The Perfect Day

Today I had a perfect day. I won't go into excruciating detail (like some folks I know) but I'll tell you just a bit.
First...Rojay made the most delicious mango pancakes. They were sublime.
Then, Pancho picked us up at our boat at 10 AM for a 10 minute thrilling boat ride to a snorkeling site called Champagne Reef.



His boat is a heavy wooden boat, not unlike that of Martin, our tour guide in Portsmouth. The "boat boys" all have boats that are painted bright colors and have a heavy duty outboard on the back. We were flying! I like Pancho. He is quick to tell you he is married to a Belgian woman and his two boys, 4 & 7, are of mixed parentage. We flew by the seaside village in which there is a church and school which the boys attend.




He is cheerful and helpful and hustles all day with his VHF on and his cell phone going none stop. He is scooting all around the waters doing whatever he can to be useful and to earn some money. He took us to snorkel at Champagne Reef. It was amazing!! The reef is beautiful and the fish are great, but to see these streams of bubbles coming up all over the and when the sun is shining the bubbles all look like prisms of rainbow colors and to feel them against your skin was just so unusual and other worldly.




We were back at our boat by 11:30 and commenced a 3 hour cleaning job of the boat. This may seem like a queer thing to include in a perfect day but not really. The result is something I crave...order and cleanliness. And, there is a sense of accomplishment.
Then I lazed (or, "limed" as they say) the rest of the afternoon away reading and swimming and showering in our cockpit as the light faded from the sky. While I rewarded myself for a good days work with relaxation, Roger fixed several of our screens which had been damaged by a couple of felines. Sometimes during the afternoon Pancho came by and offered us two fresh fish just caught which we accepted. He cleaned and deboned them and we had that for dinner with fresh green beans and beets.
We leave for Martinique tomorrow. I will miss Dominica!

Victoria Falls, Dominica

SPECTACULAR. Our pictures will not do it justice. You just can't see the scale of the falls nor the power. It is the highest falls in Dominica and the flow of water is more than impressive.
But first, let me begin at the beginning. Sea Cat is Roseau's answer to Portsmouth's Martin. He has been a tour guide here in Roseau for many years and we engaged him to take us to Victoria Falls (actually going there was his choice when we asked him what we should do on our day tour with him). He has his own boat that picked us up and took us ashore to his dock in front of his house where there were 3 other couples, one with two boys, aged 8 & 9 all waiting to head up to Victoria Falls. This was at about 9:30 this AM. But don't think for a minute we head straight to the falls. Not here in Dominica where one must stop at least 4-6 times. There is just so much to see! First stop is at an overlook where we can see Roseau laid out in front of us.



Next we stop at a friends house where Sea Cat climbs a tree to send us down some guava to eat. He also opens a young coconut so we can not only drink the water, but eat some of the gel which, if left to age, would become the nut.

Next up is a small private guest house called Zandoli Inn where the view is breathtaking. When you stand on the patio and look out it just doesn't look real...definitely more like a painting.


Finally, a mere 2 hours or so after departing, we get to the point where we leave our van and begin the hike to the falls. This point is where Moses, in all his Rasta beauty, lives and will prepare lunch for us when we return. He is known as the "guardian" of the falls.

Now the hike. It is unbelievable! We are, essentially, climbing through a rain forest that looks like what I imagine The Garden of Eden must have looked like. It is the lushest and the wettest and the greenest place I've ever visited. The White River runs through it and we must cross it 5 times before we get to the falls.


