Sugar remained the dominant industry until the 1990s, when the European Union began to subsidize and set quotas for the sugar market, altering the fundamentals of the industry for good. In 2005, after years of losses, the government of St. Kitts closed the refineries and converted the economy almost entirely to tourism.

Today, the ghosts of sugar are everywhere. At each turn, one encounters former plantation houses, dilapidated windmills, and neglected fields filled even now with sugarcane. A handful of plantations have been converted into hotels, and it is this that makes St. Kitts and Nevis different from most other Caribbean islands. The charm of these old, intimate places was clear to me on my first night, when I pulled into St. Kitts's Rawlins Plantation late in the evening (thanks to the three-hour delay of my microscopic plane from St. Maarten). I feared I'd missed dinner entirely, but the manager, Kevin Horstwood, had kept the cook on, anticipating that I'd be famished.

And so at eleven o'clock at night, I sat on the Rawlins's veranda eating Caribbean chicken, with Horstwood as company. For dessert, he pulled out a bottle of rum. "This is a twenty-three-year-old bottle," he announced cheerfully, "that'll make you feel like you're fifteen."

To our right, just beyond the pool, were the ruins of a nineteenth-century windmill. In the distance, I could see the twinkling lights of ships at sea. I took a sip of the rum and felt my temples softly throb. A cat named Queenie climbed up onto my chair and fell asleep, still purring.

There's a very English feel to St. Kitts, owing to Britain's longtime dominance of the island. As I departed the Rawlins to explore the capital of Basseterre the next morning, my taxi kept to the left and a cricket match was on the radio: West Indies versus Sri Lanka. I asked the driver how the game was going, and he gave me a variation on the answer I always seem to get when I inquire about cricket. "Pretty good—after three days, it's still even."

No one should come to St. Kitts for the shopping. Still, the area called the Circus, not far from the deepwater Port Zante, yielded a carved giraffe and a huge shell for my children. Mission accomplished, I caught a cab to Timothy Beach, at the narrowest part of the island, where the southern peninsula begins. En route, we passed a gargantuan Marriott facing the Atlantic—one that, even at this distance, exerted the pull of a minor planet. Just beyond it, down a small dirt road leading to the island's Caribbean side, was Timothy Beach, perhaps the nicest and quietest on the island. There I stumbled upon a pair of shacks that serve up hallucinatory drinks, along with burgers, chicken, and ribs: the Monkey Bar and, right next door, Mr. X's Shiggidy Shack.

I pulled up a stool at the Monkey Bar and looked over the drinks menu. "What's Monkey Sex?" I ventured, trying not to sound like the English teacher I am. The waitress smiled in the manner of one who'd been asked this question before. "You should try it," she said, adding, "You won't regret it!" as she headed for the kitchen.