Dominica

We left Dominica a couple days ago and I just uploaded my pictures to my computer and am ready to recap what I did there. It was so different from what I was expecting. It is an island in the Caribbean below Guadalupe and above Martinique. It was smaller so it wasn’t as touristy as you would think for how beautiful it is. The few hotels they have are very small and maybe 3 stars. The port we came into was pretty small too in the capital, Roseau. When we got there on Sunday it was raining but as soon as the sun came up it cleared up pretty quickly. The island was so beautiful from the port. It is a volcanic island so the soil was rich and everything was so green!

I went on a snorkeling trip in the morning to the Champagne Reefs. My pictures don’t do justice for what it looked like but there were streams of air bubbles rising to the surface from the coral so essentially the water looked like a class of champagne. It was my first Semester at Sea trip and Hanna wasn’t on that one so of course I made more new friends and there were like 60 kids in the water flipping around so it was a little crowded in the water but still saw some great things. It was my first time using my underwater camera that I got for Christmas and I LOVE IT! It was so perfect for that trip. When we got out of the water we all had a free drink card so even thought it was only 10:30 or so of course the group of college kids were all interested to taste the islands rum so we got rum punch. It was SO strong and spicy! It was so spicy that there were flakes of whatever spice floating around in the cup. I could barely finish mine (it wasn’t vanilla yummy spice like Captain Mo).

After the trip we went back to the ship for lunch. It was Sunday so everything in town was closed and they just had the taxis running for the tourists. There weren’t even any restaurants open. It was interesting seeing what the town was like all shut down and knowing that it was going to be completely different the next day (Monday morning). To me it is admirable that they can basically shut down the whole island for a day to give everyone a day of rest. You would never see that in America, we are all about 24 hour convenience. After lunch a group of us decided we wanted to go on a hike. We kept hearing about all of these waterfalls so we walked off the ship and worked out a deal with the same tour guide I had in the morning to take us all to the waterfalls and back for $13 each. There were about 30 or 40 of us by the time we ended up leaving and I felt like that was a pretty good deal. It ended up being an incredible trip. I don’t know if it was because we had no idea what we were getting ourselves into when we planned the trip or if traveling with a bung of people your age makes things more exciting but I had a great time! The hike was pretty vigorous but it was only about 45 minutes. None of us really knew each other so we all talked in groups of 5-10 as we hiked through the amazingly lush forest to this massive waterfall.

I couldn’t even get a picture of the whole waterfall because it was so tall. After everyone took pictures it was like a race for the boys to see who could get in the water first. The swam across the pool the waterfall was flowing into and there was a little cave on the other side that they climbed up and jumped off. After watching the boys do it the rest of the kids followed and again I was so happy for my camera. Everyone was like take a picture of me! Come climb the cliff with me so we can take a picture! So again it was very useful. We were all like little kids just so excited and thinking how crazy it was for us to continue the hike and talk about what we were doing in China, India and Brazil. It is hard to grasp the this is just the beginning of our journey.

The tour guide/taxi driver hiked with us which was interesting to me but it gave us a chance to ask her all sorts of questions. I was just caught off guard when she was walking through the streams that cut through that paths in her khaki pants and tennis shoes. Later I found out that it was normal for them to go with you. They feel that you are their responsibility from when they pick you up to when they drop you off. She seemed to really like us because she was telling us all sorts of jokes and dirty words and sayings they use on the island. She kept pulling over to pick all sorts of leave and grasses for us to look at. She showed us lemon grass that apparently heals any cold you may have if you make tea out of it or even just inhale it. There is a root of a plant that is apparently like natural Viagra so that was the root of most of the jokes.

The roads on the island are insane! They drive on the left side of the road and say “the right side is suicide”. On most of the roads I didn’t see a “right side”. They were so narrow but somehow we were able to pass cars on the other side of the road. They also honk at every car to wave and say hello. The next day we took a tour to a few different spots and went up so many winding roads and I was happy I wasn’t hung over like half the bus because there were definitely some gray faces onboard. They don’t have any traffic lights on the entire island. Our guide said if you can survive driving on Dominica, you can drive anywhere in the world.

The second day we went up to another waterfall called Emerald Pool. If the sun hits the pool just right it looks like an emerald. IT was raining again in the morning so I figured it would clear up again and I wouldn’t need my rain jacket….WRONG. We were soaked by the time we got to the fall because it was pouring rain so we didn’t get to see the emerald effect but I would say we got to see the rainforest effect. The next stop was Trafalger falls which were two huge twin falls. They were so big we didn’t get close to the pools of the waterfalls like the other ones but it was quite an amazing site. We hiked as close as we could and walked through a bunch of streams and some of them were warm because there was random hot springs around.

As soon as our trip got back Hanna and I spotted an internet café and got an hour of internet for $2 (WAY cheaper than the ship so we were thrilled). It felt so crazy being in a foreign country updating our blogs and just thinking we are going to be doing that in so many more places around the world. After that we explored Roseau and I was determined to try a banana because they are the United Kingdom’s #1 banana source. We went to the market and all the bananas left were bright green and we can’t bring them on the ship so I was SOL. We looked around for a place to eat for 30 minutes and I’m sure we had passed so many places but their advertisements or lack of are so different from ours that nothing was catching our eyes. They only have 3 fast food places; pizza hut, KFC, and Subway. They said diabetes was the main illness of the island but people live for a really long time there. The oldest person in the world lived there and made it to 128. They have so many natural herbs that they stay pretty healthy. Anyway we finally found a place and we had tried a cherry soda earlier in the day and this place had a banana one so I was pumped! Hanna and I ordered our food and the lady took our order in and then came back and told us they were out of pretty much everything we ordered (even the banana soda) so we went through like 2 more meals before we found something they actually had. We ended up with chicken wings and fries which were delicious.

We finished the day shopping and got back to the ship with plenty of time to spare. The sun set and there were amazing rainbows on the opposite end of the sky. We pulled out around 8 and started towards Brazil on the Atlantic Ocean. It didn’t take more than 10 minutes for us to all feel that we were in a different ocean. It was SO rough. I could barely sleep the whole night. The boat would go up and down, up and down, and every 5^th wave or so we would go really high and slam into the water again. It was so loud and in my dreams I was thinking it was so much more dramatic than it was and I felt like the ship was going to tip over. It was still rough the whole next day and kids had a hard time staying in class. Yesterday was a lot calmer and last night we passed the equator and entered the Amazon River!

Our next stop is Manaus, Brazil which is 1,000 miles up the Amazon River. It has been very calm (like we are on a lake) and it is hot and humid! The sun isn’t out at the moment but right now I am on the pool deck looking out at the brown water and the land in the distance. The river is about 3 miles wide so it is still a pretty far stretch. I started taking my Malaria pills yesterday. All the places from here until India have Malaria so almost everyone on the ship is on medicine. I have to take a pill everyday for the next 99 days! Classes are getting a little better but it is so hard to focus and do any work. In Brazil I am doing an Amazon Exploring tour and going to the Zoo with kids with leukemia. I will let you know how it goes!