The trip easily takes about an hour and it feels longer as the concentration required to scramble up and over rocks and tree trunks and roots that are bigger and taller than me as well as ford through the river when you can't see the bottom so you don't know if you'll be stepping on a rock or plunging 4 feet down is intense. And then you hear them...and then you begin to almost feel its spray...and then you see the falls. The picture at this link will give you a better sense of the scale of the falls. We took off shorts and T shirt and took the plunge. We followed Sea Cat to almost directly under the falls. I can't believe I did that. The roar was so loud one had to scream to be heard by the person right next to you. You had to hold on to the rocks around the perimeter of the pool created by the falls or you would just be swept away. And, it was cold!
I have to thank Sea Cat for his caution. He was very protective of me and watched to make sure I wouldn't fall and helped me cross and climb some of the more challenging points of the hike. I was so, so, so grateful I did all of this with no injury,
We arrived back at Moses's place for the most delicious potato soup served is a calabash bowl with spoons made of coconut.
There was more to the day...we went to a black sand beach

where we ate more coconut and ended the day at Emerald Pool.


I don't want to dilute the experience of the hike to Victoria Falls and the falls themselves by describing anything else.
I can only end today's post by emphasizing what an incredible day we had and what an incredible island is Dominica!

To and In Roseau, Dominica

We had planned to make mango pancakes for ourselves and the Volare people this morning but the propane ran out so we had to dink over and give them a rain check. We went to the market for veggies,and breakfast; marketing is so much fun.

We left at 10 and arrived in Roseau, Dominica's capital and by far its largest city, at 2. It took Roger 27 minutes, before departing, to attach, raise and secure our dinghy to its davit bar, and 17 to get it back down into the water at the end of the trip. These are times that he hopes to improve with practice.

The trip down the west coast of the island from near its north to near its south end, was about 20 miles and the winds were at our port side, but very gusty. The winds varied from five to eighteen knots. We used the full main and started and ended with the small jib but used the big genoa in the middle. The thing about wind from the side is that when it gets stronger and makes us go faster, it appears to come from further forward, and when it slows and we slow, it appears to come from aft of the beam. This means frequent trimming of the sails, which is a strenuous activity, so instead of adjusting our sails, we adjusted our course to keep the sails full, varying from slightly east of south to slightly west of it. Our boat speed varied from 3 to 7 knots. A big French flagged catamaran passed us and we gave chase, almost catching her until it was time to turn left to the anchorage.

This "bay" hardly merits that name. The water is plenty deep (we are moored in 50 feet of water a few hundred feet from the beach)


but while about two miles long between its "protecting" capes, the bay's crescent is less than 1/4 mile deep. It is totally exposed to winds from the west and roly when waves come from the north or south. We were approached by Pancho and his side kick, Lenny, (the Roseau equivalent of Martin) who told us that there was only one mooring left. It was the southernmost one. They took our propane tank to be refilled and promised wifi and that they would have the tank back that afternoon. We were frustrated because we could not get wifi on the boat or at a hotel 1/4 mile away. They were a day late in returning the propane tank so we had a great salad that night and rolls and a pineapple for desert and watched another Pirates of the Caribbean DVD.

Next morning Roger cleaned the bilge again, thoroughly, but the smell was back by evening. His current theory is that there is a small hole in the aft holding (sewage) tank. If this is so, the first step will be to empty it and then not use it until a replacement can be fabricated and installed.

Sea Cat took over from Pancho and directed us to moor on one of his moorings, further north and nearer town, where we do have wifi on the boat, hence this plethora of postings.

We dinked into a dock near town. Since this is the open sea and hence wavy near shore, we had to use our little stern anchor. You tie the dink with a line from its front to the dock and then back off as far as you can and throw a small anchor off the back of the dink which is tied to its stern. Then you pull yourself closer to the dock with the front line and get off. with experimentation, you can get it so that the dink is held by its two attachment points, jerking back and forth and up and down but far enough off the dock so that the waves do not bounce it against the dock, which is not good for the dinghy.

We had coffee at a Starbucks imitator and lunch at CocoRico, mentioned in the cruising guide. It has a very "U.S. looking" menu and was populated by mostly white people. We have seen very few white people on this island who are not tourists like us. It was market day so again we marketed. Hundreds of little stalls, most staffed by a woman who was sells much the same vegetables and fruits from her own garden. We also shopped at the IGA for staples and looked for and found a bookstore that was shown in the cruising guide map, but it was closed. It was Saturday, but more significantly, there was no cruise ship at the dock, so many of the stores were closed. So was the information center and museum, but the free public library was open. We returned to the boat, swam, watched two lads fishing by hand reel,


showered and had a delicious home cooked hot meal.

