Location: Roseau, Dominica
Hey, ya’ll, it’s your boy once again writing your daily blog, the Garfather. I hope everyone had as good of a day as we had as we went to the Boiling Lake today in Dominica. We had a nice and early wake up at 5:30, which everyone was super excited for… not really. But everyone did wake up with a lot of high energy this morning! After eating some yogurt and fruit, we departed on our dingy ride to greet our tour guides for the day, Pancho and Slice. After a warm greeting from them both, we waited for our bus to Titou Gorge. While waiting in the drizzling rain, we thought that was going to be the worst of the rain for the day, but worse was yet to come. After arriving, Matthew, Miranda, and I carefully walked along the trail missing puddles and mud before a storm blew over us.
Until that point, we had been pretty dry the whole time, but after getting drenched underneath our rain jackets, we decided to say send it and ran through the mud and puddles. After about an hour of easy hiking through the terrain, we finally got to a river that had a very strong current that felt as if it could sweep you off your feet if you didn’t get a good footing. We crossed the river and began our incline up the side of this mountain-like hill. After reaching the peak very parched and exhausted, we decided to take a quick snack/ lunch break to get some more energy for the rest of the hike. The next stop was the “Valley of Desolation,” which was a spot that had very hot streams coming down the hill. Some were warm and nice to stick our cold feet in. Others were hot enough to boil eggs in (which we did!). After a quick lunch of fresh bread and fish provided by Pancho, we were led down some serious terrain before reaching the sulfuric-smelling, beautiful Boiling Lake. The lake was breathtaking once the clouds had passed over it and you could finally get a good view of the lake, and the smell was something else! After eating some more snacks and getting some sweet photos, we decided it was time to depart as some of us had become very cold since the wind had picked up a lot, and it had continued to rain on and off. We carefully picked our way across the mixture of rocky, slippery, jungly terrain back to where we began at Titou Gorge. We got back to the cafe, which we started and had a quick snack before jumping in the gorge, which was very refreshing since it was ice cold. After we had a dip, and some of us swam up to get a glimpse of the waterfall, we got back in our buses and departed back to Ocean Star for a Leadership class with Jon. After a nice meal that was prepared by Kennedy, we cleaned up, and all began writing our papers for oceanography that’s due on Friday. I hope you enjoyed the blog again. See you all back here in 14 days.
Peace,
Garfather