The threatened charm of St Kitts
As big bucks tourism finally arrives in St Kitts, Minty clinch celebrates the last sigh of its end-of-Empire charm
Friday night is locals night at Mr X's Shiggidy Shack, the heart of the beach strip on St Kitts. Who is Mr X? No one seems to know or care.
At dusk, Kittitians and expats gather to eat red snapper and raise a few glasses of Planter's punch or Carib beer to the end of the working week. After 20 years of warm sand between his toes, Peter, the Honorary Consul, has earned his loyalty card. His acolytes include Dave, the boat builder, and Harvey, the man with the catamaran.
My hosts, Sebastian and Daisy Mottram, are relative newcomers but already they are part of his crowd. As always in remote places, conviviality rules.
It may not stay like this for long. St Kitts took its place in the cut-throat world of Caribbean development when British Airways started its weekly direct service via Antigua in January. While Nevis, its sister island and partner in the governing Federation, closed its sugar-processing plant half a century ago, St Kitts clung to the traditional pot of gold until 2005. In the Caribbean, serious tourism begins when sugar ends, so this time-warped island has a lot of catching-up to do.
Outsiders might wish it wouldn't bother, since its rump-of-Empire red-phonebox charm is increasingly endangered. Every morning the Cane Train, proudly self-styled “the slowest in the world”, clunks up the narrow-gauge track - rails made in Sheffield - on a two-hour jaunt that covers 18 miles. Our guide announces passing attractions: a landfill site, an asphalt plant, derelict cane fields stretching up towards Mount Liamuiga's dramatic crater, and empty Atlantic beaches where waves crash on to black volcanic rocks. An engagingly amateur gospel trio belts out sugary songs. As the clock strikes 8, a waitress offers piña colada or rum cocktails. The passengers from the Queen Mary 2 accept with pleasure.
It was easy to agree with our guide's opinion that “When God made St Kitts, he was smiling” but, because charming plantation inns with ragged croquet lawns and subsistence agriculture are not enough to feed 38,000 people, rapid change is inevitable. One of its triggers is Port Zante, a dock for huge cruise ships that release up to 8,000 daytrippers into a 25-acre shopping facility on land recently reclaimed from the sea. These visitors are the lifeblood of a growing number of attractions, from the brooding Brimstone Hill Fortress, built by the British as a guard against French regional aggression in the 18th century, to a new 21st-century canopy walk and zip-line in the rainforest.
As far as the economy is concerned, quality resorts are the building blocks for the future. “Our aim is to balance our nature and heritage with providing employment for our people,” said the Honourable “Ricky” Skerritt, Minister of State for Tourism, Sport and Culture for the past four years. “We want to be high-end, with a small number of projects to minimise the impact on the environment.”
The most dramatic of these is Christophe Harbour, a 2,500-acre $300 million site that occupies much of the southeast peninsula opposite Nevis. The development's focus is a salt lake surrounded by scrub-covered hills with beaches facing the Atlantic and the Caribbean. Development here over the next three years will include a Mandarin Oriental hotel, a golf course, a marina that can handle superyachts, a mall and up to 2,000 homes.
Silver Reef, a more affordable British development five minutes' walk from the beach strip, caters for those who prefer island values to gilded isolation. Four villas and 54 apartments overlook Frigate Bay and the Royal St Kitts Golf Course and will be ready for occupation in mid-2009.
Getting there
British Airways Holidays (0844 4930758, www.ba.com/holidays) offers seven nights' room only at the four-star Ottley's Plantation Inn, from £1,689pp with BA flights from Gatwick and transfers. Details: Silver Reef (020-7384 7488, www.silverreefstkitts.com).
Contact us | Terms and Conditions | Privacy Policy | Site Map | FAQ | Syndication | Advertising
© Times Newspapers Ltd 2010 Registered in England No. 894646 Registered office: 1 Virginia Street, London, E98 1XY