St Kitts

 
We had a blast in St Kitts. Brad, Nicole, Mike and I decided to go scuba diving here and it was a great experience. We did two dives. The first was The River Taw Wreck, where we saw a cargo ship that sunk in 1981. The site is now one of the most popular places to dive in the Caribbean. I really enjoyed swimming through a passageway in the ship and seeing the amazing choral and other sea life that has grown on the ship.

This isn't us, just a picture I found of the dive online.

Another picture of the dive site.

The second site we dove was Sandy Point Reef. The reef was gorgeous. There was an abundance of brightly colored fish, coral, lobsters and more.

 Again, picture from the dive site, but ones I didn't take.

I did have a small issue on the second dive. I was the last of the group to jump into the water and as I was going down the line, my mask started leaking like crazy. I kept thinking that maybe my hair was stuck in the mask, or it just wasn't positioned correctly on my face but by the time I reached the bottom I realized that something was wrong. Water was seeping into my mask. I kept clearing it, but nothing helped. I panicked just a little because I was totally deprived of all my senses... smell, touch, taste, sound and now sight! I could see a little but it was through salt water, which wasn't pleasant. I just had to tell myself to keep breathing. Everything would be fine. Finally the dive instructor came over and he immediately recognized that I had grabbed the wrong mask. We quickly shot back up to the surface and he had the dive instructor on the boat throw me the right mask. I put it on and within minutes we were heading back to the bottom. It was quite an ordeal, especially because up top the wind was blowing like crazy and I was so worried about my mask that I forgot to inflate my buoyancy jacket (basically an inflatable life vest). I struggled to keep myself above water while attempting to put my mask on and trying not be blown away by the wind. Luckily I still had my mouth piece in to breath with so it wasn't a big deal if I was above the water or not. Needless to say, I was a little shaken up the rest of the dive but I was proud of myself for getting back down there. The rest of the dive went smoothly and the sea life was beautiful. After my struggle I figure I'll be even more prepared for next time. Diving truly is an amazing experience!

 Here's a picture of me and Nicole before our second dive. Take a look at that mask. Seriously, how did I not realize it wasn't my size??

After diving we had enough time to take a tour of the island, so we found a taxi driver (Andre - taxiandre_17@hotmail.com, he's great!) and saw St. Kitts.

It's a beautiful island with a complicated history, like all of the Caribbean islands. Andre explained to us that St. Kitts has been inhabited by several groups of people including Archaics and Igneris since 3000 BC. The warlike Caribs wiped out the original inhabitants taking over the island in 1300 AD. They were living on the island when Christopher Columbus discovered and claimed it for Spain in 1493. Following the discovery, the island was fought over mainly by the French and English. They only united briefly to massacre the Caribs, a and act of defense - they had secretly found out the Caribs were planning their own massacre of the Europeans. We drove by "bloody point" as they now call it, where the massacre happened.

What a sad history. Control went back and forth between France, Spain and England until 1967 when it became an Associated State of Britain. The three European nations used St. Kitts mostly to produce sugar cane. Thousands of African slaves were brought to the island to work the fields. They lived in extremely harsh conditions and many died in their labor. They were finally liberated in 1834 when slavery was abolished in Britain. There are no Caribs left on the island. The majority of the current population is of African decent. Most of the Caribbean islands have a similar history. There is no doubt the Caribbean is one of the most beautiful places in the world, but I think it is important to remember it wasn't always a tourist destination.

We thoroughly enjoyed our tour. Andre did a wonderful job explaining the history and showing us some of the most unique places. He took us to a converted plantation home now used to create batik (a multi-step process using wax and dye to create colorful pictures and patterns on fabric).

One of the last spots Andre took us to was a high point on the island where you can see the Pacific and the Caribbean seas meet.

So beautiful! It was a wonderful day. We were pretty warn out by the end, but we enjoyed every minute of it.