Monday, day 3, Aboard the Celebrity Summit, St Kitts

Another tropical island...

This is an island, changing, adapting, modernizing... It has an old history, Christopher Columbus was here... St Kitts may be short for St Christopher, which may be Mr. Columbus' way of naming the island for himself.

It was a split between French and British areas… eventuallythey joined forces and killed or drove out the pesky Caribe "Indians"...   Then a British possession, until the French took it, then gave back a few years later...  30 years ago it gained independence, so a young country, in a place with a long history.  It's colonial economy was based on sugar... Sugar plantations need labor, and the island had none after they wiped out the pesky Caribes (they may be gone, but they are not forgotten... The local beer is named for them) so the planters imported black slaves, aka enslaved Africans... The British government recognized the immorality of slavery in the 1830's... And outlawed slavery... And in its place the planters placed a system of economic slavery... (Not unlike Tennessee Williams' "16 tons, and what do you get, another day older and deeper in debt"). That system started to crumble with labor revolts in the 1930's... And has been broken by the island's independence, the nationalization of the sugar industry, and its eventual closure in 2005.

Now the island is all about tourism, there is near universal literacy.  They have a bunch of developable land, where the cane files used to be, and the old sugar cane railroad now hauls tourists...

Up on a 10 miles up (or down) the coast, up on a hill is a massive 17th century stone fort... The kind of grand military bastion that the British army loved.  I wanted to visit... The easiest way was a ship's tour, which would also visit a onetime plantation, now batik factory.

9:00 found us on the pier, in the line marker "Essential St Kitts tour"... We exchanged tour tickets for yellow wrist bands...  Then loaded aboard a small bus – large van we set out… The guide was good, talking as much about life on the island as he did about old forts and such…

Early on, when asked when we would get back to the ship he said… "Somewhere, someone will take a few extra minutes.  It happens... I give an extra 5 minutes, someone takes 5 minutes more... It happens.  I never leave anyone, but sometimes have go looking for someone.” 

We drive out of town, along the coast… though a string of villages, many with the ruins of a smoke stack… likely a each likely the tell-tale remains of a one-time sugar refinery, a plantation…  a place where black slaves labored… The stacks were in ruins… the sugar industry having been centralized around a single modern refinery in 1912, complete with a railroad around the island to transport the cane…  That modern refinery out of date and failing was taken over by the new government… recently, no longer economically viable, it was closed… closing a chapter in the lsland’s history…

Our tour continued up the coast… through villages, past the ruins of the first church on the island… beyond, to the Romney plantation, founded by and once owned by Thomas Jefferson’s great, great, great, great, grandfather… (we note that Alexander Hamilton was born on nearby Nevis…  Early US history is close by) 

Romney plantation (jokes are made about a possible, but unlikely connection to a recent US Presidential candidate) is now the home of Caribelle Batik, an artisan fabric manufacture, botanical garden, and tourist mecca… with shopping opportunities… (they have wonderful, tourist friendly restrooms…)  Only a few minutes late… we head further up the road…  then uphill to the fort.

The fort, high on the hillside was spectacular.  A winding road, past a “No Dogs Allowed” sign, surrounded by cats passed through several gates, barely wide enough for our van… We explored the ruins, the restored bastions…  then back to the van for the ride back to where the ship was docked…

The return drive was wonderful for the conversations with our driver/guide… about island life, and island community… how commerce was conducted (local stores, with a counter, where you speak to the owner and they get you what you want… local “convenience stores” and super markets in town…)  Abou neighborhoods old and new… This is still a place where when you have no money, you can eat and get about… when you have money, you can eat better and get about more easily… A place moving beyond the plantation.

Back in town, We walk about… visiting the local museum, down the main street, through Independence Square, back to the cruise port on its man-made land… not really part of the town… something also found on other islands… back to our ship…