Another Weekend on St Kitts - Beaches & Hashing

Earlier in the week, Michael had a run-in with a Manchineel tree. These common trees are incredibly poisonous, with Wikipedia saying that Ponce de Leon was actually killed by an arrow with this tree's poison on the tip. Even burning the tree and then having the smoke get into your eyes and/or lungs can lead to blindness and respiratory problems. Eating the tiny apples is bad...very, very bad...One ancient torture method was to put victims under the tree during a rain and let the acid drip on them until they died from the burns. This can be attested to as being a horrible technique by CH's Kathleen who accidentally walked under such a tree during a drizzle and had some of the substance blister & burn her upper arm, leaving scars. Michael got lucky that he caught it quickly, rinsed it and took an anti-histamine right away. He looked like he had a black eye for a couple of days, said his arms felt like they'd been burned, but seems to be back to normal now.

Friday night, we attempted to do "one" drink on The Strip, and failed once again. We managed to leave around 10:30 this time though, so there's THAT! First we went to The Dock for a 2 for 1 happy hour (from 5-6). Had a weird sunset that had bright blue streaks in the sky - of course, pictures aren't doing it justice. Then we were wondering why Ziggy's, further down the beach, was so packed, and headed down there. Turns out they have a 2 for 1 beer happy hour too, but it starts at 3 and goes until 7. Plus they have volleyball nets. That brings the vet students out. We ran into a vacationing couple that wants to sail like we just did, so that ended up in a long discussion which obviously required several beers.

Saturday, Mike worked in the morning and then we headed to Spice Mill on Cockleshell beach and pigged out on a great pizza (thin crust, slightly burnt - mmmm) and 2 servings of french fries (we hadn't eaten the night before, so zip it).

Then it was time for some hashing. We ended up directly across from Ross University, right where we did our first hash on the island. We headed for the mountain, scaring us into thinking we might have to climb it, but this trail was actually one of the best marked, moderate hikes we've done to date.

The only crappy part was going through an area of Sandbox trees. It was a little slippery here and there and if you made the mistake of grabbing onto of these trees (even the roots!), you did not make the mistake again.


Of course, we always see Carnival's Victory heading out as we're climbing ever higher.


Headed across some farm lands, into the weeds...


Into the rainforest, by a babbling brook...


Time for some beers & food (water, thank you and I'm full for a week so will pass).


Always coming up with new punishments, we had to laugh when the hashmaster brought out these 2 huge buckets and then made Tanya & Charlie drink from them because they had actually skipped the entire hash, only showing up at the end to take part in the eating & drinking portion.

Sunday, we puttered around a bit and then headed over to The Godfather to hang with John & Tina a bit.


Mike headed to the Marriott to watch the Eagles play and I watched the Amazing Race later and saw the players running around Tallinn, Estonia - where my Mom is from! Was cool seeing people that looked a lot like me and that side of the family. Very pretty country.

And that's it! We're heading to Puerto Rico next and then maybe Montserrat after that (we're still getting details there). Gonna miss these guys though.

Oh yeah, here we were all paranoid about hurricanes hitting us and who gets whammied with one, or the remnants, at least? My Mom. The last of Ida brought 70 knot winds to the U.S. east coast, including Norfolk, VA resulting in badly eroded beaches, ripped off siding, flooded roads/driveways/basements/homes...Just goes to show....