Dominica

 Monday March 24 - Dominica

Dominica (not to be confused with the Dominican Republic, which is a completely different country!) is a volcanic island that is nicknamed “The Nature Isle of the Caribbean”.  It has nine volcanos and 2/3 of the island is covered in rainforest. There are also over 365 rivers and an abundance of waterfalls!

Roseau is the capital city on the west coast of Dominica and the most important port in Dominica for foreign trade. The population of Dominica is about 66,000 people.

Driving through Roseau

We’ve been here before but don’t remember it at all. I have a vague recollection of taking a tour and stopping at Mr. Nice’s fruit stand to try star fruit… but that is literally all I can remember. This is why we blog now. I want to remember what we did!

We took a Princess excursion. Most of the tours go to waterfalls. We looked at videos of the waterfalls, and after recently being in Norway and Iceland, we decided we didn’t need to see these waterfalls. (It's quite likely that we saw them last time!)

We decided to take a tour that went on a “scenic drive” to the Botanical Gardens and then ended at the Natural Hot Springs, which are rumoured to make you look 5-10 years younger… we shall see.

The Princess tours were actually fairly reasonably priced. I was pleasantly surprised about this because cruise ship tours are becoming ridiculously expensive. I think this one was only $60 per person, which I think is quite reasonable.

Our tour guide and driver were quite good and told us lots of interesting facts about Dominica. (You know I’ve already forgotten them! Luckily Professor Google can fill in the holes if I have any burning questions!)

On the tour minibus

One fact that I do remember is that the island was first colonized by the French. Then the English fought with them and took control. Finally they gained independence as a country in 1978. 

Side note: Being an English colony explained why they drive on the left hand side of the road.

Our first stop was a viewpoint in an area called Morne Bruce. It had a gorgeous panoramic view of the capital city, Roseau, and the Caribbean Sea. This area was once home to the military garrison that protected Roseau. 

The view from Morne Bruce

Our second stop was the Botanical Garden, which was very close to Morne Bruce. This was more like a park with some trees in it and a parrot sanctuary which you could look at through a fence.

The guide was quite proud of her trees and pointed out the interesting places. Of note was a Baobab Tree that fell on a school bus (don’t worry nobody was on the bus!) in a hurricane in 1979. Apparently the Canadian government had gifted Dominica a school bus. It was used ONE time and then there was a hurricane and a tree fell on the bus! 

She also showed us their national tree which is covered in beautiful red flowers (but not right now), a banyan tree, a tree that is always covered in hummingbirds (but not right now) and a cool little bamboo grove. Her claim is that girls from the secondary school come to this very place to have their first kiss and then they carve their initials in the bamboo. It is said if the bamboo grows long and strong then so will their relationship.

Just outside the bamboo grove

Next we saw the parrot conservancy. We could barely see the parrots (you had to look through a fence, and they were clearly not interested in showing themselves today!), but did see another interesting looking bird.

Next we drove to the Hot Springs. It is back in the rainforests of Dominica and the roads were sometimes good and sometimes bad and included several nail-biting switchbacks which included passing vans coming the other way on a road not built for two lanes. Nevertheless, our excellent driver kept us safe and even pulled over to pick some lemongrass for us to smell along the way. (It was very fragrant)

When we got to the Hot Springs (which the strong sulphur smell let us know were natural springs) there were three pools to try out. They were all quite warm and sulphury 😀 We tried each one (even the one with the broken railing that had a long rusty nail sticking out of it) and enjoyed ourselves immensely. Now do we actually look 5-10 years younger? Not yet? Maybe it takes a while to take feel the full effect?

After this we headed back to the ship, bought some postcards in the little market at the pier (I’ve decided to buy five postcards in every port because I have five years of teaching left, and then I’ll have one for sharing with my students each year 😀)

Once back on the ship we had some lunch, did some laundry (they have self serve laundry, which I loved!)  and relaxed the afternoon away.

We had another lovely dinner in the dining room and then called it a day. 

There was an 80’s party on the pool deck but it appeared to just be people learning a line dance to “Let’s Hear it for the Boy” so we carried on to our stateroom.

We have another longer tour in St. Kitt’s tomorrow which I am really looking forward to.