The island-nation of St. Kitts and Nevis was a revelation. There are hardly any tourists, at least not in mid-July. The people are wonderful, and the scenery is resplendent. Added to this is the fact that really there is only one hotel, the St. Kitts Marriott Royal Beach Resort. The 380-or-so-room hotel sits on North Frigate Bay, the bony part of an island that is shaped like a chicken drumstick—although I thought I’d be creative and also suggest that it looks like an upside-down pregnant seahorse.

The other hotels on the island run to small plantation-style retreats and a number of non-chain properties. Nevis, which I’ll talk about more later, has the celebrated Four Seasons Resort, as well as the gorgeous Montpelier Plantation.
I climbed St. Kitts’ highest spot, Mount Liamuiga, a volcano that has lain dormant for 1,800 years. Liamuiga means “fertile land” in the extinct language of Kalinago, and the name replaced Mount Misery. It is steep— one path climbs over rocks and roots and even through a mini-ravine.

Green vervet monkeys can be spotted (introduced by the French in the 17th century), and if you’re as lucky as I was, you’ll glimpse the rare, skulking Bridled quail-dove. I spotted the bird in a side ditch off the path a quarter of the way back down from the volcano’s peak and got within 10 feet of it. Once spotted, though, the bird just sat there.

The path up ends at a small peak of boulders that, once climbed, gives a great view of the volcano’s crater lake, which I also saw as my plane neared the island’s airport. The climb was steep, and as I ate my picnic lunch, an opportunistic mongoose (another introduced pest) ate discarded scraps. These critters are everywhere, and most people know the story of how they were introduced to many colonised islands essentially to take care of the burgeoning problem of rat  infestation— another animal introduced to the area. 

That plan was a dismal failure, as rats are nocturnal, while mongoose are diurnal, but both species liberally eat birds’ eggs, and the birds themselves if given half a chance. This misguided adventure has seen hideous ramifications similar to the fauna of the Hawaiian Islands .

The Liamuiga hike is an all-day jaunt, but it is certainly worth the toil. The Dutch island of Sint-Eustatius (a.k.a. Statia) can be seen, as can the French-Dutch island of Saint Martin/Sint-Maarten on very clear days.

While the Liamuiga area is lush, receiving most of the island’s rain, the southeastern peninsula, which starts at the southern end of North Frigate Bay, is drier. I ran there one afternoon, and the small road is steep, although rewarding. The road loops around at several spots, and lonely beaches can be reached.

The view of Canoe Bay was especially beautiful— a rich, verdant, tiny bright green valley. It really looked like something that travelers might attach the proper noun “Eden” to. Three small mountains dot this peninsula that goes to Great Salt Pond and Majors Bay, where a ferry departs across the two-mile Narrows to Nevis.

Ferries pass the small town of Basseterre, St. Kitts’ capital, in a blink. Several remote beach bars are perfect places to spend a morning, such as the Reggae Beach Bar on Mosquito Bay (not as ominous as it sounds) and the Shipwreck Beach Bar and Grill on a particularly pleasant stretch of South Friars Bay.

The sister island of Nevis became a minor obsession for me. I had run along the peninsula essentially to hop on the 20-minute ferry (the ones from Basseterre take 45 minutes), but the eight-kilometer-long road was steeper than I imagined, and I did not have sufficient time. On other days, the ferry times were not convenient, so the nearest I got was a catamaran ride on Leeward Islands Charters that sailed past a couple of wrecked ships and the end of the peninsula, which was within sight of the tiny Booby Island (named after a genus of bird) and within 200 feet of Nevis—but not to Nevis. Another time perhaps!

Probably the most interesting historical site on St. Kitts is Brimstone Hill Fortress National Park, which sits in Liamuiga’s shadow. It is a wonderful spot, large enough that you can lose yourself there and not see other people but small enough that you're not trooping for miles and miles to see every corner. The overgrown paths are not immediately noticeable and don’t allow for retracing your steps on the relatively steep hills. The top of the fortress gives a great view, with some 17th-Century graffiti and the island’s cricket ground in sight.

The British built the fortress (or at least its slaves did), but the French ruled it, too. Both nations, as well as the  Spanish, fought over these islands and only announced peace when together they decided to kill off the indigenous inhabitants. 

My driver, Scotty, claimed he was the St. Kitts player closest to ever becoming a Test match cricketer for the West Indies. Test match cricket, the longest form of the sport, is played between national representative teams made up of each nation’s best players. Another guide, Thenford Grey, told me that the only player from St. Kitts to become a test match cricketer was Joey Benjamin, who actually played for—gasp—the England team and only once for the West Indies. Painful also is the fact that Nevis has produced two or three test match cricketers. As many tourists to St. Kitts are Americans, this painful history does not even need to be mentioned.