Tomorrow we are boarding our cruise this is the Itinerary so you know where we are and when:
St Kitts 27th Boarding
Antigua 28th
Nevis 29th
St Maarten 30th
St Barths 31st
Anguilla 1st
St Maarten 2nd Disembark and fly home
Today we went to Brimstone Hill Fortress with some Aussies who are also staying here at the Gateway. We caught a taxi to town and did a bit of shopping while they checked their mail at an Internet café. For the trip to Brimstone we caught a local minibus taxi like we have back home, complete with the stupidly large speakers and demented driver! We raced along the coast road at breakneck speed dodging goats, dogs, cars and even tractors. When we were dropped off we realised that Brimstone hill was a rather large hill, and we were at the bottom! We started up the hill with the positive words from one of our Aussie companions that he had read in his travel guides that it was a 30 mins walk up the hill, thankfully we did not have to find out if this was true because 2 mins up the hill a passing car offered us a lift, an American lady on her way to have a look at the fort.
Brimstone Fortress was built in the late 1600’s and is a very impressive display of period military design and architecture, a truly imposing military complex. The hill was first used by the English in 1690 when they dragged cannons up the hill to fire down on the French who had just recently overrun the English compound of Fort Charles, their effort was successful and they realised the potential that Brimstone hill had for more permanent fortification. Brimstone Fortress was designed by the best British Amy engineers and built with slave labour from Africa. Spread over 30 acres and multiple levels the fortress is huge, surrounded by triangular bastions, bristling with canons, magazine stores, Ordinance store, Engineers quarters, parade ground, soldiers barracks, quarters for warrant officers, Artillery officers and Infantry officers, a drainage system that joined all the gutters to a reservoir in case if a siege and even a cemetery. To top it off at the highest point there is an armoured citadel of impressive dimensions, complete with a drawbridge for a last stand should the rest of the fortress fall! Needless to say Brimstone Fortress was never taken! This place makes the Castle of Good Hope look tiny!
After exploring for some time we started to walk back down the hill, we were luckily enough to spot a short cut about ¼ of the way down which lead to past the lime kiln (used for making the cement during construction) and back on to the road. We waited for a bit before a minibus taxi arrived to take us back to town at the maximum warp speed that seems to be the norm!
We will post some pice tomorrow.
Cheers!
After posting the last story we went on the hunt for food and caught a taxi down to Frigate Bay beach and the Shiggidy Shack. There was not a lot going on, kind of like the rest of the town, but we found a table and ordered food, rich went for a burger and I ordered ribs. There was a chilled vibe while we waited, we have come to realize that for the locals there is absolutely no reason for haste, ever, so when food is ordered it is best to sit back and enjoy the rum. Which is exactly what we did, along with the live Caribbean music, light breeze, coconut trees, moonlight, and softy breaking waves, magic!
Both our meals were very good, and the rum was as we have come to expect. After the meal we took a walk down the beach past all the other bars/restaurants and stopped at Ziggys, there was not a lot going on there and there we too many locals so we walked back to the Shiggidy Shack and sat at the bar drinking rum and talking general crap and about the good times we have had so far.
The bar never really got busy, almost all the cricket fans and students from the universities have gone back to whichever country they came from. We left for home at about 23:00.We hitched a ride in the back of a truck and once we arrived we strolled around taking videos and pictures of various points of interest. Town was dead, I have never seen it so deserted, most of the good people were in church, presumably some were hangover and in bed some were actually in town, still pissed! This was at about 10am! Yes they were Australian.
We strolled around and only found one shop that was open, all the others we wanted to go to were closed so we decided to come back on Monday and caught a taxi back to the hotel.
Tomorrow we are going to Brimstone Hill Fortress and several people have recommended we go to the Sprat Net for some local seafood so we will do that for lunch and finish our shopping in the afternoon.
Tuesday we are getting on our cruise for the last leg of our trip and I will post the itinerary on a separate post so it is easy to look up when you want to know where we are.
I’m not sure what there will be on the ship in the way of Internet, hopefully there will be something and a wireless network would be first prize!
Cheers!
(James here, Rich is tired of typing so I’m going to finish up)
Game Day!
Saturday we woke up a bit rough around the edges trying to shed the last bit of Irie Lime from our broken bodies, and too much dismay we had no breakfast in the house! We packed up or supporters tools and went to get a taxi, outside the gate we found some other residents of gateway and we all decided to share a taxi to town. Arriving in town we had hoped to get some breakfast but were not dropped near any of the normal shops so we went straight to the stadium. Arriving at the grass we found way to many Aussies for our liking and after scanning the crowds we found some other South Africans to sit with. You all watched the game so you know how it went, the men in yellow scored a very respectable total and we failed to match it. We had an excellent start to the game but in my opinion it was as a result of a stupid run out and an injured opening batsman, that we failed to win. Oh and Kallis thought he was playing a Test Match by comparison to the other guys.
Not to worry we will meet again and I’m sure we will prevail!
