Dominica January 16-17

Arriving in Dominica a few days ago, I had no idea what to expect.  A volcanic island apparently NOT the Dominican Republic, that everyone had been pronouncing domin-EE-ca off the Northern coast of South America posed nothing but mystery to me.  The presentation done at the pre-port meeting focused mostly on nature, which I have to say was pretty accurate.  Since I assume most of you haven’t heard of Dominica before either, I’ll include some

Background:

Dominica is a small island in the Caribbean which officially speaks English but also has two other main languages popularly spoken among it’s inhabitants being Creole or Patois, as well as an English dialect.  As one tour guide put it, “they tried to speak French and it didn’t work, so they created Creole,” which is essentially broken French.  Their dialect (most commonly spoken) is much like a shortened version of English essentially like an oral cursive, and definitely takes some getting used to to understand.

The country gained independence in the 1970s from England and mainly served as a sort of slave haven during the days of Caribbean exploit of the sugar cane.  The volcanic island seems to be extremely fertile for every kind of flora and fauna EXCEPT sugar cane; and because of this, neither the French nor English concerned themselves much with the country during their half-hearted conflicts over colonization over the island.  Because of the general lack of interest, many escaped slaves created “marooned communities” where they were safe from the life of harsh slavery.  It’s also the ONLY island in the Caribbean whose indigenous people survived colonization without being completely wiped out.  The Carib-Indian culture in Dominica remains strong in a community on the Eastern side of the island.

Dominica is also the “greenest” country in the world.  This means it’s not only physically green, but environmentally green.  They have the purest water (coming from 365 rivers flowing through the land), little pollution problems, and stronger environmental laws then traffic laws.  Many Dominicans begin operating cars by around age 10, and there are no speed limits or traffic lights on many of the roads, which many have turns so sharp that all cars honk before turning to warn others of their presence.  They make great use of their immense natural resources and are certainly an environmental role model for the rest of the world.

My Experiences:

The morning of arrival, I woke up with some time to kill before my first arranged side trip through SAS.  Walking around the capitol Roseau, we took a lot of pictures and got an essential lay of the land until a cab pulled up with some other kids from SAS and invited us to ride with them up to the top of a steep mountain.  The roads were WILD, but when we got to the top, the view was phenomenal.  After spotting a few men in military uniforms, we discovered another viewpoint nearby where we encountered a lot of sweaty SAS people who had hiked all the way to this point, and continued to hike back down in the route that many of them took ending up in the botanical gardens, which were very nice.

After not finding an internet café to upload pics and update my blog in the morning, I continued to meet my group for an arranged side trip which was essentially an off-road jeep tour of the island.  Ironically, we went back to the same places I had been to before: the view point and botanical gardens, but it was nice to get a bit more information on the sites I had seen.  After that we went on a long and windy road to a hidden waterfall and river in which we got to swim through caves to get to the waterfall area.  Along the way we saw a few boiling ponds and lakes which serve as exhaust pipes for the volcano and keep it from erupting.  I wasn’t able to take pictures there because we had to swim to the waterfall, but if you’d like to see that area, check out Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man’s Chest, because apparently a majority of the film was shot in Dominica including the river within the cave.

The next day, Rachel and I wandered around the French Quarter of Roseau before returning to the meeting area for our second trips.  We stopped in a few souvenir shops, picked up post cards, talked with local people, and got some groceries to keep in our room for snacks.  Everyone was very nice and friendly; there were also a lot of very cool music stores all around town, which helped to draw attention to what seemed to be a very Rastafari-influenced culture.  It did start to rain a bit while walking around, which is to be expected of the rain forest, but still encouraged us to get to the sheltered meeting area early.  My group was doing a river-tubing tour where we also hiked through a rainforest/national park to the Emerald Pool (a waterfall and pool area so called because the heavy vegetation surrounding it reflects in the water making it appear green) which is also a main attraction in Dominica.  It was a short hike to the pool in the middle of beautiful rain forest which almost looked fake.  After that, we drove to a special point in what is the longest river on the island (I can’t remember the name), and got tubes and paddles to float down the river carried by the current which varied from lazy to intense.  It was a lot of fun and a great conclusion to my trip.