Cruises, French West Indies Cruise

Wind Surf Cruise: St. Kitts and Return to St. Martin

Basseterre, St. Kitts

The last time we were in St. Kitts, there was basically a casino and not much else. The town was pretty poor. That was 25ish years ago. Today, the port has been enlarged, they created a shopping area full of stores for us to shop. It was an amazing transformation.

We decided to take a tour of a different side of the island on a refurbished sugarcane train. The trains were originally built in 1912 and 1926 respectively. The tour included 12 miles on a bus with a driver who gave a bit of history about the island.

The train portion of the tour is 18 miles on a narrow-gauge track. The train hugs the northeastern coastline where you see beautiful views of the ocean, surf, cliffs and vegetation is all around. The train crosses on steel bridges with views of deep canyons. As you circle around the coast, you can see Mt. Liamuiga, a large volcano inland from the train. You can also see Nevis Peak across the inlet. It rises 3200 feet and is the highest point on Nevis. (it is the featured picture)

The refurbished trains probably look a lot better than when they were actually working the sugar cane fields

The tour included drinks. Anyone like rum? They also had a local singing group who went from car to car.

Sugar Cane plantation ruins
Sugar Cane field ruins.
One of the spectacular views from the train

I have to say the seats weren’t the most comfortable and you really couldn’t get up from your seat because the train rocked along the tracks. I thought the tour was a bit too long. The train runs fairly slowly so you are on the train for about 2 hours. I felt an hour or an hour and a half would have been perfect.

The bus picked us up at a different station from where we embarked and took us back to the port.

That night we went to Candles, the grill restaurant. The food was quite good. The nicest thing is the two restaurants do not have an upcharge even thought the food is taken up a notch.

Day 7 Philipsburg, St. Martin.

When we arrived at Philipsburg the following morning, we were picked up by our taxi driver. Originally, we thought we would be able to go somewhere for a few hours before boarding our plane. Instead, we did some last-minute shopping and cruised around downtown Phillipsburg. It was a lovely week in a beautiful part of the Caribbean. We look forward to coming back at some point but there are a lot of places still on my bucket list.