We drank water and Gatorade (Energade) all day, not on single alcoholic drink! We were sweltering in the heat, I don’t know how hot it was but we were in direct sun ALL DAY, the queue to the bar was ridiculous, and through out the day at various times they ran out of water, beer, rum, Gatorade, basically everything they were stocking they ran out of and had to wait before more stock arrived from other bars in the stadium. As you can imagine this upset people after waiting to get to the front of the queue only to find out the drink they wanted had just run out! If you are ever in the Caribbean don’t ever expect a local to wait his turn in the queue, they push till they get to the front or just shout from the back to the bar lady “Sweetheart! Hey! Sweetheart! Get me a Carib! (beer)” I wont even mention the food queue, all I will say is that we did not bother with it and went to buy food at another counter outside of the Party Stand. But aside from the lack of service it was a good day at the cricket but it would have been even better if we could have rubbed a win in the Aussie fans faces!
When the game ended we decided to go back to the hotel and shower before heading out to the bar and drowning our sorrows! We were covered in a slimy layer of sweat, sun cream and dust, so a shower was needed!
We decided to go the Holland House (just for a change!) it was disappointingly deserted but we bumped into Brian (another South African we knew) so we got a taxi down to Frigate Bay beach to see if any of the beach bars were busier. We started at the Shiggidy Shack with a rum and coke, it was still mostly full of dinners so we walked down the beach and settled at Ziggys Bar, honestly we really wanted to have power for a decent night out but the rums were going down with barbs!
It slowly started to get busier but we were not feeling it and most of the beach bars had too many loud drunk Aussies in them, pity, because loud drunk South Africans would have been better! We decided to call it a night at about 23:00.
We got to town a little late on Thursday morning, and there was a queue at the Scotiabank, so we moved to First Caribbean Bank and got our cash – just in time to board the boat with about 47 other people – which was called the “IRIE LIME” a 70ft sailing catamaran with a yellow hull and white topside. The crew introduced themselves, and said that we were heading out shortly and they had lotsa rum, lotsa food and lotsa music for a huge party! Just as we left the docks, they handed out some drinks. We started with beer since we were going snorkelling in a little while. The people on the boat were mostly in St Kitts for the cricket, with a few Americans who were staying at the Marriot just taking a break.
The snorkelling was awesome. We all jumped into the warm crystal clear water in a small cove about 45minutes from the harbour. The water was around 20ft deep. There were a lot of fish. I saw a crayfish between some of the rocks as well as an octopus-type-of thing that moved across the rocks and changed colours while a watched it for a bit.
After the dip in the ocean, we had some lunch. For a change - it was rice, fish and chicken! And it was really good. James went for seconds, so the rest of us followed since there was lots of it.
The boat pulled up onto the beach and a ladder was lowered from between the bow trampolines so we could walk down onto the beach, the bar moved with us to the beach – this was a good, or perhaps a bad thing! Cos it was HOT, and the rum just kept flowing. Some of the people from the boat played some cricket. James and myself walked down the beach to check out the resort. They had an awesome rimflow pool right on the beach. So we moved around the side of the hotel and made it seem like we were guests, so we put our stuff down next to a lounger and dived in. This probably didn’t fool anyone since we were pretty much on our way already. We swam for a bit, and at the wall that had the rimflow bit, there was a drain or mini pool type of thing just below it. So I made the suggestion – lets lie on the wall and roll into the gutter. This wasn’t such a bright idea, since I whacked the underneath of my foot, and James took a small gash above his ankle. Again – this probably didn’t help our chirade of trying to look like we were staying at the resort. We then moved away, got more rum punch from the Ire Lime crew member manning the cooler boxes and joined the rest of the people from the boat in the water “fielding” for the ongoing game of beach cricket.
Further down the beach we spied a floating trampoline, so we took a walk and swam out to that and had a few dives into the water – that rocked! But it was short lived since the boat was leaving in the next two minutes. We swam for the beach, and then did a baywatch run as to not be left behind! Of course with a detour to have a final bomb drop in the larny rim flow pool.
Back on the boat – more rum, and more music etc. James sat with the captain at the helm. I climbed up there a little after that. The view was good, and the captain was cool. We cant remember his name, probably cos they kept serving us more rum!
Getting back to the dock, they poured us off the boat, and we needed more food! This was around 4:30/5pm, and we went to Subway to get food, and were planning on going to the Dutch pub again for a huge party after a power nap. We sort of didn’t make it, since we got back to Gateway at about 6, and passed out completely finished! We certainly got our moneys worth on the IRIE LIME!
We woke up on Thursday morning, to a bit of rain, and sort of took it slow, cos we saw on the TV that the game would be delayed. We left once the weather cleared, and started walking. We got a lift to the game with a local, who were also keen to see SA defeat Australia on Saturday. That was pretty cool – since we didn’t see any taxi’s and we figured we were running late. We got to the game, and parked off in the stand next to some aussies dudes. Again – they were in the little shorts rubbing sun cream on each other…. Makes one wonder. But – the game was a bit disappointing because Scotland posted a low score, and then Netherlands came in and beat them fairly quickly. Despite the early finish – we finished all of our drinks vouchers, and moved to the Holland House pub to celebrate with the rest of the Dutch fans. We stuck around for a little while, then got some grub from Subway again. Seems the best value. We headed home after that since we were pretty finished, and had to be up early for the boat ride at 9:30 the next day (And had to change some money to pay for it before hand).
