St. Kitts

January 9, 2018 The pier where our ship docked this morning may be one of the ugliest piers we have experienced in all of our travels. As we left the pier in our excursion transportation we were surrounded by containers either waiting to be loaded on a container ship or having already been off loaded. Our excursion vehicle was a small bus but without any windows, although it, fortunately, did have a roof. We were on our way with 10 other passengers to a Botanical Garden located on the Romney Estate, named after the British Earl of Romney. At one time this was one of the largest sugar cane plantations on St. Kitts. However, as the price of sugar went down over the years the sugar business in St. Kitts went into decline to the point that it is pretty much now nonexistent. The garden was not particular large but did feature many lovely bromileads, bougainvillea and even some poinsettia growing as a large shrub. The centerpiece of the garden was a huge 500 year old tree, fondly called "the tree" by the locals. The original house on the plantation now contains a studio and shop for the making of Batik. Batik is a process of dyeing cloth which is used for all manner of clothing as well as art work. The process starts with a whole piece of cloth on which an artist sketches the design for that particular piece. Then one of the workers puts wax over everything on the cloth that is not to be dyed. After drying the wax is removed and the whole process repeats in preparation for a different colored dye. This is done up to 5 times for different colored dyes. The resulting product is really quite beautiful. The next part of the tour was a walk through a tropical rain forest. When our guide started passing out walking sticks and suggested the walking stick was our new best friend on the walk, Lynda decided to stay on the bus. (Actually is was the sandals I was wearing - never thought about needing closed toe shoes but the locals near us told me I'd be crazy to try the walk with the shoes I had on. Lynda) It was a good decision on her part as the walk lasted an hour and a half and was quite rugged. The narrow path we followed was up and down fairly steep hills. It followed a stream most of the way. There were several brief rain showers during the walk but because of the canopy of the trees we did not get wet. We saw several very impressive ficus trees, one of which was at least 50 feet from the stream with a root that reached the stream. It was a gorgeous but exhausting walk. Our guides thoughtfully provided us with a fruit punch with a shot of rum at the end of the walk. (They included me in that! L.) The garden/rain forest was about a 25 minute drive from our ship, which took us by a university-level nurse training school and a veterinarian college. We also drove through several villages, most looking rather poor. We did have spectacular views of the ocean. Tomorrow it is on to St. Lucia.