Caribbean Isle to make a song and dance about
MILLIONS have flocked to see the hit musical Hamilton, the life story of one of America’s founding fathers. But while Alexander Hamilton – born 1757 – has become an unlikely West End and Broadway star, as the locals on Nevis constantly remind me, almost nobody outside this tiny Caribbean island knows this was his hometown.
However, it’s a bone of contention that never rises much beyond minor irritation. Indeed, it’s hard to maintain full rancour about anything on Nevis (pronounced Nee-vis). The island’s unofficial mantra is ‘rush slowly’.
There’s one mega-resort on the island: the Four Seasons Nevis, inset, a comfortable retreat on the spectacular western coastline. It’s all blissfully self-indulgent, but a more demure experience persists at Golden Rock Inn, a former sugar plantation whose stone walls are covered in lush greenery.
Hidden in the lower slopes of Nevis Peak, its 11 cottages have creaking wooden verandas leading to a network of footpaths. Palms open out on to a shaded pool and a courtyard restaurant serves huge lobster sandwiches and grilled mahi-mahi (aka dolphinfish).
Suitably charmed by the somnambulant pace, I am intrigued to discover Nevis’s more rambunctious side.
This I find at Sunshine’s Beach Bar. Painted in bright hues of red, yellow and green, this ramshackle collection of stools and tables is the home of the Killer Bee cocktail, renowned throughout the Caribbean as the best rum punch, which is sweet, fruit-laden and, I swiftly discover, deceptively mild.
Nothing is more than 20 minutes away on Nevis, apart from the summit of Nevis Peak. This green smothered volcano – potentially active but inactive for at least 100,000 years – dominates the skyline. Climbing it, I am assured, will take no longer than two hours going up and two coming down. This, I discover the next morning, is a colossal underestimate.
Starting at 7am, a pitted track that snakes through the lower levels gives way to ropes tethered to tree trunks, which I haul myself up. As the ground turns to mud, and with sweat cascading down my face, I admit defeat at what my guide Devito estimates is about the two-thirds mark.
The view, however, is spectacular – a vista over the parish known to locals as Gingerland, an expanse of orchards, long abandoned sugarcane plantations and a sprinkle of cottages. The descent is even more difficult, and I find that squatting, crab-style on my backside, is the least treacherous way to avoid a tumble.
The volcano may have beaten me but compensation comes in the form of an enormous plate of snapper, served with plantain and rice, at
Bananas restaurant in an impossibly romantic cottage hidden amid a tropical garden of harmonising tree frogs.
Over yet another rum punch, my waiter congratulates me on attempting the volcano.
‘I might try myself one day,’ he tells me. ‘But I’m only 35. I’ll go before I’m 60, I think.’
That’s Nevis time – rush slowly – perfectly encapsulated.
Doubles at Golden Rock Inn from €378 (goldenrocknevis.com). Doubles at Four Seasons from €642 (fourseasons.com). Dublin to nearby St Kitts from €1,375 return (Aer Lingus/American Airlines). Find out more at www.nevisisland.com