Location: Dominica
This morning, we all woke up a half hour earlier than usual in order to make it to the dock in time for our various tour guides to pick us up. The group had split into two groups for the day, one of which spent the day in a taxi exploring various waterfalls around the island and collecting fruit from peoples backyards, and the other group hiking close to ten miles to a boiling lake. Those of us who decided on the hike headed with our guide, Pancho, to the base of the hike, which happened to be beside Ti Tou Gorge. We started the hike around 8:30 and quickly realized that the white shoes the majority of us had decided on packing for hikes werent going to last that long. By the tide we made it to the lookout point where we stopped to regather everybody, all of our shoes and most of the rest of our clothing was fully coated in mud. Little did we know that was the easy part. From that lookout, we climbed down a small trail covered in mud and loose rocks, which ended up being one of the best parts of the day as the group all started to slip, barely managing to catch themselves before taking out everybody in front of them, including our tour guide who seemed to have no trouble clambering down the steep trail all the while laughing at the tourists behind him who just couldnt keep their feet underneath them.
We made it to the bottom of the steep trail and followed a river into The Valley of Desolation, where we were greeted by the smell of sulfur. Pancho had us stop by a small pool of boiling water not the lake; I learned later as we waited for the stragglers and boiled the dozen eggs he had carried the whole way in his backpack. He also brought some sort of cod spread and baguettes, which was definitely the highlight of my day.
Once everyone was back together and I had been told that we were, in fact, only just over halfway and not at the end as I had originally believed, we continued down through the Valley, following the river and rock-hopping our way to yet another muddy section of the trail. We all filled up our waters at a little stream Pancho pointed out and then climbed down a rock face into the river with the help of a rope. We waited until everyone had caught up and was looking around at the waterfall behind us, and then continued up the trail on the other side of the river, with everyone following closely behind. Or so we thought.
About fifteen minutes later the trail opened out to look down at the river, and we could finally see the steam coming from the boiling lake just over the next small hill.
So we stopped to gather people again, waiting out of the wind in one of the small trails. And we continued to wait. A good fifteen minutes later, Pancho announced he was going to look for the five stragglers, saying that it wasnt normal for them to be this far behind when we had all been together barely 20 minutes before. So, the rest of us stayed where we were, happy to rest out of the wind while our guide went to find everybody else; he didnt come back either. At this point we were all confused as to where now six people had disappeared to, so we decided as a group we would also go back a little way in search of our missing members. We made it all of two minutes and were making our way along next to the river, when we heard a yell from the other side of the river. It turns out the missing people had turned right down the river and had missed the trail. As a result, they had spent the past 40 or so minutes scaling steep inclines the rest of us had never seen and climbing down a total of 8 waterfalls, turning our 15-20 minute walk into 40 minutes instead.
Now, all regrouped, we realized that neither group had Pancho with them. Luckily, before we all turned around and skipped the lake all together which was now about 5 minutes away to go in search of our tour guide, he showed up, and we all made our way up to the lake, making sure to keep the five wanderers in the middle of our group and far away from the back.
The hike back went much faster than it had on the way there; even the muddy climbing-not-hiking part was relatively less painful than it had been with all the slipping on the way down. James and I made it to the bottom and found one of the locals who was selling cold drinks and snacks. I picked some sort of peanut drink that was honestly much better than it sounded, and then Morgan and I stocked up on fudge from the same lady.
We all were desperate for somewhere to clean our shoes off after learning that Mac didnt, in fact, think the idea of us walking back onto Vela with our muddy shoes was a very good one after all, so we all washed off our shoes and swam through the gorge to the waterfall at the end.
We made it back to the taxi with significantly dirtier clothes and all completely exhausted, but the hike was still one of the most fun parts of the trip so far.