A Tale of Two Chemists: Life on Nevis Wed 10th

Life on Nevis Wed 10^th – Thu 11^th January 2018

Over the last couple of days we have been lucky enough to get a quick look into life on Nevis. As with many of the Caribbean Islands, slavery and sugar plantations were a major part of the development of Nevis and to this day the society appears to be a quite stratified. Yesterday, we visited a former plantation called Golden Rock, located in the “Gingerland” area of the island, on the south slopes of the mountain, on the edge of the rain forest, with fertile soils and cool breezes. Golden Rock plantation, that has been renovated, is now a top end hotel with astonishingly beautiful grounds. You can stay there for $300 a night or just stop by for a meal. It is also the start of a hiking trail through the rain forest up to the “source”, the origin of the water that historically powered the water mill. We walked up part of the trail and saw some homes that were the complete opposite end of the socio-economic spectrum. These were rustic shacks with corrugated iron roofs, which appeared to belong to subsistence farmers. Pigs, goats and chickens seemed to be everywhere. Some of the pigs were fenced in, although we saw plenty of young ones running free, and the goats and chickens are certainly free range. We saw a few monkeys, which we believe are feral green vervet monkeys, introduced from Africa as pets during the time of the plantations. After our walk we had a delicious lunch at the hotel, seated outside at a table in front of a beautiful stone building with the landscaped rainforest all around. Our journeys to and from Golden Rock on the local bus were also highly entertaining. In my experience, bus services usually follow a set route and timetable – not so in Nevis. There’s only one main road round the island and so you hop on a bus in the general direction you need to go. If you tell the driver where you are heading they will actually turn off the main road and drop you at the doorstep. Our ride out started in Charlestown, The driver called us over to the van and we got on board, then we sat there, perhaps waiting for other customers for maybe ten minutes. But when we got going we didn’t hang around – we must have been doing 60 mph on a road with a 20 mph speed limit. Nobody else joined us the driver drove us right to the door. For our journey back we walked to the main road and flagged down a bus (minivan) within a couple of minutes. We then stopped everywhere to pick up and drop off all sorts of different people – school kids in uniform, mothers with babies, young people, old people, but with one thing in common – they were all super friendly and courteous to each other and to us.

Today we took a bus out to the botanical gardens – also in the “Gingerlands” area. But on this trip we went a completely different route through minor back streets, because it seemed that this was where people needed to go. A woman on the bus started singing nursery rhymes for some reason. At least one other passenger joined in. No one seemed to object or be surprised for that matter. Once again the driver took us right to the door. This later caused us a bit of a problem because when we came to leave the gardens, we started walking in the direction we thought was the main road. After a few minutes we flagged down a passing car to check and the driver, Evelyn, told us we were going in completely the wrong direction and offered to give us a lift into town! The botanical gardens is actually a 6 acre site with a beautiful two story building at its center which is modeled after a traditional plantation home. The gardens are lovely and there is a restaurant on the second floor that serves excellent Thai lunches!

Charlestown itself is the only town on the island and has a lot of character, with colorful buildings and lots of small shops. As we wandered around we were again struck by how cheerful and friendly everybody was.