Nevis: Oualie Beach and Charlestown

Following 5 days of exploring St Kitts the second half of our St Kitts and Nevis holiday was spent in quieter Nevis where we stayed in Oualie Beach which is pronounced ‘Wah-lee’.

We had also learned that the locals say ‘Nee-vis’ rather than ‘Nevis’ (as in Ben Nevis). The capital of Nevis is Charlestown and Nevis is separated from St Kitts by just two miles of ocean, known as ‘the Narrows strait’.

There wasn’t too much within walking distance of our base at Oualie Beach so this time we hired a car for 4 days. With having a car for longer and on a smaller island we took our time exploring and also found it useful for driving to nearby restaurants in the evenings.

Charlestown

Located on the west of Nevis, Charlestown is a 15 minute drive from Oualie Beach. While in Charlestown we visited the Museum of Nevis History and the Alexander Hamilton Muesum which are on the same site.

The Museum of Nevis History was tiny however there was a great deal of fascinating yet some of it distressing information to read. We learned about the horrific treatment of African slaves who suffered terribly on the voyage from Africa to the West Indies and then worked for European settlers in the sugar plantations.

Interestingly ‘Scary Spice’ Mel B has a heritage from Nevis. Her father was born in Nevis and her great-grandmother passed away in Zion Village in Gingerland, Nevis at the age of 107!

Alexander Hamilton, one of the founders of the United States, was born in the original building that is now the museum. As a child he was orphaned and taken in by a wealthy merchant. The literature in the museum explains that Hamilton’s “ideas on racial equality and economic diversity were so far ahead of their time it took America decades to catch up with them”. He was one of the leaders in the abolition of the international slave trade.

Oualie Beach Resort

The rest of this post covers our experience of staying at Oualie Beach and provides an account of the local restaurants we visited together with our reviews and recommendations.

We then have another two posts on the beautiful tropical scenery we were so lucky to have seen and experienced during our time in Nevis.

Accommodation

We stayed in a semi-detached chalet at the laid back Oualie Beach hotel which was quiet and peaceful and a total contrast to the busy St Kitts Marriott.

Oualie Beach prides itself on being a ‘green’ resort having implemented a number of green initiatives such as solar lighting, solar water heaters for each room and a water irrigation system. They also support community projects on the island.

Inside our room was light, airy and upon arrival it was lovely and cool thanks to the AC already being on. We had a fridge, a coffee machine and excellent wifi with our own router too.

Our room was literally on the beach and from our sofa we could watch the sun setting each evening. Although we didn’t sit on the sofa to watch the sunset… hell no! We walked for 20 steps or so and were out on the beach sitting on a couple of sun beds with a cold beer each.

Wildlife at Oualie Beach

Each day we saw tiny lizards, cute little crabs on the beach and even monkeys just outside of our room. Yes – monkeys!

African Green ‘Vervet’ monkeys have lived on Nevis for over 300 years. They live freely in the mountains and feed on leaves, fruit and insects. The above monkey was eating some of the noni fruit from the noni plant.

The monkeys were fairly timid and scampered off if we got too close to them. We also could hear the odd monkey clambering around on the top of our wooden chalet roof.

One afternoon a pelican visited Oaulie Beach and was there for several hours.

And another afternoon as we were about to wander from our room across to the beach to watch the sunset some random cows appeared 😂 about 10 of them ambled right through the middle of the chalets and stayed there for the rest of the evening, although they had disappeared by the morning🐄

Like the Marriott we were on a room only basis again however at extra cost the Oualie Beach Resort restaurant served breakfast, lunch and dinner each day. The adjacent wooden bar was a relaxing place to end the evening with a shot of spicy rum.

We enjoyed a couple of relaxing breakfasts while overlooking the sea at the Oualie Beach Resort. For around $10US each they were reasonably priced.

One evening we stayed in and had dinner in the Oualie Beach Resort and we both had wahoo fish which was a tasty white fish with a firm tuna-like texture.

Dining further afield in Nevis

For our first night we decided to walk for 10 minutes along the road in the dark to ‘The Gin Trap‘ where their website promised a somewhat exclusive upmarket members club eaterie…

But as we arrived it turned out that they no longer serve food. So we settled for a cocktail each.

After ordering the cocktails we spotted a ‘spin the gin’ wheel where you take a spin to determine your next gin! Mine would have been spicy gin. I need a gin wheel at home as I often dither when trying to decide on which drink to have whether it’s ‘g-indecision’ or otherwise!

Anyway having had a late breakfast that day and no lunch we were both hungry and walked further on around the coastal road in the dark for another 10 minutes before arriving at Luna.

Luna

And hello to the most expensive meal of our lives!

We were seated in an elegant tropical courtyard setting with African inspired interiors (as mentioned on their website). I had ‘Pan Seared Local Red Snapper’ served with market vegetables, saffron rice, beetroot puree and lemon beurre blanc which was fabulous.

The portions were not huge so we had a dessert each and shared a mango cheesecake and the most delicious soft and light coconut cake ever!

Together with a glass of Californian Chardonney each our total bill was £134 😳 this was expensive for our usual budget but the food was amazing and I would say it was worth the cost for an occasional treat.

Drift

Once we had the hire car we called into nearby Drift at lunchtime and with the appealing whitewashed shabby chic decor and the laid back atmosphere being so lovely we booked a table for the same evening.

Drift was just a 4 minute drive from Oualie Beach and located next to Nevis’s tiny international airport.

We had a wonderful evening in Drift as we sat on a wooden terrace where we could hear the sea next to us. It was lovely to also listen to live Caribbean music in the background.

