When we woke up on Wednesday we were in port at Dominica, which is called the rain forest of the Caribbean. All the islands have a lot of trees and forest up at the higher areas. Dominica was all jungle with a house occasionally peeking through the green. They get 200-400 inches of rain a year!
Our exploring plan worked out pretty well on Grenada so we decided to do the same thing on Dominica. We found a taxi driver that took just the four of us on a tour. He drove around and showed us different views of the islands. We ended up at Trafalgar Falls. After a short hike the trail opens up to a little look out area and there are two beautiful waterfalls right by each other. You could stay there or walk down and climb around in the water and rocks. So we did. We climbed and explored for a while, we found a small pool that we all got in to refresh ourselves. It was cold, but how many times do you have the opportunity to take a swim in a river on the island of Dominica?!
Next on the tour was some of the islands hot springs. They have one as big as a football field but we didn’t have time for that one. They get a lot of mud and minerals that are good for your skin from their hot springs. They were trying to rub it on us the whole time we were there. It goes on gray then dries to brown. Someone tried to give us a tattoo with it with a leaf. A sneaky old man rubbed some on my arm when I was walking by and I had a brown blotch on my arm for the rest of the day. Dominica was the place we felt like we were being haggled the most. You couldn’t walk two feet without someone wanting to sell you something. I tried to just avoid eye contact because I was not very good at saying no. I decided to not carry any cash on me after I spent two dollars on a paper flower made of crepe paper so some little girls could go to school so I could just say I didn’t have any money. A little bit later a guy with a guitar started following Sherri and I around singing a made up song about how our husbands looked like Tom Cruise and Bruce Willis. I told him I didn’t have any money and he said that Ryan and Kenny had told them to come find us and sing his song after he sang it to them because we had the money. 🤦♂️
After the hot springs we asked our driver to take us to a beach. Dominica isn’t as well known for its beaches as some of the other islands we visited but he said he would take us to one that was actually a black sand beach. I thought that was pretty cool because I had never been to a black sand beach before. It sticks to you more than white sand. The waves were black too which I did not expect and looked pretty cool. We rented a little palm tree shade area and some chairs to relax in. This beach was the first place we saw pelicans. They were flying and around us and diving for their food. All of us swam and took a nap on our chairs. I spent way to long trying to catch a pelican diving on camera. It was a wonderful afternoon.
After a few hours at the beach we headed back to the boat a little early. After we changed Sherri and I went to the rock climbing wall. We were the only ones there so we raced a few times and then tried the harder climbs. It took me a few tries but I was finally able to get to the top of the hardest one.