Day 12 Saturday 7th December 2024, Basseterre, St Kitts, Nevis - the Caribbean Cruise

We got off at St Kitts and looked for our Viator guide Elvis, he was taking us to the Brimstone Hill Fortress Hike. A fantastic day, Elvis was very knowledgeable of the area and we learned a lot.

Oldest Lime Kiln - best preserved

Our hike up was strenuous but so worth it for the views.

Our beers for the day.

Beautiful views from the Fortress

Brimstone Hill Fortress National Park is a remarkable example of European military engineering dating from the 17th and 18th centuries in a Caribbean context. Located on the Island of St. Christopher (St. Kitts) the country’s largest island, the fortress was built to African slave labour to the exacting standards of the British military to protect the coastline from a sea attack and to provide a safe refuge for the island’s citizens. The engineers, who designed the fort, made use of the natural topography of this double-peaked, steep volcanic hill rising 230 metres.

St. Christopher (St. Kitts) as the first West Indian Island to be colonized by Europeans, specifically the French and English, was the scene of many battles in the struggle for dominance in this region. The earliest use of Brimstone Hill for European military purposes was in 1690 when the British installed a canon to drive out the French. The fortress evolved over the next century and served until 1853 when the British military abandoned it and dismantled many of the buildings.

The principal structures of the fortress are situated on different levels of the upper third of the hill and were constructed in dressed stone (basalt) blocks with a rubble core. Local limestone was used as a decorative element for quoins and for facing round doorways and embrasures. Quarries on the middle and lower slopes of the hill provided much of the stone. The heart of the fortress, Fort George also known as the Citadel, dominates one of the twin peeks. Completed towards the end of the 1700s, this is the earliest surviving example of the “Polygonal System” of fortress design. The entire site covers approximately 15 hectares surrounded by a 1.6 km (1 mile) buffer zone.

On our way back from the fortress, we stopped to see the Atlantic on the left and the Caribbean sea on the right, a stunning view of unspoiled areas that are so as the result of the students that demonstrated against the building of a Hotel in the area where the Turtles bury their eggs and the hatchlings find their way to the sea.