Hop Aboard the St. Kitt’s Scenic Railway with Us

For me, this cruising thing is part lifestyle and part vacation. This week I’m posting about one of the vacation aspects- taking a tour. It is very hot and humid in June here in St. Kitt’s, and we really feel it as soon as we step onto land to do something. Still, we don’t want to sit around on the boat all day every day. We want to get to know the island and its people. When we picked up Indigo Lady in January, I read about the St. Kitt’s Scenic Railway tour. We thought we might give it a try when we returned in June. They have air conditioned cars, perfect for a hot June day. When we ran into our friends on Seas the Moment last month, they told us they’d done the Scenic Railway tour and that it was great. That sealed it for us.

Our timing was fortunate. This is low season with far fewer cruise ships and land-based tourists, so they don’t run many train tours each week. There were exactly two dates for tours in the timeframe we’re here, on days when there was a cruise ship in port. We booked our tour for this past Wednesday. 

Remember, we’re on a boat, so we can’t just jump in a car and go where we want. It takes some planning and effort. We were anchored in White House Bay, ~5 nm south of the harbor at Basseterre. We got up at 6:45am Wednesday, turned on the coffee pot and hauled anchor. We had to slow down a bit as we approached the harbor so as not to interfere with the incoming cruise ship. We were anchored by a little after 8am, having eaten breakfast underway. We got ourselves ready and dinghied ashore. We paid our $5 USD dinghy parking fee at Porte Zante Marina, then went in search of a taxi. Given that there was a cruise ship in port, we found one quickly, and $20 USD got us to the Needsmust Train Station about 45 minutes early for the 10:00am tour. There was a lovely breeze and shade, and passed the time chatting a bit with the gentleman who sold us our tickets, and then with some of the people who would be our fellow travelers on this excursion. St. Kitt’s Scenic Railway, though privately owned, is a partnership between the government and private enterprise. The tour is a 30 mile loop done 1/3 by bus and 2/3 by train. 

We boarded the air conditioned bus at the Needsmust Train Station and headed north. Our driver pointed out various historic edifices along the way, including the two oldest Anglican Churches in the Western Hemisphere, and various sugar mill ruins. She described each of the tiny towns we passed through. She shared some of the history of the island as well. Just past the town of Sandy Point, we arrived at the portion of the train tracks from whence the next leg of our journey would commence. We bid our driver farewell and boarded the train.

We opted for the covered, open-air top deck, rather than the air-conditioned lower car. There was a lovely breeze up top, the roof kept the sun off us, and the views were unimpeded. We traveled at about 10mph along the 18 miles of track that took us from the NW corner of the island, around the north end, and along its east side to just north of Basseterre, ending back at Needsmust Station across from the village of Conaree. 

We were not short on scenic views or entertainment. The train part of the tour includes free rum drinks in various forms. It was a bit early for me, so I indulged in a virgin piña colada and then a soda. The tour guide was in the first car with her voice piped through a sound system to all cars. She was very entertaining and informative. At one point, two young men performed a traditional dance for us, moving from one car to the next. One convinced me to get up and dance with him. I was impressed by their ability to dance without falling over on a moving and swaying train! We passed through many a tiny village. It’s obvious that the train makes regular rounds, because every school we passed had children waving at us and shouting greetings. We waved back, of course. Many a local waved from their porch, yard or the road, and our tour guide greeted many by name.

The views were spectacular! This is a truly gorgeous island. We passed through fields and farmland, where current crops are grown and livestock grazed. Remnants of sugar cane sprouts up among other grasses and vegetation. Occasionally, branches of almond and other trees encroached upon the airspace of the passing train and we had to lean our heads forward to avoid getting hit. We traveled around the north side of Mt. Liamuiga, meaning “fertile land.” At just shy of 3800’, it is the highest point on St. Kitt’s and Nevis. It is an extinct volcano, with the last verified eruption about 1800 years ago. We were treated to views of St. Eustatius, a dozen miles off the NW point of St. Kitt’s. We gazed down the steep slope to the black sand beach of Dieppe Bay at the northernmost point of the island (sadly encroached upon by a gigantic mat of sargassum on this day). There were also signs of difficult, hard-lived lives. There are abandoned and crumbling buildings, run down homes due to poverty, cars and other abandoned or dumped items on slopes and alongside roads, slowly being swallowed by nature. The last part of the trip took us through the “industrial” end of the island, including the dump where both household and industrial garbage is burned. It is not a wealthy island, but the people are strong and proud of their beautiful homeland.

Both our bus driver and train tour guide shared history about the island. Like all the Caribbean islands we’ve visited thus far, the Europeans arrived, killed off the locals, started plantations and imported slaves to work them. As the European settler population on St. Kitt’s & Nevis expanded through the early 1600s, the native Caribs became enraged and plotted to drive them off the island. Unfortunately for the Caribs, the Europeans discovered the plot and massacred over 2000 of them, at what is now known as Bloody Point. Some of the surviving Caribs were enslaved and the rest relocated to Dominica. In general, the French and English duked it out for control of the pair of islands until Britain was granted control by treaty in 1713. St. Kitt’s & Nevis were granted their independence from Britain in 1983.

Sugar was the primary industry on the island, although there was a brief stint very early on with tobacco. The first sugar plantations went into production in 1643. Because of that industry, St. Kitt’s was once the wealthiest British possession. The abolition of slavery, the need to bring in migrant workers, and the introduction of the global sugar beet industry were a few of the contributing factors to a steady decline in the sugar cane industry on St. Kitt’s (and elsewhere). In 1912, a group of investors who believed that St. Kitt’s sugar industry could be profitable again if scaled properly, built a modern (at the time) central sugar factory near Basseterre and a narrow gauge railway, completed in 1926, to bring the sugar cane in from the outlying fields where it was grown. As a result, sugar production continued on the island, eventually being bought and run by the government with production nationalized in the 1970s. It wasn’t until 2005, after 350 years of production, that the government finally shut down the sugar industry entirely and started to focus on tourism. The sugar train continues to run today, giving these tours.

We have a week left on Indigo Lady before we check into the guest house. We’ll entertain ourselves a bit for the next few days before we go into hurricane storage prep mode ahead of Lady being hauled out of the water. Enjoy the photos from our Scenic Railway tour. Until next time, stay safe and take care of each other!