Dominica - part 1

I'm a terrible blogger. I have been putting off this post because I wanted to be able to post lots of awesome photos with it. But that is a bit more work than I'm up to right now.. so.. one last bit about St. Kitts, which we were on for two days in July before flying to Dominica, and then I'll move on and post about Dominica!

Thursday morning we drove out to the peninsula on St Kitts to see the “good” beaches. We were still unimpressed. The beaches lacked the nice white sand and calm crystal clear aqua water of the Virgin Islands. We met a local who was going spear fishing – he sells the fish he catches. He had just parked and was walking barefoot carrying his speargun, fins, etc to another beach about 2 miles away. (We didn't ask but we guessed he was swimming back which is why he left his shoes by his car.) Once we were done with photos, we offered him a ride. (“That would be much relief” he said.) As we arrived at Turtle Beach to drop him off and check out the area, we discovered a flat tire. Oops. My driving on rough dirt roads full of bumps and rocks didn’t make a good combination. Though the rental car was a bit of an island car – complete with a trunk we couldn’t open and a jack that wasn’t entirely operational, Dave changed the tire quickly and we headed back to the hotel on the spare. True to island business practices, though the rental car guy said it would only take about 5 minutes to return the car, nobody was at the return counter – for about an hour after we arrived. Much stress was involved, but it was resolved without too much screaming and we were on our way back on LIAT for a short hop to Antigua and then on to Dominica.

Dominica is an amazing island. We went there over the long July 4 weekend in 2006 and were excited to revisit the island for a full week this time. Dominica is one of the larger islands among the Lesser Antilles. It's 291 square miles and has about 71,000 people living there. About 3,000 Carib Indians live there, mostly in the middle of the island (basically the hard to reach areas) and they are the only pre-Columbian population remaining in the eastern Caribbean. The island is about halfway down the island chain between Puerto Rico and Trinidad and Tobago. It's very tropical and has a heavy rainfall. The place we stayed at in 2006 was the Papillote Wilderness Retreat, recommended in the 1000 Places To See Before You Die - Worldwide book. Papillote gets about 200 inches of rain per year - conveniently, it seems most of their rain arrives at night. Dominica seems to be one of the few islands around here that doesn't have a water shortage problem. There are ample rivers (they advertise they have one for each day of the year: 365), and many beautiful waterfalls. It's self-named "The Nature Island" and is considered an "alternative" Caribbean experience, as it's a good place to really escape and not just go sit on the beach.

Now, to really understand what we were anticipating upon our return to Dominica, I should probably just post what I drafted back in March 2007 for this blog, but failed to ever post it because I never finished the summary of what we actually did on the island. (Keep in mind I wrote it about 8 months after our trip - something about Dominica makes it susceptible to seriously delayed blog posts...) So the rest of this blog is the 2006 trip:

Driving in the Caribbean is generally an experience in itself. Driving on Dominica was perhaps an experience we both could have lived without. We paid our $15 each to be entitled to a temporary driver's license (no test required). We didn't want to be limited to only one of us driving. Another couple from St. Thomas had been on all of our LIAT flights too and were renting a car as well, so once we were all set, the four of us plus the car rental worker walked and walked along the dirt road to the rental cars. We decided to head straight to the hotel which was on the opposite side of the island. We opted for the most direct route - the road that cuts across the island. I took the wheel first - it was a bit strange at first because the driver's seat was on the right, and they drive on the left. So unlike in St. Thomas, the driver is in the middle of the road. It's like in the states, which you'd think would be fine and make sense.

However, the roads on Dominica were very narrow and had a gutter/trench/ditch along the left side of the road. Being on the right side of the car, it was hard to tell how much space I had before the left tire would fall into the gutter. For those of you who have been to St. Thomas, here's a perspective that might explain things - the step down from the states to St. Thomas in the quality/safety of the roads is pretty much the same as the step down from St. Thomas to Dominica. Dave shouted things like "AAAAH!!" and "WATCH OUT!" and "ROAD!!" while I tried to avoid hitting cars coming towards me. After some mild hysteria and tears on my part, and serious panic on both our parts, I figured out Dave wasn't yelling AT me, but was just trying to help me keep from running off the road. Yes, he thought I wasn't driving very well, but he wasn't screaming at me because of that. He seemed to believe me when I said I was doing the best I could. On St. Thomas, tourists often honk while going around blind corners. We don't bother there. On Dominica, I could have just left the horn on constantly, given how often I was hitting it. We did see some beautiful scenery, lots of rivers, TONS of trees, and many small Carib villages.

We went to two waterfalls. Papilotte was right near Trafalgar Falls - one of their most famous and perhaps most photographed waterfalls. It is a small falls compared to some of the others, but it is very accessible, with just a short walk to the falls from a nearby observation area on a road. Many of the cruise ships take their passengers to Trafalger and then to Papilotte for some local food. The other falls we went to required a 1.5 hour hike to reach - Middleham Falls. The trail through the rainforest was pretty good, with many parts of the trail made up of steps created from wood. We had to hop our way across a couple small streams, but we managed to avoid soaking our shoes. This tiny waterfall created one of those little steams. The lush green pictured below was everywhere.

Papillote had a meal plan option, which we were originally against - we wanted to try out lots of different restaurants to get a better flavor for the island. But we quickly decided we didn't want to be out driving after dark, so we ate breakfast and dinner at Papillote every day. They had two (very interesting) options each dinner. One night we tried rabbit... Our favorite was their appetizer called dasheen puffs. Dasheen is also known as taro. It's a root vegetable, and the puffs are made by boiling it and adding flour and spices and then frying them. They are light and fluffy. The leaves are used in kallaloo soup on St. Thomas. We also drank a Kubuli beer each night. Kubuli is a shortened form of the Carib name for the island - Wai' Ti Kubuli - which means how tall is her body. It's a long/tall island.