The introduction picture is actually from the island of Saba

View of St Maarten from the plane

View of St Kitts from the plane

On the way to Nevis

On the way south through the island in the eastern carribean this is our second stop. St Kitts and Nevis are two islands and also one of the smallest countries in the world with 55’000 inhabitants. It’s isolated, it’s hard to get anything from car parts to any kind of supplies. Eveeything is expensive. People are living here in another world. Most are friendly and all are very different mentality wise, a mentality I don’t know and don’t understand at all.

The garden of the lovely BNB in Conaree village, St Kitts

Dragging home our groceries. It’s not understandable to people here how you can walk if not because you are too poor to afford other means – which we obviously can’t be, beeing here!

The islands is empty and beautiful. There are monkeys, goats, sheep and wild donkeys running arround all over the place, especially in Nevis. If a car doesn’t drive anymore you just park it at the side of the road and the problem is solved. Same with houses, if not used anymore, they just fall apart in the middle of the towns, and no one cares.

In 2005 they finally stopped the highly indepting sugar production which lead to a high unimployment rate. I guess one can still feel that reality here. Salaries are bad and on the other hand everything else like for example electricity and food is very expensive. That’s why they often also lack the concept of providing a service. They let you wait at the counter because they are more interessted playing on their cellphone, and when they finally manage to attend to you they do so extremly slow and often with a totally pissed of altitude. You actually have to experience it to believe it.

The capital Basse-Terre manages to generate traffic jams throughout the day, with only that little amount of cars, it’s just another sign of hardly any existing management in place. I heard that there is not even a law against drunk driving.

Cruiseships stop here as well, and this tourism just destroys cute little places like this town with bruteforce, it’s like using a rocket launcher on an ant! Also an understandable reason, why they don’t like tourists too much. Arriving with up to four monstrous cruiseships a day, throwing arround with their money for a few hours, then leaving again. Cruiseship holidays is an advanced version of ‚all inclusive holidays‘, because you physically move from place to place, but the same fat people doing it and getting even fatter than they already are… It should not be allowed such a thing…

All in all it is very interessting place to be, back in time, feeling the isolation of a small island, with no backup by a big and wealthy ‚mother country‘ like many other islands around here, who belong to France, Netherland, UK or the US. Independence from the UK happend here only a few decades ago, amd I only start to realize that this ‚freedom‘ seems to be more of course than anything else for the people living here. Education is bad, many illiterate people, it’s hard here to develop any intellectual, emotional or creative sides within one self on this base. And like with all small, isolated places: Everyone knows everyone and as a foreigner you will always stay one! Also if you are black as the people are here (98%) our two (black) hosts (from the two places we stayed on each island) are from the US and UK, but they will never be able to fully integrate.