Journey Back In Time” Scenic Tour
(ZIZ News) – The St. Christopher National Trust is putting its final preparations in place to host the fourth “Journey Back in Time” National Heroes’ Day Scenic Tour.
The event will be held on board the St. Kitts Scenic Railway, this coming Wednesday.
Honorary Secretary on that organisation’s board, Ryllis Percival said it will be a tour with a difference, and will feature cultural presentations and information on the island’s heritage sites.
She said, “It is geared towards locals who want to come on the tour. It’s cheaper than the normal tour train cost, so we sell it at $80 for adults and $50 for children over three years. The tour is really an informative tour and filled with storytelling, history information, singing, music and questions about our history in terms of our heroes, or culture and so forth. So it’s really an informative, interesting journey back in time.”
She said the previous three events were highly successful, noting that for the first time, this year, cruise ship visitors will be part of the tour.
“I think it was a success because of the amount of persons that attended. We had about 150 persons coming on the tour. Now this year, we could only accommodate 120…because we’re only allotted three carts because we have a ship in this year so we are sharing the train with visitors,” Percival stated, adding “we’re excited about that because what we are having is something different to what they normally have on the tour and so we think those visitors will have a very unique on this tour ride differently.”
According to Percival, the funds raised from the tour will go toward maintaining and restoring the island’s heritage sites.
She noted, “The (St. Christopher) National Trust is the keeper of our national sites and so it costs money for us to manage or maintain those sites. What we are in the process of doing is refurbishing the sites so they can now become tourists attractions where tourists can visit the sites and learn about what happened there. For instance, the Cayon Cotton Ginnery, where they made the cotton, and so we cleared that and that’s one of our sites and we also have Belmont Farm and certain other areas that we are responsible for upkeeping and maintaining, including our home at the Old Treasury Building. We’re doing some renovation work there and it’s costly and we would like to raise the funds to assist us.”
Tickets for the “Journey Back in Time Scenic Tour” are available at the National Museum which is located at the Old Treasury Building in Basseterre.
The train is scheduled to depart the station at 9am.