November 2 - Basseterre, St. Kitts and Nevis

The name St. Kitts comes from St. Christopher.  The sister island is Nevis, where Alexander Hamilton was born.  Our tour was a drive through downtown and a bit of the area before going to the Bond House which was the big house owned by a sugar cane plantation baron.  It was high on a hill with lovely gardens.  At the heyday there were 67 sugar cane plantations here, but the industry finally closed down in 2003 when the cheaper alternatives like beet sugar in Europe made it unsustainable. Now tourism is the main industry, like most every island here.  There is still a bit of production of small engines and the like.  The population of both islands is around 55,000.  Again we saw a KFC and Subway, but there is no McDonalds.  Wonder why they aren't in the Caribbean.  There are 2 medical universities which follow the US curriculum and a large veterinary medicine school.  The VAT is 17% and payroll tax is 10%, but again no other income tax.  The downtown doesn't have a lot going for it, but the outlying areas are pretty.  You can buy citizenship for an "approved" real estate purchase of $450,000 or a charitable donation of $250,000.  Like all the islands around, water is precious so they have a desalination plant to supplement the rainfall.  There is one in Guadaloupe also.  While we were wandering downtown there was some sort of parade headed by a marching band.  Unfortunately this slow going group was preceded by a police car with the siren going.  We elected to hot foot it away so as not to go deaf, so we don't know what it was all about.

Since New York, we've seen other ships at only one port, Hamilton, Bermuda which had a P&O and a Royal Caribbean.  Today there was a Princess and Carnival.

We returned to Manfredi's, the Italian specialty restaurant for dinner a deux, then back to the cabin.