We ordered breakfast in the room, since we are going to have to get up early. I finally put the iPhone to good use - as an alarm clock. Pretty much all it can do here. But, of course, I am well awake at 6:30 am, though not quite ready to wake up. At 7, the iPhone goes off, and at 7:01, breakfast knocks on the door. It is quickly eaten, watching CNN. The orange juice is frozen, not the divine freshly squeezed one we get at the regular breakfast buffet.
Outside the window is Nevis, a single volcanic cone, with a plume of clouds stuck on the top. There are several stories of how the island got its name. The most popular is that the early Spanish sailors - maybe even Columbus himself who, of course, did come here in 1493, but apparently never set foot ashore - thought it was snow topping the peak and called it after the Spanish word for snow, nieves. Hard to believe that seasoned navigators who'd made their way through the Atlantic would be that wrong, at least in any kind of sober state. My theory, which I have not read anywhere, is that it's named after the highest peak in the British Isles, the Ben Nevis. Which (my theory too) is thought to be the highest point because they've never actually seen the top, so miserable is the weather in that part of Scotland!
The reason we are up so early is that I have signed us up for a kayaking trip. We meet the rest of the group in the nightly concert lounge, which is very strange when fully lit. There is the same feeling as when you are in Bourbon Street in New Orleans in the morning, when the only other visitors are a few guys cleaning away the signs of the previous night's revelries. We embark on the first tender, and land in a different world. Where everyone was white and French in St Barth, here it's finally the Caribbeans, with natives. Well, at least the natives we brought a couple of centuries ago, courtesy of our free transatlantic voyages... As Nevis is part of the British Commonwealth, the gardens and the people look, I kid you not, English! They drive (insanely fast) on the left. The school kids wear plaid uniforms.
Roosters roam in neat gardens overflowing with bougainvillea, in front of small colorful white-shingled houses. But also, many houses and hotels along the way are boarded up or just abandoned.
Our guide says that, two months ago, a hurricane destroyed a lot of the beaches and, most dramatically, closed the Four Seasons hotel. The only modern hotel of the island. (There are several venerable plantation-type institutions on the slopes of the volcano, which I'd love to pay a visit to, but that will have to be for another time - any volunteers for the field trip?!). Closed until at least 2010. There are insurance fights, lawyers,... Our guide says that 90% of the economy depended on the Four Seasons, so it's big drama on the island.
When we get to the kayak shop, there's no one to meet us. A guy prepares bikes for other tourists.
Finally, a dude show up and tells us we can only take a towel for two and our money on board the kayak. The rest has to stay in the taxi that, supposedly, will meet us at the end of the kayaking journey. We are also warned that everything that is not in the tiny "dry bag" is going to get wet. Dad takes his pants off so that he'll have something dry to change into afterward; I opt to keep mine to avoid sunburn.
After rounding the first cape, we stop on a small beach of purely black sand. 
This one was clearly very damaged by the hurricane. It is littered with debris. But also some magnificent shells - orange, pink, yellow - that we are not allowed to bring back.
Some of the debris is quite photogenic...
Here, we get to snorkel. I swim far to reach the cliff. I cross a freeway for fish, but mostly it is sand, sand, sand. There's nothing left after the hurricane. Next to the cliff, I see three types of fish, a bottom feeder of indistinct color, yellow-tailed snapper and a black-bodied blue-finned species that stumps the guide. Very damaged indeed. It'll come back. I'll have to come back.
We get back in the kayaks, and paddle to the next bay. The scenery is again different here. There is a small section that looks like a mini-Etretat or maybe like Laguna Beach here (the fake Italian architecture of the house at the top of the cliff is more Orange County than Normandie).
We stop on a very large blond sand beach. So different from the previous one. But there is no one here either.
Strikingly, here as we saw during the short taxi drive, most palm trees are dead. I inquire about whether this is also to be blamed on the hurricane. No, that's a disease. Double whammy.
We have a feast on the beach, fresh guava juice, home baked super moist (and not with water!....) fruit cake, star fruit, orange slices, and a fresh coconut machetted open by our guide.
Suddenly, the lady in a white bathing suit starts wailing. In a good way. She and her friend had a lot of trouble with the kayaking. Couldn't get it to move in the right direction, or forward, for that matter. But here she is, big, black and beautiful, waving her arms, her body rocking back and forth, and...wailing. An odd, plaintive, soulful song in a language I don't recognize. My, my, oh my. It's DIANNE REEVES. She can't kayak, but man, can she sing...
Dianne Reeves (left) and her friend on the blond sand beach.
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