Chaudiere Pool - Dominica

On the last of our three days in Portsmouth under the care of Martin, he assigned his assistant, Walsh, to be our driver for the day. (Walsh is to the right, with Lene and a cow.)


For nine hours we were driven across the northern part of the Island from the west to the east coast and back, with stops for lunch in Calabishi (a seaside beach of restaurants overlooked by homes built by and for foreigners -- far side of bay, left),
a visit to the newly renovated airport which now permits night landings and of which Walsh was quite proud, an ice cream stop, through his village, called Wesley, and stops at two natural wonders.

The first of these is the waterfalls. Actually we stopped about a mile from them and then walked over a dirt road that became a path and then a trail and then vertical.

It was quite slippery with mud; Ilene slipped and fell a few times and luckily was not hurt. Walsh found her a walking stick -- a third leg he called it -- and we proceeded until we came to a river near the falls that required us to take off our shoes (mud encrusted to an inch. We walked barefoot on the rocks or in the water to the pool. We swam but did not dive off the rocks on both sides as the French party that followed us did.
The falling water, so concentrated at the point of the falls, carved out a deep pool. Water, filled with air, bubbles up from the pool and pushed us not downstream, but to the side and then, since what goes up, must come down, downward.

During this pre-lunch waterfall hike we had oranges, sugar cane (strip off the outer bark with your teeth, bite off a piece, chew to release the sweet liquid and spit out the remaining fibrous material) lemon grass. We were shown coffee trees, cocoa trees, breadfruit trees, various tuber bushes, cinnamon (Walsh carved off pieces of its bark and told us it was his brother's house), ginger (very fresh and wet and not yet dried off, and of course the ubiquitous bananas. All the rural men carry unsheathed machetes.

After lunch we visited Red Rocks, a natural coastal cliff deposit of red rocks -- where did they come from on this volcanic island whose sandy beaches are black ground up volcanic rock, and where did the very red inland clay come from? Walsh said this was the oldest part of the island but that did not fully explain the geology of the matter.

Here in Dominica, the friendliest of the islands we have visited so far, and the smallest with only about 75,000 residents, the custom is to toot your car horn when you see someone you know. Walsh knows thousands! At age 42 with wife and kids, he has never set foot off this island; it has everything he needs. He was surprised to learn that in New York, one can be fined for tooting a horn.

Hike to Fort Shirley and the Summit of West Cabrit

In a previous post we suggested that "Cabrit" means "hill", because the places on several islands called Cabrit were so hilly. This was error; cabrit is French for "goat".

After a morning of work on ILENE trying to fix the source of an occasional bilge smell, and then a visit to Volare where Roger whipped the ends of many of its lines and taught the Bound family how to do this, producing a more nautical and neat look than does the use of electrical tape to prevent fraying of the ends of ropes, we walked to the fort, which is in the valley between the two Cabrit hills, the western one taller than the eastern, which, with the separating valley, comprise the westward jutting peninsula that protects the north side of Prince Rupert Bay. Landward of the peninsula is swampland which formerly was a malaria source that resulted in Portsmouth not becoming the capital city of Dominica.

The fort is being seriously restored, providing a history lesson to us all. At its foot is a dock used for "adventure" cruise lines -- sailing ships.

The next photo shows the bay from the fort. ILENE is one of the boats out there.

And this photo shows the reciprocal view: the fort from our boat. The red roofed buildings are the fort and one can see that they are not at the summit.

The rest of our hike was more vertical but its top was disappointing because the gun placed there was overgrown with trees that cut off most of what would have been a commanding view. We sympathized with the slaves rented by the British to pull heavy cannon

up such steep hills. The next photo shows, left to right, Andy and Lori Bound and Ilene; the photo does not do justice to the steepness of the trail however.



