Caribbean Cruise, Day 8

Today we woke up in St. Kitts.  Its a beautiful little island.  

I love this picture of everyone walking up the dock... and hello Dena's hair!  It must have been windy.

Usually in a tropical island you expect to see palm trees everywhere.  As we drove I didn't see any!

 Usually our taxi driver is nice and accommodating .. this one just wanted to cram as many people as possible! We had 3 in the front (with the driver), and 3 people on each row(4 rows)!  It was insane and we were annoyed because he was not a very nice person to begin with.  Anyway, it  was really awful because we were going to a beach that was on undeveloped roads with potholes everywhere and through a series of roads that went up, down and winded all over the place.

 Brenda, Ardena, Stephanie and me

 Cockleshell beach was beautiful!  We could actually see where the Atlantic and Caribbean waters met and the island of Nevis was in the background.

However, this is the one and only island where I didn't swim.  The water was murky from recent storms and the men claimed that it was full of grass and weeds growing through the sand.  I opted to sunbath and relax.  We went to Ragae Beach Bar to set our stuff down.  Instantly we had a group of women rush over in their nurse scrubs to ask if we wanted an aloe massage.  All of us said no but ended up getting a free sample which was nice.

Minutes later a man asked if we wanted to listen to his music... he played it and wanted to sell his CD's(ragae music).  Ardena and Brenda got sucked in-- 2/$20.  Later they heard him selling them to someone from 2/$10.  That's just how it is here!  Surprisingly we were not offered any weed at this place, though!

 The view from my chair.

Brenda, Stephanie and I decided to check out the rest of the beach.  We walked for quite awhile and every time we got around a bend we'd want to walk more.  I wondered if these palm trees were planted by someone in the past??

 You can see the road to the right of the picture.  This was an area that looked like it had been developed a long time ago and got washed out.

 We found tile, linoleum and bricks... just a floor-- no house!
The best part was finding some black sand-- its so pretty! I took a picture but it was super blurry.

We got back to the beach and everyone was ordering food.

We got in our taxi and left Cockleshell beach.  It was a fun day but not my best experience of the week.  I can definitely appreciate the beauty of this island though.  Our taxi driver told us that they used to earn money doing sugar cane on the island but are trying to change and make their money in tourism.  For St. Thomas & St. Maartin, tourism is their only economy and they LOVE cruise ships.  In the next couple weeks they begin getting at least two ships each day... wow!  I'm glad we didn't come during the "season" and experience a huge amount of people at each port.

 This is a viewpoint on our way back.  We had just driven up a road that literally went straight up that hill.  The van sounded like it was about to die!  On the left side is the Atlantic ocean... On the right is the Caribbean Sea.  Doesn't the Atlantic beach look amazing?  They told us no one ever swims there because it is SO rough that many people die there.  Wow!

 This guy was selling pictures with a rasta donkey... awesome.

 Oops, these got mixed up.

 This was on our little jungle excursion (self-guided).

 This was a little snack stand at the top of the hill on our way back.

These guys were dancing and playing music when we got back to the port! It was awesome!

 A little lizard... cute.

The reason I'm smiling so big in this picture is because I had a wonderful day... of course and because we were able to connect to WiFi and do some FaceTime with Mae and Will!  It was great!  It totally made my whole day.  I had missed them SO MUCH already.  It was so hard to not be able to just call or text anytime.  Our phones didn't really work and apparently its really pricey to use them while in another country.  Next time I'll just have to plan on using payphones or something because it was so hard to go so long without talking to them and hearing what they're up to!  In our short conversation I could tell I had already missed a lot... they had a million things to tell me which just broke my heart even more.  Luckily they have amazing grandparents and were having a blast.

I'll post more about how much fun they had in a separate post!