St Kitts & Nevis, St. Kitts & Nevis

Golden Rock Inn

Price per night from$285.71

Price information

If you haven’t entered any dates, the rate shown is provided directly by the hotel and represents the cheapest double room (including tax) available in the next 60 days.

Prices have been converted from the hotel’s local currency (USD285.71), via openexchangerates.org, using today’s exchange rate.

Style

Sugar and spice

Setting

Gingerland jungle

Set on the slopes of Mount Nevis on a teeny-tiny island, Golden Rock Inn is a hilltop hideaway nestled into the jungle, which overlooks the Caribbean Sea. A cluster of brightly painted cottages and former sugar mills have been transformed by appropriately named landscape architect Raymond Jungles and filled with souvenirs from the artist-owners’ Helen and Brice Marden's globetrotting. The meandering paths connecting the cottages are roamed by friendly feral donkeys, who share their vermilion- and indigo-painted home with wilder critters and the Inn’s handful of lucky guests.

 

Smith Extra

Get this when you book through us:

A glass of the inn’s famous rum punch on arrival, plus afternoon tea with shortbread and one glass of prosecco each

Facilities

Photos Golden Rock Inn facilities

Need to know

Rooms

11, including three suites, scattered across the grounds in villas and standalone cottages.

Check–Out

Noon. Earliest check-in 3pm, but if your room is ready earlier the hotel is happy to accommodate.

Prices

Double rooms from £253.45 ($320), including tax at 12 per cent. Please note the hotel charges an additional service charge of 12% per booking on check-out.

More details

Rates include à la carte breakfast with island favourites such as Nevisian-style omelettes, Caribbean French toast, eggs any way, pancakes, parfait, fruit and yoghurt, washed down with rich coffee and fresh tropical juices.

Also

All payments include a 10 per cent service charge. The hotel has several hiking trails nearby, including the Source hiking route which heads up Mount Nevis to a natural spring; the chance to spot wild monkeys alone makes it worth packing your walking shoes.

Hotel closed

The hotel is closed annually from the middle of August until early October.

At the hotel

Freshwater swimming pool; gardens; on-site parking; free WiFi throughout. In rooms: cafetière and local coffee, free bottled water, skin-friendly insect repellent, Le Labo bath products.

Our favourite rooms

All rooms are comfortable and colourful, decorated in a traditional West Indian style with no tech-y distractions like TVs (only four rooms have them), air-conditioning or phones. Appropriately named and impossibly romantic, Paradise Cottage is the stuff of holiday-hideaway dreams. Cut from ash-grey local stone, the freestanding cottage has a large back terrace shielded from prying eyes by a stand of bamboo and views towards Windward Beach. Two-storey Sugar Mill is named after the old conical mill building it’s set in; it’s ideal for families with room for up to four guests.

Poolside

Resting between the treetops swaying in a jungly mist above the hotel, greenery declining away to the sea below: the pool is in a scenic spot. It’s the ideal backdrop for Instagrammable bikini snaps. Refreshing rather than heated, the freshwater pool is fed by a spring and surrounded by boughs of bougainvillea and hibiscus; palms overhead provide shade.

Packing tips

Bring your driving licence. Nevis is easy to explore and hire cars are cheap and readily available (keep to the left).

Also

Wheelchair access is limited due to the hotel’s hilly location and the steps, rocky paths and cobbles throughout the grounds.

Children

All ages are welcome, and baby cots are available. Because of the hotel’s cobblestone walkways, steps and rocks the property isn’t accessible with a pushchair. Extra beds can be added to some rooms for $50 a night (subject to availability).

Sustainability efforts

Where possible, the hotel uses locally-sourced, seasonal, free-range and organic produce in its restaurant. All cleaning products and bath products are ecologically sound, including skin-friendly insect repellent.

Food and Drink

Photos Golden Rock Inn food and drink

Top Table

All meals are served alfresco on dining decks overlooking the sea, but the hotel also has secluded supper spots around the grounds, such as inside the pavilion.

Dress Code

Blend in with brights or stand out in gauzy white linen; the restaurant is as colourful as the rest of the hotel.

Hotel restaurant

The Rocks is renowned across the island for its modern take on Caribbean cuisine. Designed by architect Ed Tuttle (the man behind Aman hotels’ much-loved minimalism), the indoor-outdoor eatery overlooks the gardens and reflecting pools, which sparkle in the sun by day, and are lit with hundreds of oil lamps by night. Chef Ricky Finch’s contemporary Caribbean comfort food focuses on seafood, such as the hotel’s famous lobster sandwich, coconut-curried shrimps or grilled mahi-mahi with orange and clove. Fish-phobes can try spicy savouries like jerk pork with corn fritters and sizzling chicken roti, accompanied by an impressive selection of wines by the bottle.

