St. Kitts & Nevis

I had planned for Nevis (pronounced (Nee-vus) to be the final (193rd) country I’d visit, and have my family and friends join me for a celebration. However, entering Syria was virtually impossible (due to the war, poor relations with the U.S, etc) and therefore my wife and I visited Nevis in 2019. Flew into St. Kitts and then took a ferry across to our hotel on Nevis.

When we arrived, to our delight, we found very few tourists there.

What we did see a lot of were donkeys, left on the island from its colonial past when sugar cane was grown on the island.

Nevis was the capital of the slave trade and produced more sugar cane than any other island in the Caribbean because the soils are so fertile here. Many of the people that currently live in Nevis are descendants of those slaves who used to work here.

The Arawaks used to call Nevis “Oualie” translating to the land of beautiful waters … and they certainly got it right.

We loved our time in St. Kitts & Nevis!

Madagascar

Country Information: Madagascar's capital is Antananarivo and the official languages are Malagasy and French. About 26 million people live here. Over half of the population is estimated to have traditional religious beliefs, with the rest being Christian and a small...

Nicaragua

  I traveled to Nicaragua in 1986, during the Contra War. This was another proxy war between the U.S. and the Soviet Union. On one side of the conflict were Nicaragua’s Sandinista government, Soviet puppets or sympathizers.  On the other were the rebels, known as...

France

On our "Backroads" bike trip from Provence to Cannes in France Jim's Perspectives: I've lost count of how many times I have visited this gem of a country. Some of the more memorable time were as a young man right out of college, I took two summers to improve my...