Guadeloupe, from which we sailed here, is clearly in view in the background, below. Isles des Saintes are so small that they are lost against the big main island behind them.

Returning to the coastal road, we followed it south a mile past the point where we left our dinghy and it became the main commercial street in this very small rural and fishing town. We passed many shops and purchased vegetables, bread and coconut milk, before returning to our dink, our boat, a good home cooked meal and a viewing of the Bound's copy of a DVD of "Pirates of the Caribbean".

Indian River Tour

The River in question, according to our guide, guardian, friend and servant --Martin -- pictured above, is one of 365 in Dominica. (incidentally, the island's name is accented on the third syllable, not the second, and it is pronounced "eek" not "ick". It was a French island until the 1780's so think of the French pronunciation of Dominique.) What makes this river part of pop culture, in its beauty and the beauty of the forest surrounding it, is that the river scenes from "The Pirates of the Caribbean, Part 2" were shot here. In fact, many scenes from the film were shot in varying locations around Dominica, called "the nature island". Martin told us that he is a professional licensed tour guide, with university education in the history, flora and fauna of his island, first aid and CPR. He is also an entrepreneur who owns a boat and a van and a big smile. He has done this work for 20 years and is one of the ten current members of PAYS, the Portsmouth Area Yacht Services organization. PAYS sounds like a protection racket, but it is not. Its members provide real services and have rid the Bay of crime against boats. Martin took our laundry and brought it back, took away our garbage, brought us ice, took us to get dinghy outboard fuel and to the bank as well as on the Indian River cruise. PAYS regulates the touring industry and provides security, to protect their industry and hence their income.

He picked us up in his boat, made of wood, weighing perhaps 500 pounds, with seating for eight plus two kids, plus Martin in the front, facing back and rowing while explaining. His boat, named Providence, has a powerful enough outboard to get us to the river entrance at good speed, where we bought tickets, $5US, but Martin rowed the rest of the way, which is about one mile upstream, because no motors are allowed on the river. Its mouth is partially blocked (and hence protected) by a wrecked cargo vessel that broke loose in a hurricane and washed ashore several years ago. We didn't realize that there was a current in the river at first, because it was perhaps 50 feet wide. But by the time we got to the head of navigation, where boulders block boats, it was only 20 feet wide and the current was quite apparent. In fact the tour cannot be run after big rains because too much water is flowing. At the head of navigation we disembarked and walked to a campground.

Regrettably, our camera's battery ran out, so we have few pictures to illustrate this text. We saw land crabs by the river bank. They are an ingredient in local soups called callaloo.


We saw several types of birds and very many types of trees, including coconut palms and bloodwoods. A cut in the bark of a bloodwood produces red sap that looks like blood. Martin cut a gash in one on the way up and we saw the sap on the way back. Sap was used by the natives as dye. We drank the water from a ripe coconut and ate its flesh, as well as oranges. (we are finding the fruits and veggies, which are SO abundant and cheap, to be just delicious....tasty, juicy, fresh) Martin made each of us an origami style bird out of braided green coconut palm fronds. The tree roots wave fantastic patterns. You can see photos of these roots at the website link at the very beginning of this post. (It has been a few days and accordingly I have forgotten a lot.) The branches of the trees on the river's banks form a canopy of rain forest overhead.

We took the trip with the Bound family and after being delivered back at our boats we agreed to meet for wine, Orangina and cheese on their boat, "Volare", and then dinked ashore to Big Papas, where shoes are optional, for dinner .

Isle de Saintes Impressions

This has to be one of the most beautiful, charming and quaint places I've ever been to. It reminded me of the scenes from Mama Mia...it has a similar charming idyllic feel. I know Roger posted pics of Pain de Sucre, where we anchored, but this spot is so idyllic that the picture of the rock is now my screen saver. I just can't believe how fortunate I am to be able to be in these amazing locations...and they're all over!
We snorkeled and ate and slept and we were as safe as the NY Public Library which has its lions guarding its doors (Patience and Prudence)...we have our own feline door guards!

