Woke up and had instant coffee on our balcony to toast our 30th anniversary. Gerry posted a picture on Facebook and we spent the day checking to see the congratulatory messages of our friends. We had breakfast in the hotel (comes with the room), then gathered our things and set off (several times) to walk to the beach. The walk is along the access road to the hotel and then the “main” road of Nevis (which goes all the way around the island). It took us about 45 minutes, walking at a normal pace to reach the beach – the same place we came in on our water taxi. We didn’t see much wildlife along the way, but we did stop to look at the ruins of Cottle Church, a plantation church, built by the owner for his family and slaves. According to the sign it was the first place on the island where any and all could worship regardless of color.
We were walking through what to us looked like a dry tropical forest – lots of spiny plants and cacti mixed in with tamarind and other seed pod trees. Along the main road, we got occasional glimpses of island style houses, colorful with lots of white details.
Oualie Beach was nice (my way of saying that it was perfectly adequate as a beach, but nowhere near as nice as even the beach in Condado). The sand was a mix of black and white sand. It had almost no shells, but it did have a lot of reeds washing up on the shore. The Oualie Beach Hotel is right along the beach. With typical-looking island cottages strung along the edge of the water, it might be a place to stay on another trip.
We sat under an umbrella, Gerry reading, I was trying to relax. Finally I got up and went for a walk along the beach. I didn’t take my camera, but would wish I had. Mostly I looked at things in the sand, but my sixth sense told me to stop and look ahead of me at one point and when I did there was a beautiful white heron-like bird right in front of me. Beautiful because his legs and beak were light green! I also found part of a dead crab with the most brilliant blue claws; a shell with coral growing on it that looked like a red goo, complete with vejigante horn; and another shell, perfectly smooth and an unnatural shade of bright yellow.
At the end of the beach were two pelicans fishing. That was fun to watch as I could see ripples in the water from the fish. The birds could fish without rising much more than four feet off the water. It was a continuous fly, scoop, gooble.
The brown pelican is the national bird of St. Kitts & Nevis.
We had lunch on the beach (the weather was not very good for sunning) at the Oualie Beach Hotel Restaurant. We had a good lunch of fish (Gerry) and curried vegetables (me). After lunch, we walked the beach a little more (the sun was now out) and called for our pickup about 3:30.
Gerry had a massage in the room, compliments of our hosts, for our anniversary and I nodded off on our balcony. We were trying to arrange a hike for Tuesday, and naturally the phone rang twice while we were trying to relax. Some things don’t change no matter where you are.
Dinner was a disappointment. The food was good and the service fine, but we were seated in a part of the dining area that I could hardly wish on my worst enemy – Bubble gum pink and white decoration lit by way too many fluorescent lights. It was so awful I could hardly enjoy my food. In fact, that is the only thing I remember about that dinner. (You need to know that the other part of the dining room is covered by a dark wood roof and has a gol tiled floor. The lighting is from sconces on the walls, softened by vases of flowers beneath them. It is obviously an entirely different feeling!)
During the night we were awakened by a big storm that sounded like a hurricane!
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