Day 8: Nevis

We have come to terms with the fact that every day we will have some boat issue.  Today's issue was the radio is still not working - I was wrong that it got fixed last night.  Today dad spent about 4 hours re - wiring the entire electrical panel in order to get the radio to finally work.  It turned out to be an issue with the ground wire going to the radio.  I'm pretty sure that most charter guests should not be expected to know how to rewire the electrical connections on board.  I think when we return this boat to the charter company we should deduct dad's hourly consulting rate since we will probably return it in better condition than we received it!

The highlight of our day was the 4x4 Funky Monkey tour of Nevis.  This was a tour with Neil on a 6 passenger ATV.  He took us all over the island, on and off road,  for a 4+ hour tour.  Neil was awesome and it was incredible to see the entire island and learn the inside scoop from a local. 

He took us to the ruins of the sugar plantations - most of what remain are the stone bases of huge windmills that look like big cones. 

We saw incredible views of the Atlantic and Caribbean coastlines and traversed up a crazy rocky dirt road to near top of the volcano.  Sheep (tails down), goats (tails up), c9ws, donkeys and monkeys are everwhere...we also saw a few chickens and a pig.

We visited several beautiful hotels.   Some used to be big sugar plantations.  My favorite was Golden Rock which had beautiful views of the ocean from on top of the mountain where it is much cooler and more of a rainforest environment.  The owner of the hotel has brought in plants from all over the world and it is an amazing botanical garden.  We lives the fish because they would follow you along the fish pond thinking we would throw them food.

After our long tour, we had dinner at Yachtsmen ' s Grill owned by a guy named Greg from Michigan.  It was the kind of place where everyone talked with everyone else, so we met some folks from England who were really into the world cup soccer (along with Lindsay) and we ran into the people we met yesterday at Friendly's. 

This is a small island of about 8000 people and every where we've been the people are so welcoming and kind.  The best part of this trip so far has been learning about other countries and lifestyles...and talking with the people.

Tomorrow we plan to head to St. Kitts.   We hate to leave it here and hope to come back one day.