The Treasury Building, or Old Custom House, sits right on the waterfront and is now used as one of the entrances to the island from ships docked at the port.
We left soon after for our island tour. St. Kitts was founded by both the French and the British in 1623. After see-sawing back and forth between the (then) two world powers, the island became a British colony in 1727. It became independent from Britain and a member of the British Commonwealth in 1983.
In the past, much of the arable land on St. Kitts was turned into sugar cane fields to support local industries such as rum distillation and agriculture. Now, however, the sugar cane fields have been abandoned and the island depends on tourism to sustain itself. Local unemployment is around 18%; the current world-wide recession has decreased tourism here, as in all of the other islands we visited.
Our first stop, after a drive through the capital, Basseterre, and some rural areas that looked economicaly depressed,
was Fort Brimstone, a UNESCO World Heritage site. The fort was built by the French on a volcanic extrusion with a commanding view of the island and the sea.
After many attempts, the British finally took the fort and the island in 1727.
Our next stop was Romney Manor, an old county house whose surrounding lands became a botanical garden.
A batik factory was also developed near the site, and we toured this next.
The batik dying process was demonstrated and the show room had many items of clothing and decoration for sale.
An interesting sideline to St. Kitts is that the tropical forests there are overrun by monkeys. The first monkeys arrived by accident; several crates of the animals were being transshipped from somewhere else to somewhere else when a crate was dropped, broken, and several monkeys escaped. Having no natural enemies on the island, their population exploded. There are now 40,000 humans on St. Kitts and over 70,000 (estimated) monkeys.
Our tour over, we went back to the Equinox and another pleasurable evening of great food and entertainment, while we cruised to our last island stop, St. Thomas.
No comments:
Post a Comment