Blogs from Dominica, Central America Caribbean - page 2

1/23/12 I am currently 4 hours ahead of California and 3 hours ahead of Colorado. Since the Bahamas we have traveled 785 nautical miles. Waking up today there was much excitement throughout the ship to get off for the first time, at the first port and explore. I packed my towel, snorkel, mask, and underwater camera in my backpack. I grabbed a hat, my money belt and camera, put on some sunscreen and headed up stairs to meet up with Anna Sophia for breakfast and then to go exploring in Roseau. Where we were ported was beautiful! The view off the back deck of the ship was a steep green mountainside with all different colored houses and a steep road built into it. At the very top right hand side of this mountain was some sort ... read more

Somehow this blog from May was never published. So take yourself back to spring and here are our final thoughts before returning from Dominica... There has been lots of rain so our snorkelling trips were delayed due to murky water but we still got out there as much as we could. The Reef Fish book comes out after each trip to check on new fish we have seen. Life at the house is still wonderful, and as trees come into bloom we watch the small colourful birds – including lots of humming birds - darting around. The local Zandoli tree-lizards continue to be a favourite to watch and Andy spends his evenings gazing at the ceiling and our unpaid cleaning staff – the house geckos hunting insects. Son continues to help us with our ever expanding ... read more

Never can you have so much fun with so little effort! Just sit back and let the river take you - this is not an extreme sport! We were taken very good care of by Malin and David from River Tubing Dominica - rivertubingda@hotmail.com - from the tubes being brought down to the river to managing the floating bar (a coolbox with its own tube). Periods of calm drifting and gentle chats with other floaters were broken by bursts of speed along narrower stretches, usually involving bouncing off rocks and disorientating spinning. All this under the canopy of the rainforest without any sign of civilisation. So a couple of hours after leaving Hibiscus Cottages, after much laughing and squeeling, the occasional beer and a long stop at a beach en-route, we hauled our tubes out at ... read more

Our two-week cruise came to an end, if you ask me, way too early. Our last stop was the small island of Dominica. We decided to not do a tour today but just took the shuttle to the inner city of the capital, Roseau. We had enough time to walk around the city, did some last souvenirshopping and reached the harbour of the city, where a huge american cruiseship had arrived. This day was very hot and the small city started to be flooded with the tourists, so we decided to head back to the ship. The ship left a bit early and we said good-bye to our last stop. The next day was another passageday and on Saturday we arrived at the harbour of La Romana, Dominican Rep. again. In the afternoon we started our ... read more

Well we are here in Mango Lodge and tonight all seems right with the world. We arrived on Monday and it’s now Sunday - we’ve had a few things to sort out but hey ho that’s life. It’s funny but you feel lucky if your luggage arrives with you at the airport. The added bonus was that our car was ready to pick up from our friendly mechanic, it started first time and he’d even cleaned it!! Bonus!! We drove to the house and there it was Mango Lodge all in one piece, and not blown away by a hurricane - anything else is manageable. The things we had to sort out seem long ago now, but basically they were: No cooking gas for 4 days - one empty gas cylinder and our spare cylinder has ... read more