Things To Do in St. Kitts

The British colonial town of Basseterre is built around a so-called Circus, the town's round square. A tall green Victorian clock stands in the center of the Circus. After Brimstone Hill Fortress, Berkeley Memorial Clock is the most photographed landmark of St. Kitts. In the old days, wealthy plantation owners and their families used to promenade here.

Try to visit the marketplace, especially on a Saturday morning. Here country people bring baskets brimming with mangos, guavas, soursop, mammee apples, and wild strawberries and cherries just picked in the fields. Tropical flowers abound.

Another major landmark is Independence Square. Once an active slave market, it's surrounded by private homes of Georgian architecture.

You can negotiate with a taxi driver to take you on a tour of the island, costing from $80 for a 3-hour trip; most drivers are well versed in the lore of the island. You might want to make lunch reservations at either the Rawlins Plantation Inn or the Golden Lemon. For more information, call the St. Kitts Taxi Association, the Circus, Basseterre (tel. 869/465-8487, until 10pm).

The island's most popular attraction is the St. Kitts Scenic Railway (tel. 869/465-7263; www.stkittsscenicrailway.com). In double-decker and air-conditioned railcars, you're taken on a panoramic tour of the most spectacular scenery the island has to offer. The upper level features a spacious, open-air observation deck. The narrow-gauge railway follows the old sugar-cane train tracks, taking in the best vistas of mountains and the Caribbean Sea. You can enjoy a service bar and live musical entertainment. The train is boarded at Needsmust Station. This is certainly the quickest and easiest way to see all "St. Kitts in a nutshell," especially if you're a cruise-ship passenger with limited time. The 50km (31-mile) ride costs $89 for adults, half-price for children. Trips last 3 1/2 hours, with departure daily at 8:10am. Sometimes a second daily tour will be announced if business merits it.

If you want to go on a "safari" in the sky, Sky Safari Tours at Wingfield Estate (tel. 869/466-4259; www.skysafaristkitts.com), on the site of an old sugar plantation, leads cable-line treks that zip through St. Kitts Rainforest at speeds of up to 80kmph (50 mph), from as high up as 76m (250 ft.) above the ground. Most tours vary from 1 1/2 to 2 hours, costing $89 per person and $65 for children 14 and under. Tours begin at 8am daily, shutting down around 4 or 5pm when the last cable line comes in.

Brimstone Hill Fortress (tel. 869/465-2609), 14km (8 3/4 miles) west of Basseterre, is a major stop. This historic monument, among the largest and best preserved in the Caribbean, is a complex of bastions and barracks ingeniously adapted to the top and upper slopes of a steep-sided 240m (787-ft.) hill. The fortress dates from 1690, when the British attempted to recapture Fort Charles from the French. Admission is $8 for adults, $4 for children.

Today the fortress is the centerpiece of a national park, with nature trails and a diverse range of plant and animal life, including the green vervet monkey. It's also a photographer's paradise, with views of mountains, fields, and the Caribbean Sea. On a clear day, you can see six neighboring islands. Visitors can enjoy self-guided tours among many ruins and restored structures, including the barrack rooms at Fort George, which contain an interesting museum. The gift shop stocks prints of rare maps and paintings of the Caribbean. Admission is $8, half price for children. The Brimstone Hill Fortress National Park is open daily from 9:30am to 5:30pm.

You can visit the site where a large tamarind tree in the hamlet of Half-Way Tree once marked the boundary between the British- and French-held sectors. It was near the hamlet of Old Road Town that Sir Thomas Warner landed with the first band of settlers and established the first permanent colony to the northwest at Sandy Point. Sir Thomas's grave is in the cemetery of St. Thomas Church.

A sign in the middle of Old Road Town points the way to Carib Rock Drawings, all the evidence that remains of the former inhabitants. The markings are on black boulders, and the pictographs date from prehistoric days.

Into the Volcano

Mount Liamuiga was dubbed "Mount Misery" long ago, but it sputtered its last gasp around 1692. This dormant volcano on the northeast coast is one of the major highlights for hikers on St. Kitts. The mountain's peak often lies under cloud cover.

The ascent to the volcano is usually made from the north end of St. Kitts at Belmont Estate. The trail winds through a rainforest and travels along deep ravines up 788m (2,585 ft.) to the rim of the crater. The actual peak is at 1,138m (3,734 ft.). Figure on 5 hours of rigorous hiking to complete the round-trip walk.

The caldera itself is some 120m (394 ft.) from its rim to the crater floor. Many hikers climb down into the dormant volcano, but the trail is steep and slippery, so be careful. At the crater floor is a tiny lake, along with volcanic rocks and various vegetation.