We both had ‘West Indies curry of the day’ with basmati rice, plantain and Nevis mango chutney; Chris had shrimp and I had mahi mahi (maki maki) fish.

Drift is another highly recommended place although this wasn’t exactly wallet friendly either at £110 for 2 mains, 3 glasses of wine and a bottle of water!

Generally when ordering, the individual meal and drink prices don’t seem too expensive however by the time VAT, service charge, another tax and sometimes a community charge is added, the end bill is usually way more that you are expecting!

Indian Summer

We had enjoyed Indian Summer in St Kitts so much that we visited its sister restaurant in Nevis. In here we had more delicious Indian food 😋 this time we shared a huge dish of vegetable biriyani, a ‘Navratan Korma’ which had mixed vegetables and dried fruits cooked in cashew nut sauce and a portion of ‘Corn Tikki’ which were corn fritters. We also had ‘Papad’s’ aka poppodums!

We both came out feeling very full and with a total bill of just £45 for both of us we had re-balanced the budget 👍

Golden Rock

For our final evening dinner of the holiday we drove back to the south of Nevis to the Golden Rock where we had enjoyed lunch the previous day. We were shown to a table on the terrace overlooking the ponds and it was very atmospheric with the sounds of frogs and crickets chirping away in the background.

We both had ‘Green Curry Shrimp’ with coconut rice and sweet fried plantain, another fabulous meal in the wonderful setting of the old sugar mill.

Yachtsman Grill

If you are looking for a casual lunch with a sea view we recommend Yachtsman Grill which is just along from the Four Seasons.

We called in there for a lunchtime snack and shared a delicious pizza which was huge and more than enough for both of us.

The Yachtsman Grill is the beachfront restaurant of the Hamilton Beach Villas complex.

Transferring from St Kitts to Nevis

We had 3 options:

• Pre-book door to door transfer service with British Airways
• Ferry from Basseterre (St Kitts) to Charlestown (Nevis)
• Water taxi from Reggae Beach to Oualie Beach

We had already decided to do this independently as the first option was £168 which left options 2 and 3.

Ferries between Basseterre and Charlestown are fairly frequent but apparently don’t always run to the timetable so you sometimes have to wait for a while.

We decided on option 3 following a recommendation by our taxi driver. This involved driving to the southern tip of the peninsula but the water taxi took us directly across the 2 mile Narrows Strait to Oualie beach where we were staying.

This was much quicker than options 1 or 2 as the crossing took about 15 minutes and the total cost was 70 USD in cash (£58). This was 30 USD for the car taxi and 20 USD each for the water taxi.

Transferring from Nevis to St Kitts

We had different logistics for the journey back to St Kitts ready for our flight home…

First was a slight cash issue… the ATM in Nevis didn’t work with my Monzo card so we only had 100 USD in cash between us for our 5 days in Nevis. It was fairly easy to conserve most of this as all restaurants, the car hire, petrol etc took credit card. However given it had cost 70 USD in cash to get to Nevis and on top of this we had further to get to the airport it was borderline that we would have enough.

In addition we were dropping the hire car off in Charlestown next to Nevis ferry port so decided this would be the best option back to St Kitts.

As warned by our previous taxi driver the ferries don’t seem to run to any schedule. We arrived at 10.30 and while the ferry website said there would be two at 11 am these didn’t materialise so we had to wait an hour for the next one at 11:30. We hadn’t had breakfast and there was just a tiny open air bar at the open air terminal so we had a Carib and packet of Doritos each (cash only).

At around 11.10 a ticket booth opened but first we had to obtain a small pink port tax ticket for 1 ECD each from a different ticket booth. The ferry transfer cost was 12 USD each, cash only and we were given a plastic boarding card to hand in when boarding the boat.

We boarded just before 11.30 and were soon on our way. The small cramped 32 seater ferry took 30 minutes to get to Basseterre.

We arrived back in St Kitts at midday and took a taxi for the very short distance to the nearby Palm Court Gardens in Basseterre where we had booked lunch.

The total cost for the return journey was 25 USD for the ferry and 12 USD for the taxi so a total of 37 USD (£30) for both of us.

Once back in St Kitts we had lunch in the Palm Court Gardens near to the ferry port before making our way to the airport for our flight back to London.

Money

Similar to St Kitts we paid by credit card for almost everything although we did need cash for things like taxi’s, entrance fees to some places and the occasional beach bar drink.

Restaurants charged in either Eastern Caribbean Dollar (ECD) or USD however as mentioned we were able to pay for all meals using our credit card.

For the 10 days in both St Kitts and Nevis we spent around $300 for both of us in USD in cash, nothing in ECD cash and the rest on our credit card.

Weather

Apart from the occasional downpour overnight we had hardly any rain during the day throughout the 10 days on both islands.

The temperature hovered at around 30 degrees during the daytime and dropped to 27 degrees at night. Even at 3 am it was still 27! So no jacket was needed for any evening and definitely no jeans!

Summary

An authentic rustic room on a quiet beach to watch the sunset with barely anyone else around is more my kind of thing than a large busy and bustling resort.

This, together with the freedom of another car to explore the island exactly as we wished was the ideal way for us to spend 5 days in Nevis.

We both felt relaxed and didn’t rush from place to place trying to cram everything in.

Overall I was pleased with the decision to split this holiday with 5 nights on St Kitts and 5 on Nevis which worked perfectly for us 🙂

The next two posts will reveal our adventures around the colourful and tropical abundance of Nevis.