Dominica #3 - Land Tour

At the mouth of the River, Eric/Spaghetti delivered us to Ken/Uncle Sam and his taxi, where Stuart and Susie were waiting on us, so we took off promptly for the all day drive through the countryside.

While other islands to the south and north are dry, Dominica is lush.  Very lush.  It's high mountains trap the moisture in the clouds and it rains regularly, particularly in the interior.  Probably because development has been kept low key with no great tracts of modern housing,  resorts or golf courses cutting away the forest, they do not seem to be having the rainfall shortage other islands are experiencing.  

One is hardly out of Portsmouth without Sam pointing right and left at all the different kinds of vegetation crowding the roadway -- fruits here, vegetables there, and flowers all over! With our being from semi-tropical homelands or Florida and Stuart and Susie being from Australia, not to mention everybody's years sailing in the tropics, a majority of Dominica's plants are familiar: hibiscus and heliconia, parrot's beak and bird of paradise, bouganvillea and crotons, agapanthus and bamboo, papaya, mango, breadfruit, and banana, coco and coffee and even lemongrass. Still, the chaotic crowd of it all is impressive, and Sam's proud display was knowledgeable, especially when he augmented it with Latin names.

The road, while not an interstate, is good.  Like many things, it is thanks to financial and development support from China!  China has a surprisingly big presences in the Caribbean in fishery, agriculture and education. (Our cab driver in St Lucia's daughter was in Taiwan on a scholarship!)

We crossed the island through the gorge that funnels the trade winds into Portsmouth and our anchorage.  Sam rooks us on side streets through villages precipitously crammed on steep hillsides.  We emerge on the east coast where the Atlantic gnaws against the shore leaving isolated islets and rocks standing off shore.   Ironically, given the morning's strong winds back in the anchorage, we all expected the Atlantic seas to be rough as snot, but it wasn't.  

After many photo op stops, we came down to Calabishi, a village at sea level and stopped for an excellent lunch right on the beach.

 Then we continued on to the Carib Indian territory where we stopped to buy souvenirs.  I still use  Carib baskets bought twenty years ago....and I still want the big ones I have no way of getting home. I didn't buy them, sigh.  At least we're not from Australia like Stuart and Susue who must assume Aussie quarantine restrictions will take any such thing away when they go home!

 Dominica has one highway that goes all the way around the island and three or four that cross the mountains.  After the Carib territory, we turned inland and climbed steeply, passing copra sheds, old sugar mill ruins, and more sights that Johnny Depp's presence has unread into a landmark.  

Our actual destination was a waterfall for fresh water swimming.  but, of course that's when it started to pour, so we all begged off.  

Instead the boys persuade Sam to stop at a beach side bar on the way back up the west coast, where we met several Ex-pats, living the life of the retired, the male of which species threatened to lower his drawers to demonstrate some biblical comment about parting the seas.  Hmmmm?  perhaps been there too long and had too many Haroun beers.

Our last stop was an IGA grocery in a town just south of Portsmouth which also hosts an American Medical school. The campus looked pretty modern, but it was so strange to suddenly be amongst a pod of young white American students.

Back about 6pm with our groceries, San present each boat with a fistful of a fragrant fresh lemongrass,  a pineapple, and a bouquet of tropical flowers he'd collected along the way.