriott dollar and and an efficient smiling service ethic. The staff are all local Kittitians, wearing a hierarchy of coloured polo shirts to denote role and rank. Every one of them, from cleaner to top dog meeter and greeter are uniformly helpful. No need to walk along the 500 meters to the golf course. Smitty or Curt will give you a buggy ride to the clubhouse door, then drive round the back to find and load your clubs on your own buggy for first tee action.









Golf is the big draw here for me and brother Dave. The Royal St Kitts course skirts the eastern Atlantic beach and extends across the isthmus almost to the western, Caribbean side of the island. Scrubby hills on your right, with pastel-coloured or white colonial style residences climbing the hills above the coconut palms. In the distance, the conical volcanic hills of the interior. When the golf course was laid out on recently defunct sugar cane fields, the move was not popular, especially with those families who lost their houses to make the 12th fairway. The Prime Minister of St Kitts and Nevis of the time was not inclined to listen to protest. "I shall play a round of golf every morning on the way to work. I don't care what they think." Whether Mr Marriott was his four-ball partner, I shall never know. I have a social conscience, which is suspended when I have a golf club in hand, particularly in such a beautiful spot as this, in 30 degrees with a sea breeze helping to hold the perfect seven iron as the ball soars to the cloudless sky and and lands on the perfectly manicured green, three feet from the hole. (Reader comment: Lying sod.)The course has the 3rd green with a view of the Caribbean and the 15th elevated tee with a view of the sweep of Frigate Bay, with white Atlantic waves breaking on the beach. Coconut palms provide an occasional obstruction to the green. Best to play the low runner between the smooth trunks and run it up. The soaring wedge shot might hit the guy who is halfway up the trunk to steal the coconuts before ambling off on his bike, with a bag full of a dozen or so nuts on the crossbar. 'Hey man, if you want take a picture of me, it'll cost you 10US'. I decided to ignore him and my social conscience (again) and reached for my 7 iron.




Golf replacing sugar epitomises the St Kitts economy. Tourism isn't the only money-maker on St Kitts, but it now accounts for a good slice of the cake. For two hundred years, sugar-cane fields filled every non-volcano space on both St Kitts and its neighbour, Nevis. Sugar made some people very rich, but the money benefited Bristol more than Basseterre. Sugar cane was extremely labour-intensive. The local Carib population had been largely eradicated. Workers were needed. What's a better idea than cheap labour if you're a British plantation owner? Of course. Slave labour. Take a ship from Bristol, call in at West Africa, pack the ship with strong looking guys from The Gambia or Sierra Leone. Chuck the dead ones in the Atlantic. Get the survivors to work the sugar cane and take the sugar, rum or molasses to Bristol or Boston and watch the money grow. If you're Bristolian John Colston, you salve your conscience about getting rich through slavery, by becoming Bristol's biggest philanthropist. The grateful burghers of Bristol will then make a big statue to you and name the Colston Hall after you where your descendants can see the Beatles, Blur and even The Sugar Babes. Local hero, job done.





The houses of the plantation owners on St Kitts and Nevis are largely restored and converted into upscale hotels and restaurants. The volcanic stone sugar mills are now used for honeymoon retreats in 4 and 5 star boutique hotels. The Golden Rock Plantation Inn on Nevis (above) is set in tropical gardens high in the hills below the top of the volcano which IS the island of Nevis. The volcano was quiet above as we enjoyed our lobster sandwich lunch, with plantain chips and passion fruit dressing. No sugar in sight. Just the blue ocean below, beyond the mangoes, green monkeys and the coconut palms.














We'd come to Nevis as day trippers on the 45 minute ferry from Basseterre. The crew were keen to help Rosie board the ship. No gangplank or ramp. Just a 30 centimetre gap, bobbing between dockside and vessel. A bit hairy for Rosie and us, but 'noo prablem, man' for the crew. Getting off in Nevis was slightly less scary, but the real obstacle was getting into the back of Jonesy's ancient minibus taxi. After R ended up in a heap on the floor of the bus, Jonesy pronounced : "That was a very easy piece of cake." Jonesy was a slow-talking, slow-driving 60 year old with a rudimentary taxi bus which might have been turned away from the Marriott. Giving tourists an island tour called for one decision. Clockwise or anti-clockwise round the one road from Charlestown, tiny port village and capital of Nevis. He took us past the church where Nelson and Lady Hamilton were married, the hotel where Lady Di celebrated her divorce from Charlie and the Prime Minister's parking space outside the church hall building that was his office. Nevis is beautiful, with white sand beaches, dense vegetation and a dormant volcano permanently up the hill to the left. There seem to be as many churches on Nevis as there are houses. Clearly the Victorian missionaries, Methodists, Catholics, Moravians, Church of God, Baptists, Wesleyans were never short of sugar for their teas, even if competition for custom must have been tough.




We were looking forward to the Labour Day parade on Monday in Basseterre. Although the sugar industry effectively died ten years ago, the compensation process for laid-off workers still goes on and adds some spice to the celebration of the worker. More spice will be offered after the parade and speechifying on Monday, notably from the recently ousted Labour Prime Minister, Denzil Douglas. Open air food in the grounds of the primary school by the cemetery. According to advance publicity, there will be " Black Pudding, Fried and Barbeque Fish, Goat Water (yum), Monkey Meat, Conkie, Cassava Bread, Ginger Beer, tamarind Drinks and Passion Fruit Drink". We missed the Crowning of the Labour Queen on Saturday. "The beautiful women of Labour will showcase their beauty, talent and charm and vie with each other in a spirit of comraderie and togetherness to capture the enviable trophy of the Miss Labour Queen." Nice to feel that the Kittitians can still produce a few phrases which wouldn't have been out of place a hundred years ago. The publicity could have been penned by Eric Morley.




