Arrived back this weekend from St Kitts, still recovering as my internal clock is five hours behind (sleep until noon, bedtime at 3am) and still doing laundry etc. I haven't downloaded my photos yet. Overall the tour turned out to be a great first-time visit to the Caribbean, with tours around both islands and the opportunity to meet the locals. For me personally, it was far too hot: 31C and very muggy almost all the time, perhaps dropping a few degrees before sunrise or after sunset, and the odd day where it was a little less muggy. Muggy like the bathroom after you've had a long hot shower, from first thing in the morning until last thing at night.It meant that I couldn't get out and walk around to explore during the middle of the day as I normally would like to, because the heat and humidity just wiped me out - instead after lunch I sheltered in my air-conditioned hotel room with a lovely sea view, read, took naps etc. for a few hours. And I struggled with the daytime activities that took us out in the heat, I have to stay out of the sun so was bathing in factor 50 suncream and hugging the shady spots. As a result of minimal exercise (apart from sea bathing which was lovely, like bathwater temperatures) and too many frozen sugary smoothies (trying to stay cool), I have put on five pounds which isn't good, lol. Apparently in high season (December, January time) it is a more reasonable 24-25C but the sea is still warm enough to swim in, so that would be better but of course more crowded/expensive than visiting at the end of the season as we were doing. It was a shock to arrive at my home train station and actually feel cold for the first time in two weeks. There were some beautiful spots on St Kitts but in the main it was an arid, somewhat unkempt landscape. I preferred Nevis which was more green and lush, and the villages we drove through seemed better kept, perhaps it has a higher standard of living, I don't know. I enjoyed some lovely seafood: big juicy shrimps, mahi mahi fish steaks, huge slabs of grilled salmon, and some nice sushi. The wildlife was amazing and everywhere: white egrets, brown pelicans, green vervet monkeys all over, little ferret-like brown mongooses scurrying around, some sort of heron bird, the big frigate birds up in the sky, buterflies. And the tropical flowers were so beautiful: hibiscus, alamanders, bougainvillea, loads of others I don't know the names of, the Flamboyant trees with their crowns of fiery blossoms, an orchid tree where the blossoms all look like orchids. We went to the botanical gardens on Nevis which were so colourful and exotic. Lots of words that I know from the supermarket but had no idea how or where they actually grew: mango trees, almond trees, tamarind trees, cashew trees, frangipani, breadfruit, pineapples etc. Coconut palms I actually knew about, and we tried coconut water fresh from the nut plus the inner soft white flesh that the locals called 'jelly' - presumably it goes hard later on in the lifecycle. I had brought some swim goggles so could look under the waves at the beach to see colourful aquarium-like fish just swimming around.
I didn't buy a lot because the shops I had access to were mainly either supermarkets or tourist tat. I brought home a couple of t-shirts as gifts, some mini-pots of island jams ditto, and a couple of bags of assorted batik scraps from the island's Carabelle Batik factory. Not sure what I'll make with them but they look pretty in the bag. We were able to view some of Carabelle's primitive opensided workspaces where they boil batiks and dye pots in iron cauldrons over fires, I wondered if they have additional workshops elsewhere on the premises or if they outsource the manufacturing of their colourful bags, clothing items, accessories and of course yardage. The aesthetic is vibrant Caribbean colourways with large-scale wax stamps of flowers, birds, marine motifs, foliage etc. Yardage was around USD$28 per yard. I found a couple of hand-painted fridge magnets fashioned from palm tree bark for my fridge magnet collection.
It's so nice to be home again, out of the heat (the UK hot spell that I left in has gone away again), in my own bed in a strangely silent bedroom with no aircon running, and the garden rampant with roses blooming. Also an unfortunate amount of weeds and deadheading waiting to be dealt with.
I had some happy mail: my pre-order of the beautiful Tilda Somethng Blue fabrics was waiting when I got back. I will need to find a good project to show off the lovely soft blues
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