 

Hotel bar

The cool, cave-like setting of the hotel’s bar is ideal for escaping the sun and sampling a glass of fiery, house-rum-laced punch, ubiquitous across the island. Pull up a spindly-legged stool in the vaulted former sugar mill and try the potent signature cocktail, the Mount St Helena (Absolut vodka, jalapeño, fresh rosemary, lime and cranberry juice).

 

Last orders

A la carte breakfast is served 8am–10.30am and lunch is a leisurely 11.30am–3pm. Night owls will need to adjust their timings accordingly as dinner is served 6pm–9pm. The bar opens at 10am and closes at the end of dinner service.

Location

Photos Golden Rock Inn location
Address
Golden Rock Inn
Golden Rock Inn, Charlestown
West Indies
Saint Kitts and Nevis

Part of Golden Rock Inn’s charm is its secluded location, so getting there might take a little longer than other islands in the Caribbean.

Planes

Fly to Robert L Bradshaw International Airport (SKB) on neighbouring St Kitts and from there take a ferry or water taxi to Nevis. The hotel can also arrange a roundtrip transfer service via speedboat (for $175 per person). Transfers to and from the ports are included and the transfer time is roughly one hour. Nevis is well connected to the USA and Caribbean Islands via smaller airlines and ferry services. Alternatively, fly direct to one of the larger Caribbean Islands such as Antigua or St Maarten, around a 30-minute journey, with Winair, Tradewind or LIAT.

Automobiles

You can easily hail a taxi on the island, but to make the most of the rugged scenery and blissfully secluded location you’ll want to hire a car. Find a car-hire kiosk at the airport or enquire at the hotel, who can arrange for car to be delivered to you. The car hire company will help you obtain a local driving license which costs $25. Once you’ve arrived, driving around the various beachy towns and jungle settlements is a breeze.

Other

Fly into St Kitts and take a taxi from outside baggage claim to the ferry terminal at Basseterre for a scenic, 45-minute crossing to Nevis ($11). Otherwise, book a private water taxi with the hotel to cross the two-mile channel; sailing from St Kitts to Oualie Beach in the north of Nevis takes about 30 minutes and costs a flat fare of $80 for up to four people. A taxi driver will meet you on the Nevis side for the drive to the hotel.

Worth getting out of bed for

Submerged in lush, colourful jungle and overlooking the sparkling waters of the Caribbean, Nevis is topped off by a slumbering volcano and ringed by dreamy white sand beaches – in short, it’s the stuff of Caribbean fantasies. Lesser-visited than its more travel-accessible neighbour St Kitts, Nevis is an island of simple pleasures. Hiking boots are a suitcase essential for exploring the local jungle and only your most colourful swimwear will do for lazing on local beaches. Drive 20 minutes north and you’ll find the blissfully soft sands of Newcastle and Nisbet beaches, the ultimate contrast to the tangled greenery of the interior. In the same amount of time you could head west to the tiny capital, Charlestown, or the golf courses and manicured lawns of the Four Seasons Resort.

Local restaurants

Bananas Restaurant has a lush tropical setting and equally exotic Caribbean fare, with guava-glazed barbecued ribs, mahi-mahi fishcakes with passionfruit nam pla and banana crème brûlée.

 

Local bars

Pinney’s Beach is home to arguably the most famous watering hole on the island, Sunshines Bar & Grill, which hosts monthly Full Moon parties and nightly bonfires. Take a seat on the sands and watch the sunset while sipping a Killer Bee cocktail (loaded with rum, of course) and a fresher-than-fresh Caribbean lobster.

Reviews

Photos Golden Rock Inn reviews

Anonymous review

Every hotel featured is visited personally by members of our team, given the Smith seal of approval, and then anonymously reviewed. As soon as our reviewers have returned from this boutique hotel in Nevis and unpacked their duty-free rum and hot pepper sauce, a full account of their Caribbean break will be with you. In the meantime, to whet your wanderlust, here's a quick peek inside Golden Rock Inn in Nevis…

New York escape artists Helen and Brice Marden have created a masterpiece in Golden Rock Inn, a riotously colourful island hotel splashed across unspoilt jungle on the tiny isle of Nevis. They've  concocted a winning holiday formula; the pool shimmers magnificently, like an island amid the greenery, the cottages are cool and calming, with restful terraces, and dining largely consists of fresh seafood in innovative dishes. Any serenity-spoiling distractions are done away with: there are few TVs, no noisy air-conditioning or ringing phones… However, the hotel’s WiFi-connected, so you can switch on or off as you please. You’ll likely choose ‘off’ mode – monkeys swinging through the jungle canopy, tree frogs croaking and twittering birds entice you to put the devices down and enjoy the scenery.

 
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Price per night from $285.71