So much has happened in the last week that I am going to have to back up and blog about things topically. So for this post I give you my first experience of one of the beaches on St. Kitts.
So, brief geography lesson: The Federation of St. Kitts and Nevis has been described as looking like a baseball bat and baseball. St. Kitts is the bat (albeit short and stubby) and Nevis is the ball. The main part of the island is the top of the bat and the peninsula is the handle. The Northwestern shore is along the Atlantic Ocean and the Southeastern shore along the Caribbean Sea. The ocean and sea meet at each end of the island (it's a pretty spectacular pattern of waves, but I'll talk about that later). The most popular beaches are on the peninsula even though it's out of the way and harder to get to.
On Sunday we went to a place called Shipwreck beach. It's one of the first beaches you come to as you go down the peninsula on the Caribbean side. The beaches on the Atlantic side are not as good for swimming because they have bigger waves. In fact there is one beach that has warning signs posted due to the vicious undercurrent that has claimed several lives. In any case, the two main Atlantic beaches are off-limits right now due to sea turtle nesting season. The sea turtle project monitors the beaches so the sea turtles can come and lay their eggs without being scared off. So the beach we went to on the Caribbean side was GORGEOUS. It of course had vibrant turquoise waters and a stunning view down the coast.
There was a beachside bar and grill to enjoy and shades made out of palm fronds. As you came in to the beach there was an amusing sign welcoming you to Shipwreck beach and showing the distance to various cities. I was especially tickled to see that one of the cities that made the sign was Green Bay, Wisconsin, only 2604 miles away. It was directly above the arrows claiming that monkeys and mongoose were 20 feet and 25 feet away, respectively.
I found the sign very accurate for, indeed, about 20 feet away were some monkeys and mongoose eating scraps left out from the bar. I was disappointed to see that the monkeys were not guzzling alcoholic drinks as I had heard about but were eating (rather stereotypically) bananas. I had not heard about the mongoose on the island and they were pretty cute despite being a bit shifty-eyed.
