NEVIS – Great beach. Great drink. Great golf course.
I just got back from the lovely island of Nevis, and found just a ton of great stuff to do. And great people, too.
I was staying at Nisbet Plantation, which is beautiful and very relaxing. It’s got a nice beach, but it can’t compare with Pinneys Beach on the west coast of the isand. Pinneys goes on forever, and then a bit more, with nice sand and soft waves and beautiful sunsets.
There’s a nice restaurant maybe 50 metres in from the beach called Lime’s, where they make a great shrimp curry with rice. It’s an outdoors place with a roof and lots of lime green colours and a fun bar; very Caribbean feel without trying too hard.
Next door is a fun spot called Sunshine’s, one of the classic beach bars in this part of the world. Sunshine the man started serving workers at the nearby Four Seasons Nevis resort when it was under construction, and now he’s a legend. They serve a great rum punch called a “Killer Bee” with way more alcohol than is necessary. Six of those and you’re really finished.
It’s a fun place with flags from Canada, California, the Czech Republic and more, plus pennants from the Baltimore Ravens, University of Notre Dame and other schools. They also have the requisite license plates (I liked one that said “Lusty” from Missouri, which is called the “Show Me State.” They also have a ton of photos of celebrities with Sunshine himself, including Bill Clinton and our own Wayne Gretzky.
“Gretzky came one with Paul Coffey and I think Ray Bourque,” Sunshine told me.
A good spot with pretty good food. I had a great lobster sandwich with fries for about $20; featuring tons of meaty lobster (more like crawfish than Atlantic lobster).
Definitely a fun place to chill out on giant red, green and yellow cushions and listen to reggae and watch the beach folks come and go.
You couldn’t ask for more of a contrast between Sunshine’s and the nearby Four Seasons, which is a stunner. They have three giant pools, maybe more, with nice bars and a pretty relaxed vibe for a Four Seasons. A great location on the beach, plus they have ten tennis courts (four of them clay, I think) and an INCREDIBLE golf course.
It’s a Robert Trent Jones II design that rises and falls and dipsies and doodles around the sides of Mt. Nevis, with a 400 foot elevation change and a huge variety of holes. It’s not a tough course, but the wind makes it tricky – and devilishly fun.
The design is wonderful, with humps and bumps and perfectly placed trees and flowering bushes in blue, orange, red and other colours. Once you get towards the back nine you’re up on the hill and the views of the blue Caribbean and nearby St. Kitt’s are simply out of this world.
A truly great resort course that’s a ton of fun to play. It reminds me of Kapalua on Maui in Hawaii, and that’s one of my favourite places on earth.
I promised I’d mention Patterson Fleming, so here goes. This is a truly wonderful guy who’s the maitre ‘D at Nisbet Plantation.
He’s a big guy with a great smile and a tiny square patch of hair on top of his mostly bald head. He’s always sporting a snazzy suit with a bold tie as he greets people at the door of the Great House at Nisbet, which dates to 1778 and is the hotel’s dinner spot.
Folks have given him ties over the years, so much so that he’s now up to something like 8,000.
“I’ve got Disney ties, historical ties, ties with Marilyn Monroe, the Rolling Stones. You name it.”
Fleming makes a point of wearing a tie a guest gave him if he knows the guest is coming to dinner. And he knows.
A great guy who’s a ton of fun, so look for more on him in future pages of Star Travel.
It was tough to leave a place as beautiful as this. But I’ll be back.