We took a couple of very difficult hikes. One was to Fort Napoleon where we met an adorable Italian couple who live in Bellagio, Italy. She works in a villa and he own a restaurant high on a hill. They were so friendly. I don't want to offend anyone but it is not so easy to feel the warmth and friendliness of the French...but why is it only they that can bake such a good baguette? Every morning a power boat came by to deliver to us a freshly baked baguette and croissants...still warm from the oven. The fort was interesting. The fort is now a museum with great pictures of the town and its inhabitants in the early 20th century as well as the story of the sea Battle of The Saintes between the English and the French. [The French, under de Grasse, who we believe is the one who blockaded the British out of the Chesapeake, permitting George Washington to demand the surrender of the British at Yorktown, was the loser -- but it is the most exciting thing that ever happened here, so the French museum describes the battle.] Along the top of the fort and going all around are magnificent gardens which overlooks the Bay of the town. The cute Italians took our picture there. Our anchorage is just behind Pain de Sucre which is the lump between my shoulder and the cruise ship

One day found us wandering down a side street in search of what the cruising guide called the cheapest restaurant in town, which we found. It was cheap and let me just say here that, generally speaking, one gets what one pays for. However...what we found alongside the very picturesque restaurant (EVERYTHING here is picturesque!) was the town cemetery. I think this is where I want to be buried although I'd probably be the only Jewish person.

The next day we tried what we were told was a very tough hike, and it was. It was to Le Chameau which sits 1100 feet above sea level.




The views were amazing and pictured above is one of town from up there with Fort Napoleon visible on top of the lower hill at the left. Below right is one of Roger with goat in background on the totally paved road which we went up and up and up in order to get to the top. (All motor vehicles, including scooters, have been prohibited.) BTW, there are goats everywhere. In fact they are, along with the other animal pictured below, our daily alarm clocks. And, just in case they don't do the job at about 5:30-6:00...there is always AG and Whitty jumping on our heads saying...FEED ME!!!!!"



We were planning Monday (yesterday) to head into town to anchor there so we could get the internet but luckliy we went over by dink to say hello to a boat newly arrived in our anchorage in Pain de Sucre on Sunday afternoon. They are Andy and Lori and their two sons, Aiden and Nathan (7th and 5th grades). They are a young couple from California who decided 3 years ago to sell their house, buy a boat and sail here while homeschooling their children. As it turns out, two months into their adventure, the mast on their boat broke and, although I'm not totally clear how or why, their trip was postponed 2.5 years. Anyway, they came on board later that afternoon and we shared some snacks and stories. We really like them and they advised us that the weather for sailing to Dominica would be better on Monday than any other day until later in the week because of very strong winds. We decided to follow their lead. It's interesting how things turn out. We had to say good bye to the Donaldsons on Lucille as they are going no farther south than Guadeloupe. But now we have new friends to hang out with and, in fact, will go touring today with them. Andy is a mechanical engineer who, for 10+ years worked 70 hours a week and decided it was time to experience his children growing up. He took a buyout from the company in which he was a partner and is now enjoying the life on their boat, Volare, a 44 foot Mason, much more the classic look than our boat because it has long overhangs forward and aft.

We arrived in Dominica last night. They have what are called "Boat Boys" who are really grown men who offer a myriad of services. Martin was recommended to us by Bill & Sando and we met him yesterday. So far he has taken our trash off the boat as well as 3 weeks worth of laundry to be delivered back to our boat later this afternoon. He will bring us ice later when he picks us up at noon for a river tour and a swim is some natural pools. Dominica is known as the "nature island" and anyone who has ever been here only tells us how incredible the island is. I am sure we will be posting many pictures. Until then...love!