Majors Bay

A rarely busy gem of a beach, Majors is located a few yards from the tip of the south-east peninsula highway, just next to where the Sea Bridge ferry to Nevis picks up and lets off vehicles and passengers. Majors could hardly be simpler: a longish, narrow stretch of golden sand, warm blue water that always seems to be calm, and nothing by way of beach bars or other amenities. It’s been touted as the location for a major hotel, and doubtless that will happen at some time in the not-too-distant future, so catch it while it’s still off the beaten track.

South Friar’s

They say you can’t go wrong if you follow the locals, and that doesn’t apply only to restaurants. South Friar’s, a long stretch of golden sand handily located off the south-east peninsula highway just beyond the Frigate Bay tourist area, is a favourite with savvy Kittitians for its excellent Caribbean bathing and wide choice of places to eat and drink. These range from ramshackle bars oozing charm and character to one of the eastern Caribbean’s most elegant beach restaurants,Carambola, where you can take a break from swimming to nibble on superb sushi. A word of warning: you will notice North Friar’s beach just over the road from South Friar’s and will be tempted by its beauty and emptiness. Resist the temptation: it’s deserted because the Atlantic water is treacherous, even in shallow areas.

Frigate Bay South

For years the most popular beach in St Kitts with locals, Frigate Bay South has had stern competition since the 1989 opening of the south-east peninsula highway, which made an assortment of superb white-sand beaches easily accessible. But Frigate Bay is still home to St Kitts’ major tourist hotels and most of the island’s big houses, and over the past decade a string of beachfront bars, known collectively as ‘The Strip’, has sprung up. The bars have become a big attraction for locals and tourists, many of whom enjoy taking a dip and a drink – not necessarily in that order.

Frigate Bay North

An off-the-beaten-track gem on the Atlantic side of the island, Frigate Bay Northis a superb beach, long stretches of which you can usually have more or less to yourself, even on public holidays and at the height of the tourist season. That’s despite the fact that one stretch of Frigate Bay North is the location for a bunch of beachfront condo developments and the sprawling Marriott hotel. The bathing and swimming are excellent, and a long reef ensures that the normally treacherous Atlantic water is remarkably safe. A bonus is that a lengthy stretch of beach north of the Marriott is kept in immaculate condition thanks to the hotel’s expansion of its beach cleaning area beyond the sand immediately in front of its premises.

Cockleshell

A small but diverse choice of watering holes, a gorgeous stretch of powdery white sand and excellent bathing from end to end make Cockleshell the most popular of the handful of beaches around the tip of the south-east peninsula. It’s a magnet for locals out to party on weekends and public holidays, and a favourite destination for cruise-ship tourists, which means the scene can get decidedly lively. But you can have the beach pretty much to yourself on weekdays in the quiet summer season. For food and drink, the Spice Mill is elegant and upmarket, Lion Rock, just next door, is funky, fun and popular with the local crowd, and the lively Reggae Beach Bar and Gril, 100m or so further down the beach, features fresh fish and lobster, most of it caught by owner Gary Pereira.

Sand Bank Bay

One of the eastern Caribbean’s loveliest beaches, Sand Bank is also off the beaten track. A few years ago, in fact, it was completely untouched by human hand – not so much as a beach bar intruded on its pristine beauty, much less a hotel or a house. That’s no longer the case; there is a scattering of houses set back from the beach, and a decidedly upmarket but mercifully unobtrusive private beach club at the back of the south end of the semi-circular stretch of sand. The cliffs that tower at either end of the beach keep the Atlantic waves down to manageable proportions – they’re usually big enough to be fun without being a threat. Like most of St Kitts’ best white-sand beaches, Sand Bank is on the island’s south-east peninsula, a little more than a kilometre from the end of the highway that extends to the tip of that rugged, narrow stretch of land.

Turtle beach

Tranquillity reigns most of the time at Turtle beach, a lovely stretch of sand on the south-east peninsula, located at the end of a sometimes tricky dirt road just off the branch of the highway that leads to Cockleshell and Banana Bay. The bathing’s excellent, and a bonus for snorkellers is a smorgasbord of dazzling fish swimming around the coral reef that protects Turtle beach from the Atlantic waves. It’s worth noting that a small fence makes the beach look as though it might be private property. It’s not: like all beaches in St Kitts and Nevis it’s public, and can be accessed by a gate in the fence.

Pinney’s beach, Nevis

No roundup of the best beaches in this part of the world would be complete without Pinney’s. With mile after mile of superb white sand and a beguiling array of options for eating and drinking, Pinney’s is not only recognised as one of the finest beaches in the Leeward chain of islands, it’s one of best in the entire Caribbean. It’s also – like Nevis itself – a favourite playground of the rich and famous. That’s at least in part because big names don’t attract a lot of attention here, and you might easily find yourself sitting next to Beyoncé and Jay Z or Keith Richards or Oprah hanging out and enjoying a Killer Bee cocktail at Sunshine’s, a beach bar that helped define the funky-chic ambience of Pinney’s. Oh, and the bathing’s superb too, from end to end.

Oualie beach, Nevis

While it’s nowhere near as long as Pinney’s, Oualie beach offers equally good white sand and equally good bathing. It’s dominated by a single establishment, the venerable Oualie Beach Hotel, which offers rustic beachfront accommodation and a down-to-earth bar frequented by a lively mix of locals and tourists. Oualie is also the base for a variety of water activity operations, including catamaran and sloop cruises, scuba diving, windsurfing and kayaking.

Banana Bay

Just next door to Cockleshell, Banana Bay offers equally fine sand and equally good bathing, and the lack of facilities of any sort means it’s rarely as busy as its neighbour. Not so long ago, St Kitts was known as “the Caribbean the way it used to be”. A spate of development over the past decade or so has rendered that description pretty much redundant, but Banana Bay is very much St Kitts the way it used to be. An ideal choice for a quiet beach picnic or just a lazy, laidback day of sun and sand.

Garry Steckles is an editor and writer; he is the author of Bob Marley: A Life (2009) and has been a regular visitor to St Kitts for more than 30 years