Basseterre, St Kitts – Monkey Hill

I think it’s fair to say that, by this point in our adventure, we were starting to feel somewhat snorkelled-out. Since Basseterre, on the island of St Kitts, didn’t have a convenient nearby beach, we decided to take things a little easier today, and go for a walk.

Our general policy is ‘see a hill… climb it…’, and from the ship, we could see an impressive range of mountains, and a smaller, closer hill known as Monkey Hill. To get there would require a good thirty or forty minutes walking, so after a leisurely breakfast, we headed off in that direction, on the understanding that we would only walk as far as we were comfortable, in the heat, and the objective was not necessarily to climb Monkey Hill, but to get at least somewhere within its vicinity.

We had water with us, but what we failed to give any real prior thought to was food – a factor that threatened to turn us around even earlier than expected.

Our route took us well out of town, towards the airport, which we needed to skirt around. As we walked, a very helpful lady hung her head out of her car window and informed us that there was nothing to see here, and that we should turn around and go back. Both Tracey and I are quite stubborn, and such a declaration is liable to spur us on far more than deter us, so on we walked.

It was as we approached Monkey Hill that we started to seriously contemplate our food oversight. Unless something turned up soon, we would have to turn around. Fortunately, as we were walking through a suburban area, we found a small shop where we were able to purchase sustinance in the form of cold water, a large packet of Doritos, a packet of custard creams, and a small tube of Pringles. Don’t judge us… the high sugar and salt content can be surprisingly nutritional in the extreme heat (and believe me, it was scorchio…). The lad on the till was in for an enexpected bonus; when we gave him the ten US dollars he asked for, he started to sort out our change in Eastern Caribbean dollars, which are pretty much useless to us, so we told him to keep the change. I think he did rather well out of the transaction.

Eventually, after much climbing upwards, we came to a point where, according to the map, we expected to find an access point and a possible footpath up onto the hill. All we found was an old rusty, abandoned car covered in what appeared to be many years of undergrowth (which was fantastic… I feel a project coming on…). As well as the car, we were surrounded by quite dense vegetation – however, no access point was to be seen.

Somewhere in the trees we could hear the amplified sound of what we could only assume was the recording of a preacher speaking in a very soothing American voice, extolling the virtues of the Lord to, presumably, whoever was around to hear. We could just glimpse a building up the hill a ways, but couldn’t quite locate the source of the voice; it was Sunday, though, so we assumed it might be a chapel of some sort.

With no onward footpath at our disposal, we found somewhere to sit under the trees and ate our custard creams and drank water while we decided upon our next move.

We decided to skirt around the hill, following the nearest road, in the hope of – at the very least – getting some good views across the island. I’m pleased to say that we managed to get those, but had to walk quite some distance before seeing the possibility of any tracks leading up onto the hill, by which time walking any further away from the port would not be a good idea.

In front of us, as we walked along the dirt road, we could see a man who appeared to be walking and stopping occasionally, dipping into the vegetation alongside the road, and we wondered if it might be because he had a weak bladder. As we got closer, he turned towards us, and was beckoning us… at which point we realised he as carrying a machete…

He introduced himself to us as James, and told us that he is The Chosen One. He explained that God had spoken to him, and as a result, he must climb the mountain every day, stopping to pray as he goes along. To back up his claim (we didn’t ask, he just insisted), he told us that he had proof of God talking to him. He promptly took out his mobile phone and played us a YouTube video of a very smooth American voice extoling the virtues of the Lord.

He insisted that Tracey take a photograph of himself with one arm around me, the other holding his machete.

If I look a little uncomfortable in the photo, that would be because of the machete… we were trying very hard to remain upbeat and friendly, keen to wave him on his way and not say anything that might upset him.

The rest of our walk back was something of an anticlimax, and couldn’t begin to compete with the thrill of meeting The Chosen One. James seemed like a nice enough chap, if a little odd, but the YouTube video he appeared to base his entire daily mountain climbing routine on left us somewhat bemused. He’d invited us to join him on his pilgrimage, but fortunately our time was short. I’m pretty sure if we’d had the time there was no way we were going to go climbing a mountain with a strange man wielding a machete.

By the time we arrived back in the town, we’d walked about 7 miles. We stopped along the way to finish off our snacks, and were disappointed to discover that the Pringles were ‘off’ – not past their sell-by date… just ‘off’. We made one final stop in Liberation Square to finish off the Doritos, before heading back to the ship, tired from a long hot hike and ready for a cold beer in the Britannia Lounge.