Tuesday 15 January, Nevis day 7: Road trip again, along west coast and to the Botanical Gardens.

On the road again, in another new hire car. We aim to visit the places which we missed last week and we start along the west coast.
Cliffdwellers is our first stop, brief one, as this is a private residences development with no public facilities. It is very nicely done and looks relatively new, the paint or wood on the buildings doesn’t show too much weathering yet. The gardens are well maintained too and we come across three locals which were watering and trimming the plants. In between the houses there is small swimming pool, and each house has direct access to it on a narrow path. But otherwise no way to circumnavigate around the edge of the pool. Very interesting set up. There was a sales office in one of the buildings and we were very curious to inquire on availability and prices, but it was closed.

Oualie Beach Resort (pronounces Wally Beach) is the next one along, in a very sheltered bay with lots of small motor boats on mooring buoys. And a dock where, as it happens, the infamous Ocean Pride boat is docked, the very boat which rammed Cloudy Bay and Buddy’s boat after the NYE party at Salt Plage. We walk over to them and ask how they got the windows broken, and their reply was “some boat run into us”. Really? Are you sure it was not the other way around? And when we challenge them with the opposite version of the events, their only justification is “it was very dark and this boat is light and difficult to maneuver”. Needless to say, they don’t admit they were driving drunk, and no apologies were presented from their side. And of course, with only 600HP on the transom to power it, it would surely be sluggish to maneuver! What a load of bull!
Back to the purpose of our visit, the resort itself is a more modest looking one compared to the others we’ve seen on Nevis, looked aged, with small huts along the beach. A good looking restaurant though, and the beach is very nice with golden sand and shady trees here and there overlooking the southern shore of St. Kitts.

We continue our tour looking for more former plantations or ruins, but we couldn’t find any on that area of the island.
So the next objective is the Prison Farm, up the hill on the north east side of Nevis. Why such an unusual objective? Because the lady working at the Tourism Authority mentioned it yesterday, saying there are only 15 inmates there and they are self sustainable, farming the land and growing animals. And they come to the villages to do community work, the guard accompanying them is never armed. “You would never see that on St.Kitts though…”, she finished her story with. So we imagined if there is a farm, maybe they sell some produce.
After driving on a dirt road up the hill for a couple of kilometers, we come across a sign “not for general public”, and being a prison at the other end we thought this time it would be smart to actually obey the instructions and make a u turn. Which we do, reluctantly.

Driving south we do come across some ruins, or better said an unfinished development based around some plantation ruins. A very weird one. A couple of large unfinished buildings, looking more like ski resort chalets than Caribbean type houses, with a windmill between them and a swimming pool full of green water. Maybe it was meant as a hotel. We walk around and even climb into the windmill. And we have a good laugh with some goats which were at the upper floor of one of the unfinished buildings. Quite a few of them in fact, and lots of small kids, like a big family taking residence there. They are so cute as they look down on us.
Then it starts raining, hard. We run to the car which was parked outside but we still get soaked.

Early afternoon by now so we head towards the Botanical Gardens where we plan to have lunch at the Oasis, a Thai restaurant. It was praised by others as having Thai chefs and serving very good authentic food.
Again, hardly anybody in the restaurant. And the dining experience is rather disappointing, neither the soup nor the noodles had the right taste or ingredients. Either the chefs are not actually Thai or I guess it is difficult to import all needed spices or the egg rice noodles into the islands. Verdict: we postpone such exotic dinning attempts till we are back on the continents.

Just as we ready to leave another downpour starts. Hm, after 4 days of hardly any rain it now looks like these clouds want to catch up on the missing rain fall. Doesn’t look like it will stop soon, so no point in waiting around. We walk to the car in the rain and head off towards Charleston, debating what should we do for the rest of the afternoon. This is cinema weather we would say, but with no cinema around, we console ourselves with the thought of returning to Cloudy Bay.

We find a fair quantity of water in the dinghy, so it must’ve rained hard on the Charlestown side too. And we have a very chilly dinghy ride back to Cloudy Bay, this rain has certainly cooled the air.
Tea is in order to warm ourselves up, and we resume the usual admin jobs on our computers for the rest of the rainy evening.