I asked on Sunday at the hotel desk for info on Labour Day, the next day.

-What time does it start?

-Well, there's a match.

-A match? Cricket? Football?

-No, a match. They go matching into town.

-Oh, marching! Great. What time is the march?

-Bout 8 or 9.

-And the ceremony? And the speeches? (I'd read that the Denzil Douglas was scheduled)

-Oh, don't know bout that. That'll be before the match. Or after.

-Ok . And the food?

-What food?

-The barbies and monkey meat I saw advertised.

-Oh they go home for that.




I gave up at this point. The desk was good for arranging taxi tours of the island but had no idea of what was happening in the real world down the road. I was the first person ever to ask about Labour Day. Determined to see the remnants of the march after our morning 18 holes, we took a taxi into Basseterre. The driver was reluctant to take us and our money. "It's all closed. Nothing open. Ghost town. Labour Day. You still want to go?" We went. All closed. Nothing open. No traffic. A few people in red shirts limping home clutching a bottle of water. Nothing to see, except a donkey walking along the road with a monkey on its back. WTF? We returned to the hotel immediately, feeling a deep sense of failure. Will have to rely on my postal vote for Thursday to express solidarity with the revolution. At least my deep sense of failure would later chime with Ed Milliband's.




Fort Brimstone is on a volcanic outcrop overlooking the west coast of St Kitts. From the ramparts at the top, the 18th and 19th century British forces could spot an invader (usually the pesky French, but the naughty Spaniards had a small interest in Central and South America) and be ready to repel boarders. Our attempt to reach the top was thwarted, but not by the French. None of us was up to a half-mile 1 in 5 wheelchair push to the top, so we had to be content with the marginally less stunning view from the windy and dusty car park by the visitor centre. (see above)




For a time, the island was shared between the Brits and the French, who had co-operated so well in destroying the local Amerindian people and culture. There are very few remnants of French place names. Apart from Basseterre, the only one spotted on the map was Dieppe at the northern tip, "where the Atlantic meets the Caribbean". Nothing was obvious on the road, as no place was given a sign to identify it as you drove in. Probably good reasoning, as you were through the other side of the place in a few seconds. Hardly worth making a sign for that. Without a map, navigation is easy, as like on Nevis, there's only one road around the island. To the left, the Caribbean, past Fort Brimstone and the the northern stretch of the islands, with a succession of scrubby villages, with a mixture of small wooden or concrete houses, some smart, most a bit wonky; with several it was hard to decide whether they were derelict or half finished. Several had unfinished work on the roof. Perhaps to avoid the tax due once the roof was on.









In the village of St Paul's, it was clear that we were in Labour Party heartland. This was Denzil Douglas' home village. We passed a large house, smartly painted and set in well tended gardens. Denzil's place ? The bridge over the dried up stream was painted pillar box red with "A confident future with the Labour Party" painted in large white letters. Denzil's picture beamed down at us from a large billboard as we rounded the bend by the primary school. Denzil has been in opposition again since February. On Monday he addressed the red-shirted faithful on Labour Day, urging the ousted sugar workers not to be fobbed off with inadequate redundancy payments. Most have been waiting for settlement for ten years. We passed acres of untended sugar cane fields with not one person to be seen on them. The once mighty Rawlings Plantation was partly given over to a new residential development in the foothills, overlooking a new, as yet unopened golf course. The access road was full of ruts and potholes, our welcome was underwhelming, so no, we won't be investing. St Kitts seems to be caught between exploiting its natural fertility for agriculture and selling its prime spots for the foreign tourist buck. Judging by the provenance of fresh food at RAM or IGA, the dollar seems to be winning.










Dave and Eileen's timeshare apartment was wonderful. Acres of space, efficient aircon, ice cubes dispensed from the generous fridge freezer. Indoor or outdoor dining. Sunrise view. Only 50 yards to walk to the beach across grass, under coconut palms and along a smooth concrete path. Sun loungers and mini tables set out under shady shelters on the beach by the Atlantic. To the right across the water, the bumpy skyline of the volcanic hills which fall into the ocean and face Nevis across the strait to the south. Considering the number of people this place can accommodate, in apartments or hotel rooms, there is still plenty of space to swim, lounge, or eat. For the bored or the ultra-sociable, there's a Hi-Di-Hi team of Kittitian Gladyses, Teds and Spikes who set up pool volleyball with reggae surround sound. We could learn to snorkel with Spike, play tennis or get henna tattoos from Ted, or even play table tennis and bingo (not simultaneous) with Yendi.









The triumph of our two weeks on St Kitts was the arrival (10 days later than our own - “We take our time here”) of a beach wheelchair for Rosie. It was an enormous contraption, seemingly assembled from off-cuts from PlumbCentre or maybe PlumbCenter. Complete with padded seat and reclining mechanism, the chair just needed a friendly relative to wheeze their way from the apartment to the sand, allow R to descend the few steps to the beach and voila. More heaving and wheezing, a quick burst with the defibrillator and everyone was installed under the shade 10 yards from the ocean. Nothing to worry about except the prospect of a safe return. We made it.

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