St. Kitts -West Indies, Caribbean

We had to take 3 flights from Aruba to get here, which sounds ridiculous because the Caribbean Islands are not that spread out. We first left Aruba after paying our $34.25 USD departure tax per person. Aruba is in the ABC islands of the Caribbean (Aruba, Bonaire, and Curacao) and we flew out with Insel Air. Our first flight was back to Curacao where we paid our paltry little transit fee of 2 US per person to transit through their little airport. Then our second flight was to St. Maarten where we were not there too long before we had to board a Liat Air flight to St. Kitts. Thank God the Liat plane was not as tiny as the experience of the 15 seater with Insel Air on the way to Aruba. The Liat Air flight was fine and we landed in St. Kitts. When you leave the airport and walk out the door you are confronted with quite beautiful views of St. Kitts because the airport is quite elevated and you see the ocean and mountains and it is quite green. We phoned to have our Avis shuttle to Basseterre the capital which is about a 7-minute ride. We picked up our car and we had to buy a St. Kitts temporary licence for 25 USD which is a huge money grab. Out of all of the countries that we visited on this world tour, this was the first. By the way, buying an International Driver’s Licence is completely bogus, don’t waste your money, Darren did not have to pull it out once. Even in Brunei, they did not question his Saskatchewan driver’s licence. We were then off to the Marriott St. Kitts Beach Club which is only a ten-minute drive from Basseterre.





Driving along the only road which is called the King’s highway, this circumvents the whole island which is only 16 miles wide and 32 miles long. The road is not what you would call a highway by normal standards but it is better than a goat path. My husband Mario Andretti still felt he could wiz around the curvy hilly roads like he had lived here his whole life. There are quite a few potholes to watch out for. We checked in for our 11-night stay here in St. Kitts and then left again to drive back to Basseterre to visit the local IGA grocery store. Holy Moly are the groceries ever expensive about 1/3 more for regular items and then if you want something imported which is most things then you are looking at putting most things back on the shelf for some other much wealthier person to purchase. Most boxes of cereal were around the 10-dollar range. Grocery shopping took quite a long time because you had to be very selective on what you were going to cook to make it cost-effective plus you have to divide by 2.7 for the exchange rate on the EC or Eastern Caribbean dollar. Needless to say, I still have not lost an ounce of weight on this island, I think I may have even gained weight so groceries really can’t be that bad then can they?





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