The Dickerson Pondit: February 2010

I am somewhere east of Puerto Rico and west of Casablanca. The island of Nevis is only a short boat ride from the southern point of St. Kitts and is a fairly round dot in the middle of the Caribbean. The center of the island is dominated by a dormant volcano that is over 3,200 feet high. I am staying at the rather comfortable Montpelier Plantation Inn on the low hills south of the volcano. This has been a dry February for Nevis. The cold air up in the United States is keeping warm tropical air trapped to the south. This posting is emanating from poolside – a rather inactive poolside where my fingers typing away seem to be the only human activity except for some occasional breathing by several other guests. Most of the guests are from the United Kingdom. Nevis/St. Kitts is still a Commonwealth country loyal to Queen Elizabeth (but I am not certain they know that this is Queen Elizabeth the second!).

Getting here from New York City last week was a bit of a challenge. Originally we were scheduled on an early morning flight Friday to San Juan and then an afternoon connecting flight to St. Kitts. It is very hard to find flights to Nevis although they do have a small airport. The weather predictions in New York led us to change our outbound San Juan flight to Thursday afternoon. That we did but our three and one-half hour flight took us over seven hours to complete. We spend at much time on the runway at JFK then we did in the friendly skies. We stayed in San Juan and caught our scheduled Friday flight to St. Kitts. The trip after deplaning is more of a logistical challenge. The airport is about ten minutes from the capital of St. Kitts where there is a twice a day ferry to Nevis but it is about thirty mountainous miles to the beach on the south end of St. Kitts where you can arrange for a water taxi to take you to a beach on Nevis. That was our choice. Michael, out cab driver met us outside customs at the airport. With hardly a word he took us over the winding coast road to a dirt path that led to a short dock in the middle of nowhere. In front of us was a dive boat moored at the pier. There were people on the beach enjoying the sunny weather. Looking out we could see Nevis just a short boat ride away. After dragging our five bags through the sand to the dock, we boarded the rather large dive boat. We were handed two Carib beers and were glad to be sitting down with Nevis in sight. We waited about twenty minutes and were into our second bottles of beer when four young day trippers joined us for the ride across the channel.

We docked in Nevis and paid the boat operator $80 and tipped the crew. Our prearranged cab driver was waiting for us as we disembarked. She was anything but quiet, a feisty Brit fro Yorkshire who has been on the island for eighteen years. The ride to our inn was about twenty minutes with each turn off the highway leading to roads of less and less attention. The final two miles were two parallel strips of concrete with a grassy path in the center. Mind you this was still considered a two way road and we did encounter a truck coming at us from the opposite direction. We made it to the hotel; then we settled into our gorgeous room and were able to make cocktail hour -- a Pernod for me and chardonnay for Barbara -- before moving out to the west terrace overlooking Charlestown for a scrumptious dinner.

I have added some pictures and will continue our vacation saga in another posting.

Here is Nevis from the southmost point of St. Kitts. Those are clouds and not fumes on the top of the volcano!

Living full time in Nevis is a real temptation. Life is soft and easy.

Nevis has been waitng for years for a visitor of distinction. Little do they know he is on his way.

This is a great shot of Barbara! Our taxi is visible in the distant. If there was a road to the beach, that would also be in the picture. We arrived on a goat path.