Looking for an overlooked Caribbean escape? Get to St. Kitts — before new developments change the island’s character forever.

by Charles Coxe

 

Searching for an off-the-beaten-path beach spot in the Caribbean is a bit of a wild goose chase: If the place is nice, it’s guaranteed to be overcrowded; if there are no tourists, there’s usually a good reason, whether it’s bad beaches, an unstable government, or crumbling amenities. But every so often, you can catch a Caribbean spot at that best-of-neither-world moment between complete economic ruin and cruise ship overrun. The tiny island of St. Kitts (together with neighbor Nevis, the smallest nation in the Western hemisphere) is currently in that short window, several years removed from the collapse of its sugar industry and a devastating hurricane, and still a few years away from a massive, character-changing resort development going up on the island’s southern tip. As a result, St. Kitts offers a dozen secluded beaches, great wreck diving, quietly elegant plantation inns, and jungle trekking up a volcano, all without crowds. With all that diversity, to appreciate the drumstick-shaped island on a laid-back island schedule, split your nights between lodgings up- and down-island.

 

 

 

The Southern Peninsula:

Where to stay: The best lodging close to the beaches of the Southern peninsula (the only area of St. Kitts that offers the stereotypical stretches of Caribbean sand) is the St. Kitts Marriott in North Frigate Bay. It’s as massive a resort as the brand name suggests, but by some measures that’s a good thing — it’s spread out enough to avoid feeling crowded, and when you need a break from the beach it boasts the largest casino and one of the best spas in the Eastern Caribbean. Request a suite on the top two floors for an unbroken view out over the Atlantic (from $149 a night).

Where to swim: The adjacent beaches of Frigate Bay (North and South, on opposite coasts of the peninsula) offer the standard watersports and beach-bar shacks; to get a stretch of sand to yourself, take a cab further down the mountainous peninsula (the driver will know where to go), where cliffs create hidden pockets of beach reachable only by unmarked dirt roads or boat.

Where to dive: Deserted White House Bay has wrecks (a sunken tugboat and a recently discovered 18^th-century British troop ship) shallow enough for snorkeling and nearby reefs inhabited by turtles, stingrays and octopus ($10 a day for snorkel rental; $80 for an offshore SCUBA dive with all equipment with Pro Divers, Inc.).

Where to drink: At the end of the road, Cockleshell Beach has a great view of the island of Nevis across the water as well as the island’s best bar to enjoy it: the newly rebuilt Reggae Beach Bar, which offers great chicken roti and flying fish sandwiches, local drinks from St. Kitts-brewed Carib beer to “Ting with a sting” (Ting grapefruit soda with CSR, the local rum-like sugarcane liquor), and a built-in beer-mooching drinking buddy in the form of a 600-pound pig named Wilbur.

 

 

The Northern Jungle:

Where to stay: Of several upscale sugar-plantation-turned-inns, the most naturally elegant is Ottley’s Plantation, with 24 rooms and six villas with private plunge pools overlooking the ocean, a 66-foot pool built into the ruins of the 17th-century sugar refinery building, and 35 acres of surrounding rainforest. Ask manager Marty Lowell to take you on a twilight hike to watch extended families of green vervet monkeys (brought by 18th-century French settlers in a botched attempt to kill rats) scamper home through the canopy after pillaging his mango orchard ($254-$778).

Where to eat: Ottley’s restaurant, the Royal Palm, is the most elegant on the island (known particularly for its Sunday brunch). For a more casual dinner head to Sprat Net in Old Road Town for the freshest seafood in the Caribbean: Here the owners are also the fishermen, who heap their day’s catch on a table for you to pick out what you want (don’t pass up the lobster), then grill it and serve on picnic tables overlooking the water (869-466-7535).

Where to hike: That towering peak is 3,792-foot volcano Mt. Misery (official tourist guides claim the mountain was renamed Mt. Liamuiga, Carib for “fertile island,” but none of the locals got that memo and laugh if you call it that), centerpiece of the Eastern Caribbean’s newest and largest wilderness area. Don’t try hiking to the kilometer-wide crater without a guide like Greg’s Safaris ($90 for the 8-hour hike) to help you navigate the plethora of unmarked trails. Feeling a little less adventurous? Stop for a scramble on the hardened lava at Black Rocks (shown above). Then explore the island’s violent history at the dramatic British fortress on Brimstone Hill, captured by the French after a lengthy battle in 1782 (and then handed back in the Treaty of Paris the next year), or nearby Bloody Point, where the French and Brits set aside their differences to destroy the island’s native Caribs in 1626. For a spot few tourists know exists, pull off the road by the bridge in Bloody Point and scramble upstream on a muddy trail that crisscrosses the creek; after 15 minutes you’ll be in a narrow canyon that reaches heights of 80 feet, clothing the creekbed in a spooky darkness. Look up — the canyon walls here are covered with dozens of pre-Columbian petroglyphs, some outlined in red paint by locals. On this spot as many as 2,000 Caribs were cornered and massacred by the colonists, according to legend making the creek run red with their blood for three full days.