Location: Roseau, Dominica
After two weeks of getting accustomed to life on board- filled with its challenges and abundant change to life on land-, after nearly four days on passage-where not a full night of sleep was had by all, we finally had a day that embodied the true essence of fun and adventure of which this trip is all about.
Now, I’m not saying that the prior two weeks weren’t fun at all; they were fun in a different way, more so in the unique challenges that each day presented. But today felt like the real trip finally started. We woke up slightly earlier than usual, filled our bags with packed lunches for a full day on shore, and split into two teams for our different excursions. The first team (the team I was on) sensibly chose to go on a driven tour of the island. The second team (for reasons unknown to me), chose to go on eight-hour hike up an ungodly steep mountain.
Our tour of the island was guided by a gentleman named Stowe, who drove us around in a white minibus while continuously honking at all the passerby that knew him. With the motor of our bus doing all of the work that the legs of the people on the second team were doing, we acesnded up the mountains to start our journey.
Our first stop was to Middleham Falls. We exited our minibus and started what was just under an hour’s hike to a 250-ft waterfall. I myself, made the wrong fashion choice when I decided to wear white sneakers for the day. This did not pair well with the rather muddy path that we were traversing. After many careful steps and precarious foot placement in trying to preserve my white sneakers, we made it to the waterfall. The waterfall was quite the site, and at the end of the 250ft fall of water, there was a natural pond of sorts. Everyone (except for me, who didn’t want to spend the rest of the day all wet) changed into their bathing suits to take a dip in the water. From there, we turned around and walked the same path back up to the minibus.
Once all were loaded into the vehicle, we made our way to the next stop, Titou Gorge. On our way to this gorge, we made a pit stop at this Rastafarian house/fruit stand, where there was a Rastafarian-looking gentleman who served us freshly squeezed juices. We savored the view of the valley and ocean while drinking our drinks. Once all the cats were herded back into the minibus, we completed the drive to the gorge. The gorge itself featured a drop of roughly 20ft, which was still rather fun to jump into, though. The really beautiful part was swimming deep into the gorge through cracks in the rocks. It was otherworldly back there, looking up you’d see the vines of the rainforest floor above leeching down into the crack of the gorge; it was something out of a movie. All the way at the back of this crack in the gorge (a roughly 15-minute swim against the current) was our second waterfall of the day. This one was about 30ft tall and not as intense as the first one, so we were able try to stand underneath it. I say try because even though this was a relatively small waterfall, the water was falling at such a rate that it was damn near impossible to stand for more than a second. The swim back was much easier going with the current. We all dried off and filed back into the van to go to our next location.
Our third and final waterfall of the day was truly a sight to behold. We ditched our shoes to begin what was an unexpected bouldering excursion to climb up to higher and higher levels of this waterfall (the barefoot allegedly gave us more traction on the wet rocks). We climbed up to three different levels of this waterfall, with each “level” having a different small body of water at it. The first level was just normal, cold mountain water, rather uneventful. The second level was unique in that there was a hot water part and a cold water part. The water here was coming out of cracks being heated by phosphorus gasses. And when I say hot, it was actually hot, nearly rivaling my hot tub back home. All the phosphorus eroded the rocks as well, creating what was essentially a red clay mask that we lathered onto ourselves. The third and highest level that we could ascend to took us to where the water from the fall was landing. The views were just gorgeous, looking up at the waterfall and down into the valley. It was one of those moments where you feel nostalgia for the present moment that you are experiencing. We all jumped into the body of water at this level, with some going up to stand behind the waterfall itself. Now, I did this standing behind the waterfall, and it was quite the experience, but I had water enter my body in ways that I did not know was possible. After we all thoroughly enjoyed ourselves, we made the controlled fall back down to the base.
It really was quite the day and I rather enjoyed myself. This is an island that you travel to to enjoy the natural beauty of it, and that we saw a lot of today. I’ve seen some beautiful things in all my travels, both man-made and nature, and today was up there with some of the most beautiful things I’ve ever seen. I’m not too sure how eight hours of hiking could top all that we did today
Hike Report!!!!
As Robert so eloquently mentioned, we had the option to choose between the island tour and the Boiling Lake Hike – a Dominica bucket list hike to a UNESCO World Heritage site of the world’s second-largest boiling lake, next to the opening of a dormant volcano. Four brave students – Will, Owen, Chloe, and Claire – took on the challenge alongside Allie and Ben and set off on a hike that they expertly finished in just under 6 hours, with a break to swim in a hot spring in the middle. The hike was definitely difficult, but it was gorgeous! We did mud face masks from the hot springs, drank fresh water from a mountain spring, went up to 3 different peaks, and the coolest lookout in all of Dominica. We climbed up and down various streams, scrambled up rocks and into the jungle, into the clouds, down through the Valley of Desolation, past various hot springs, one with a lovely hot water waterfall for a mid-hike massage. We shared many laughs and some tired groans and sore legs. We vlogged and perfected our Paris Hilton impressions. We saw Claire go from exhausted to a full sprint right at the end. We weren’t sure if we were out of breath from the hike or our endless chatter. Our guide, Pancho, somehow managed to do the whole thing barefoot, as if it was his morning stroll to pick up the newspaper. But in a way, it was! Pancho has done the Boiling Lake Hike 3 days a week for the past 25 years! At the end of the hike, we cannonballed into the Pirates of the Caribbean famous Titou Gorge, where Ben described the water temperature as “quite lush,” and the rest of us described it as “Cold, Ben!” We endured the cold for the sake of the gorgeous Titou Gorge, swimming to the waterfall at the back, which was quite powerful, before emerging lazy river style, shot by the current for a nice drift out of the gorge.
There are so many photos from today, and the Blog can’t handle them all! So we’ll do an Island Tour today and hike tomorrow.