Dominica

Monday January 23 – Tuesday January 24, 2012

Day 5-6

Day 5:  As it has every morning, the sun woke us up at the crack of dawn regardless of our attempts to try to sleep past sunrise.  But this time when we woke up it was the endless ocean that we saw.  Instead we were already docked to a pier that extended out from the giant green mountains of Dominica!  Although I wish I could have seen us sailing toward Dominica, it was so cool to go to sleep at sea and then wake up with a volcanic island outside our window.  I’ve never seen anywhere that looked like Dominica.  It really was one great big set of mountains covered in rainforests.  Everything was green and colorful. 

            I threw a bathing suit and towel in my backpack as fast as possible and ran to go get in line to see our first stop around the world!  I had signed up four a tour and to float down the longest river on the island.  A group of us hoped in taxis and the first place they took us was somewhere called the Emerald Pool.  It was about a 20 minute drive through the craziest roads ive ever been on.  Our guide was telling us that they didn’t really have many driving laws in Dominica and if you could drive here than you could drive just about anywhere else in the world… I would definitely have to agree.  In Dominica it is perfectly legal to drink and drive, there are no speed limits, no stop signs, and no stoplights.  But if you are caught littering you could be fined $5,000 or put in jail for a year!  Sounds extreme but I certainly didn’t see one piece of trash the entire time.  We made it to the Emerald Pool after the 20 min drive and a short walk through the rainforest.  The Emerald Pool was a small pool surrounded with rocks and a small waterfall pouring into it.  Whoever named the pool was dead on because the water really was an emerald color.  I had never seen water that looked like that.  So after a quick deep in the freezing cold water we threw our clothes back on and got back in the vans.  Next they took us to the bank of the longest river in Dominica.  When I signed up for a river tubing trip I was picturing myself leisurely cruising down a natural version of a lazy river getting a nice sun tan.  When I got out of they van I was handed a life jacket, helmet, and paddle and I 

I quickly realized this was no lazy river trip.  The river wasn’t super rough but in was pretty intense for sitting in small inner tubes!  The water was freezing and was completely water logged by the time we reached the end of our trip down the river.  The river literally went through the rainforest for most of the time and at other parts it was just mountains shooting straight up on either side.  In addition, the guides had fresh cocoanut, fruit, sugarcane, and rum punch waiting for us at the end of our journey.  These two things alone would have made for an amazing day, but that was only the beginning.  After we drove back into Roseau, which is the small capital of Dominica, we walked all around town in our soaking wet clothes.  We walked through the market and stopped at a restaurant for lunch and ended up trying an assortment of crazy flavored rums including one with a dead snake in it.  There aren’t really beaches in Dominica since it’s a volcanic island but towards the end of our wandering we saw people jumping off a pier into the ocean.  I have never seen water clearer than the ocean in Dominica.  Literally the clearest water I’ve ever seen.  Before we knew it tons of other Semester at Sea-ers also discovered the pier and we had spent nearly 3 hours just floating in the WARM ocean.  Around 5 we headed back into town and looked for a cheap hotel for a group of us to stay the night.  We booked a room at “La Flamboyant” and headed back to the ship to get ready to go out.  That night we went to a local bar called JR’s which happened to be right across the street from our colorful hotel.  We met a ton of great girls from the trip at JRs who we ended up hanging out with for the rest of the time in Dominica.  At JRs we also hung out with a ton of cab drivers! Haha It doesn’t sound safe at all but they take advantage of the absence of a no drinking a driving rule.  The cab drivers were some of the nicest and most friendly people we met on the island.  Yes, it was probably because they wanted our business, but they charged us one dollar a person and stayed with us for the entire night taking us anywhere and everywhere we wanted to go.

Day 6:  The next morning we woke up around 7:45am and did the 40 minute walk from La Flamboyant hotel back to the MV Explorer.  The town was bustling bright and early because everyone was setting up for the day.  Right when we made it back to the ship we met up with a group to go hiking through the rainforest to a 400 ft waterfall.  It was about a 30 minute drive down winding dirt roads to get to where the hike began.  Once again I did not think that this would be a very strenuous activity… this time I was EXTREMELY wrong.  It was about a 4 mile hike through the rainforest, and when I say rainforest I actually mean mountainous rainforest.  Parts of this hike seriously involved climbing rocks at an unimaginably steep incline.  I’m not surprised to say that when I woke up the next day ever part of my body was so soar!  Basically it was so hard I almost had to whip out my inhaler!  I am an outdoorsy person, but hiking the mountains isn’t exactly an activity Charlestonians get to partake in every day.  Trust me, it was hard.  So right about when I though I was going to die we finally reached the waterfall!  The waterfall was the biggest and most amazing thing I’ve seen in a long time!  I threw off my clothes as fast as I could because after that long hot and humid hike all I wanted was to jump in so cool water.  It wasn’t 30 seconds after getting there that I jumped off the 20 foot ledge into the water.  I thought the water had been cold at the Emerald pool… but this literally was the COLDEST water EVER!  I seriously thought my heart was going to stop beating!  The waterfall was so big that we couldn’t swim under it.  The current kept pushing everyone back so that no one could get very close to it!  After that the hike back seemed so much shorter.  On our way back it started pouring down rain.  When it first started raining we could here it hitting the tops of the trees but for about 5 minutes we weren’t even getting wet because the rainforest was so thick.  I looked like a total mess by the end of the hike and my legs and arms would not stop trembling uncontrollably, but who knew that I would have the time of my life getting covered in mud while hiking through the rainforest in the rain.  I loved everything about Dominica!  Once reason I think was because it was nothing like somewhere like Nassau.  Tourism is the island’s number one industry but you would never know based on the feel and look of the city.  No commercial feel whatsoever. 

“Do not follow where the path may lead. Go instead where there is no path and leave a trail.”