Greg's Safaris (tel. 869/465-4121; www.gregsafaris.com) is the most competent and best-accessorized trekking outfitter in St. Kitts, maintaining seven different four-wheel-drive Land Rovers for access to some of the island's toughest terrain. Owner and founder Greg Pereira charges $95 per person for 9-hour hiking tours of remote regions of his island, recommending that participants be reasonably fit and that they carry a dry shirt (the one you'll wear will get drenched with perspiration) and a waterproof bag or knapsack for transport of bottled water and your camera. Hikes go up the sides of Mount Liamuiga ("fertile isle" in Carib) and include a picnic lunch and a rum-based drink or two at the conclusion of the day's hiking. Treks include a guide and running commentary on the island's topography, sociology, ecology, and history. The same outfit also offers half-day rainforest explorations for $65 per person.

The good buys here are local handicrafts, including leather (goatskin) items, baskets, and coconut shells. Some good values can also be found in clothing and fabrics, especially Sea Island cottons. Store hours vary but are likely to be Monday to Saturday from 8am to noon and 1 to 4pm.

If your time is limited, head first for the Pelican Shopping Mall, Bay Road, which contains some two dozen shops. Opened in 1991, it also offers banking services, a restaurant, a philatelic bureau, and the administrative offices of the St. Kitts Tourist Office. Some major retail outlets in the Caribbean, including Little Switzerland, have branches here. Also check out the offerings along the quaintly named Liverpool Row, which has some unusual merchandise, and Fort Street.

Associated with the island's burgeoning cruise-ship industry, Port Zante is a shopping mall built just after the turn-of-the-millennium directly on landfill that was dumped into what old-timers designated as Horseshoe Harbor. Cruise ships can berth at quays immediately adjacent to Port Zante, in a way that's replicated in Barbados, and whose role model the St. Kittitians copied. The Queen Mary stops frequently, disgorging passengers who shop, shop, shop. Port Zante is the home of about 60 shops, with emphasis on things that glitter, especially jewelry. Although there are dozens of shops purveying upscale goods, one of the noteworthy, best-established shops is Linen and Gold (tel. 869/465-9766), which offers a limited selection of gold and silver jewelry, usually in bold modern designs. But the real appeal of this shop is its tablecloths, doilies, and napkins, laboriously handcrafted in China from cotton, linen, and polyester. The workmanship is as intricate as anything you'll find in the Caribbean.

Ashburry's, the Circus/Liverpool Row, Basseterre (tel. 869/465-8175), is a local branch of a chain of luxury-goods stores based on St. Maarten. This well-respected emporium sells fragrances, fine porcelain, Baccarat crystal, designer handbags, watches, and jewelry at prices 25% to 30% below what you might pay in retail stores in North America; the selection is similar to dozens of equivalent stores throughout the Caribbean.

Spencer Cameron Gallery, 10 N. Independence Sq., Basseterre (tel. 869/465-1617), is set on a dusty plaza ringed with businesses and residential clapboard-sided houses, near the center of Basseterre, and with an exterior brightly painted in tropical colors, this is a leading art gallery. On display are scenes of St. Kitts and Nevis by Brit Rosie Cameron-Smith, along with works by a handful of other mostly West Indian artists. Rosey ("a good-natured English lass in the Tropics") is well known on the island for her paintings of Kittitian Carnival clowns, monkeys, and figurative work, and she also produces greeting cards, postcards, calendars, and lithographs.

The finest gallery on St. Kitts is Kate Design, Mount Pleasant (tel. 869/465-7740; www.katedesign.com), set in a carefully restored West Indian house, on a hillside below the Rawlins Plantation. Virtually all the works on display are by English-born Kate Spencer, who is well known throughout North America and Europe. Her paintings of island scenes range in price from $200 and have received critical acclaim. Also for sale is a series of Ms. Spencer's silk-screened scarves, each crafted from extra-heavy stonewashed silk.

Island Hopper (known as "The Big Shop of the Little Island"), the Circus, below the popular Ballahoo Restaurant, Basseterre (tel. 869/465-1640), is one of St. Kitts's most patronized shops, with the biggest inventory of any store on the island. Notice the all-silk, shift-style dresses from China and the array of batiks made on St. Kitts. About half of the merchandise is from the islands.

Caribelle Batik, at Romney Manor, Old Road, about 15km (9 1/4 miles) west of Basseterre (tel. 869/465-6253; www.caribellebatikstkitts.com), is the most unusual factory in St. Kitts. It was built around 1625 as a manor house for sugar baron Lord Romney. For years, it has been used as the headquarters and manufacturing center for a local clothier, Caribelle Batik, whose tropical cottons sell widely to cruise-ship passengers and tourists from at least three outlets in the eastern Caribbean. The merchandise ranges from scarves to dresses, along with an extensive collection of wall hangings and cushions. In 1995 a tragic fire and hurricane completely gutted the historic building. The manor has now been rebuilt and extended. Consider a stopover here if only to admire the 2 hectares (5 acres) of lavish gardens, where 30 varieties of hibiscus, rare orchids, huge ferns, and a 250-year-old saman tree still draw horticultural enthusiasts. Entrance to the gardens is free.