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Attractions
St.Kitts
Basseterre
Basseterre, set against the irresistible backdrop of St. Kitts' emerald green hills and punctuated by elegant Georgian architecture, is one of the best of the Caribbean's small capitals. I ts French name simply means "lowland," a description that must have been scratched onto a French sea chart sometime during the late 1620s. In the 375 ensuing years there have been many Basseterres, for earthquakes, floods, hurricanes, fires, and invasions have all swept through this modest community. Set before the dramatic backdrop of St. Kitts' lush green hills, Basseterre today retains much of the elegant Georgian character of Nelson's days.
Old Road Bay
It was here at Old Road Bay that Sir Thomas Warner, along with his family and 14 others, began the first permanent European settlement in the Leeward Islands. The settlers were at first on good terms with the island's Carib inhabitants, though such friendship lasted only a very few years. Rather than cultivating sugar, it was tobacco that had drawn Warner to the island, and it was the island's tobacco crop that first supported the settlement.
The Warner family estate served as the capital of St. Kitts until 1727, when it was moved to Basseterre. Outside of Old Road bay are found a number of interesting Carib petroglyphs.
Sandy Point
This second largest of St. Kitts' towns occupies the very spot on which Thomas Warner and his small party made landfall in 1623. During the 17th century Sandy Point was the center of the island's tobacco trade, and among Sandy Point's most fascinating sights are the large tobacco warehouses constructed during that time by the Dutch West India Company.
Frigate Bay Peninsula
Frigate Bay Peninsula stretches like the neck of an upturned wine bottle, connecting the main body of St. Kitts to the widened tip of the bottle's mouth at the Southeast Peninsula. One side of that neck--the dramatic windward beach at North Frigate Bay, is battered dramatically by the Atlantic surf. On the leeward side, the beach is met by the calm Caribbean waters of Frigate Bay.
Wingfield Estate and Petroglyphs
For hundreds of years before European navigators arrived in the Caribbean, the island's Carib community lived on this beautiful site. Three years after the first European settlers arrived, the Caribs were all but annihilated at Bloody Point. At the edge of the estate, standing as mute witness to the island's ancient, pre-Columbian history, is a cluster of large boulders marked heavily with petroglyphic symbols and human figures. Liamuiga, or 'fertile land,' was the Carib name for the island; in the 1980s, that name was given to St. Kitts' central mountain, a lush, 3792-ft volcanic peak known during the colonial period as Mount Misery.
Southeast Peninsula
At the Southeast Peninsula the narrow neck of Frigate Bay Peninsula broadens to a wide, undulating plain that contains some of the island's most stunning natural features. There are nine unspoiled beaches and lagoons here, as well as the eye-popping pink salt pond--its color comes from its innumerable, miniscule krill shrimp. This protected wilderness area is also populated abundantly by tropical birds, as well as by white-tailed deer and black-faced vervet monkeys.
St. Thomas Church
In the yard of this modest church is the tomb of Sir Thomas Warner, the leading figure in the island's colonial history. The memorial itself is a fascinating object, replete with a finely engraved Elizabethan epitaph to the 'much lamented gent.' Warner, who earned his knighthood as a colonizer of St. Kitts and a number of other islands, died in 1648. St. Thomas is located in Middle Island, which followed upon the establishment of the island's plantations as St. Kitts' first European village.
St.Nevis
Charlestown
The capital of Nevis is, even among the modest, charming cities of the Caribbean islands, a particularly modest and charming town. With a population of only 1,500, Charlestown is the sort of place in which you can still feel the tranquility and the quiet sense of remove that characterized the traditional Caribbean. Life on Nevis is in general quite calm; in Charlestown, it seems to be punctuated by only two events each day--the arrivals of the morning and the afternoon ferry from St. Kitts. Whenever a ferry comes in, a small crowd gathers to watch the wares being unloaded and brought to the nearby open market on the waterfront.
The Alexander Hamilton House
Birthplace of the great American statesman Alexander Hamilton. The original house, built in 1680, was destroyed by an earthquake in 1840. There now stands on the site a carefully constructed replica. Inside is a fine museum, dedicated not only to Hamiltonian memorabilia but also to Nevisian history. Hamilton, born on January 11, 1757, was the illegitimate son of Scotsman James Hamilton and Nevisian Rachael Fawcett Levine. Bright and enterprising, he was at seventeen sent to the North American colonies for education at King's College (now Columbia University) in New York.The young man soon became involved in politics, and with the outbreak of the Revolution he became a captain of artillery. In that capacity he attracted the attention of George Washington, whom he served as secretary and aide-de-camp.
Hamilton was one of the original members of the continental congress in Philadelphia, and he was chosen as the first Secretary of the United States Treasury. A brilliant economist, Hamilton was largely responsible for the federalist financial policies of the new nation. His opposition to Aaron Burr during the Presidential contest of 1800 undoubtedly contributed to the election of Burr's rival, Thomas Jefferson; his renewed opposition to Burr in the 1804 campaign for the governorship of New York undoubtedly contributed to Burr's issuance of a challenge to duel. Hamilton accepted: the two met at Weehawken Heights, NJ, on a bluff overlooking the Hudson River, and Hamilton was fatally wounded.
Memorial Square
This central civic space honors those Nevisians who served in World Wars I & II.
The Jewish Cemetery
The Jewish Cemetery in Charlestown is a tangible reminder of a once vibrant community that existed on the island of Nevis. The cemetery contains gravestones that are engraved in English, Hebrew and Portuguese, dating from 1679 to 1768. Once constituting 25% of the island's population, the Sephardic Jews of Nevis brought to the island the secret of how to crystallize sugar, a technique that had been discovered and protected by the Portuguese and the Spanish. Expelled from Brazil during the 17th century, their arrival in Nevis helped to make the island the 'Queen of the Caribbees,' a title that referred primarily to its remarkable sugar production. A stone-walled path, known as the 'Jews Walk,' leads from the cemetery to the supposed site of the community's synagogue, which is believed to have been built in 1684.
Horatio Nelson Museum
This captivating museum contains the largest collection of Nelson memorabilia in the West, and it offers a fascinating introduction to the island's Nelson heritage.H oratio Nelson is Britain's greatest naval hero. In his dashing exploits at the Battles of Cape St. Vincent (1797), the Nile (1798), and Copenhagen (1801), his legendary romance with Lady Emma Hamilton, and his epochal victory and tragic death at the Battle of Trafalgar (1805), Nelson seems always to be a little larger than life. The Nelson commemorated throughout the Caribbean, however, is younger, a little newer to the world, and if a bit less impressive, certainly more intimate.
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