Blogs from Roseau, Dominica, Central America Caribbean - page 2

Waiti-kubuli, “Tall is her body” in Carib (the indigenous peoples of the land), was renamed Dominica when “discovered” by Columbus… surprisingly enough, on a Sunday. Luckily its geography prevented it, for the most part, from the fate of many of the other islands in the Caribbean. With an active volcano and mountainous terrain, the conditions were not conducive to slave-dependent sugar cane crops. And while this island was not completely immune to the woes of colonization, the peoples of Waiti-kubuli were fortunate enough that the rugged mountainous terrain insulated them from many of the all too common woes faced by the tribes of the islands around them. With areas of this small island averaging over 200 inches of rain a year, the landscape is peppered with tremendous waterfalls and 365 rivers winding their way across the ... read more

Last I wrote was a while ago – we were in Bequia – I can’t remember when that was date-wise. I guess I’ve lost that sense of time on the ship now; people speak of time in regards to geographic places, like: “Remember the last time we ran naked with burning palm fronds?” – “When was that?” – “Mangareva.” So where have we been since Bequia . . . hm. Having left the Caribbean a couple days ago and the tropics yesterday (twas a sad day) the islands seem a blurr. After Bequia . . . oh! Dominica! We had a short stop in Dominica which requires MUCH more time to explore beyond the evening and day off I had during our stop there. Dominica is HUGE and LUSH – known for its ecotourism. We luckily ... read more

We drove down the coast road to Roseau on Monday morning, checked into the Garroway hotel and parked our car in a position where we could drive out forwards (reverse gear is still not working – but that's another story). Then we just followed the sound of the music. At 11.30 the T-shirt bands were already pumping music through the streets. We grabbed a rum punch to kick off the day, found some lunch and then joined in the fun. It was great – we popped back to the hotel every so often to chill (and rest my knee) and then back again for another session in the streets. The huge articulated lorries carried the live bands, with speakers piled high on the back booming music to a stream of fans all dressed in the same ... read more

Clem drove us to Dive Dominica today. We boarded a boat and went to Champagne Bay. After a couple of hours snorkeling at Champagne, we sailed west towards Martinique to go whale-watching. A guide swam with us in Champagne, pointing the various marine organisms. We saw a sea cucumber, swam over a wrecked British ship, and enjoyed the warm bubbles that give Champagne Bay its name. During our whale-watching trip, our captain would continuously stop the boat and place this device in the water used for listening to whales. He would then follow the direction of their sounds, until we finally saw a sperm whale breaching. We followed her for a while and caught glimpses of what was probably her calf. The first whale was almost 9 m long. Journal Entry 20: 06/13/10 Today was our ... read more

Clem picked us up at 8:30 this morning and we went on about an hour’s drive to Freshwater Lake. The drive was amazing because we reached 2000 ft. in elevation and had great views of the island. Dr. Lacher pointed out the peak we will be climbing on Wednesday to reach Boiling Lake. We walked around Freshwater Lake for awhile before beginning our hike to Boeri Lake. The hike was pretty treacherous - the rocks were very slippery and the climb was pretty steep. It lasted about 45 min. and we finally reached Boeri Lake. The type of vegetation there was mountainous - we were at roughly 2800 ft. above sea level. There were several melastomes around Freshwater Lake ranging in sizes - one melastome was so small that we could not see the distinct venations ... read more