| Oh Dominica! What a beautiful island. We have promised ourselves that we’ll come back here. We needed a couple more weeks. The rainforests are nothing less than magnificent. You can hike from the South to the North. It takes two weeks and we’d like to do that. Sleeping in the rainforest at night (bit worried about the boa constrictors though). We visited waterfalls, a gorge, bubbling sulphur pools and smoking caves, but had to leave the Boiling Lake, which is a huge bubbling volcanic crater, until next time. Gina swam in the Ti Tou Gorge – in through the rock crevice to the internal waterfall. Apparently it’s featured in Pirates of the Caribbean II, but we’re getting on and can’t remember movie details. The enormous force of the water being pushed out through the three to ten-foot wide crevice means you have to literally walk horizontally along the rock walls and pull yourself forward with your hands against the current. The bubbles created by the waterfall make you feel like you’re in a shook-up bottle of champagne and the sound is deafening. When you get really close to the waterfall which is about 50 metres in (but feels like miles because you’ve used so much energy to get there), you are so awe-struck that you accidently let go of the wall and wham, you’re pushed out with the full force of the water through the narrow winding hole and all you can see ahead through the narrow opening is the brilliant green rainforest until you are literally thrown out into the sunlight. It can never sound as exhilarating as it feels. Incredible! We moved on all too soon and were so unbelievably lucky that our next stop was Les Saintes, a small group of French islands below the main island of Guadeloupe. No cars allowed, just electric golf buggies/bikes and the atmosphere of a typical French village. Unfortunately Gina didn’t get to see too much of Les Saintes because she had a bad case of hangover after a night on Rum Punch. Some people never learn. They actually list Rum Punch in the Caribbean Pilot under “Dangers”. It even ranks ahead of the Boa Constrictors. Unlike the Med, we actually get to sail here. Wind direction is predictable and strength generally varies between 15-25 knots. Crossing between the islands can be uncomfortable with the swell coming straight through from the Atlantic, but the distance is manageable – maximum about 45 nm. We’re cruisers, so we don’t put unnecessary stresses on our boat and tend to move about at an average 5 knots. So island crossings are more vigorous than we’re used to. We put a couple of reefs in the main and often bring in a bit of the genoa, but still we get up to 8.5 knots if the swells aren’t too bad. Since we’ve been here we’ve only used the engine 10% of the time and that sure is a change from the Med where we were lucky to have to sail up that much. We were ignorant of the fact that each of the Caribbean islands is a different country so we have to check in and out of each island with Customs and Immigration and the procedures can be really simple or long hand-written forms in triplicate with fees to match. It also means we are changing currencies a couple of times a week. The islands use Eastern Caribbean dollars (EC$) and/or US$ or Euro(€) and prices vary widely. The French islands are best for wine, but everything else is more expensive. Now we are in Antigua, where the water is again the colour of the Bombay Sapphire Gin bottles and bottom is pure white sand. |
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AuthorLenny & Gina Archives
February 2015
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