Dominica questions

[mikeycanuk]

agilis, i`ve never done the manual AND RHD. how do you find it

 

[agilis]

I planned a trip for 22 Nov to 29th I am flying from Miami using LAN and paying $533.00 round trip business class which allows three 50lb. bags. Though having done a little online research I am thinking about changing resort. The price is right but the diving around Punta Cana does not seem to be that great.

You are going to the Dominican Republic, a very different kind of place from the Dominica being discussed. Extremely different in just about every imaginable way. Huge DR has resorts. Tiny Dominica has mountains that plunge directly into the sea, and very few people.

A common complaint on Dominica is mail being misdirected to the DR. Many people have never heard of Dominica. They speak a French patois and English there. No Spanish.

---------- Post added September 26th, 2014 at 12:59 PM ----------

agilis, i`ve never done the manual AND RHD. how do you find it

As long as you are comfortable and competent with a clutch, you should have no problem. The driver sits on the right side of the vehicle, but everything else is the same. The position of the driver is an almost foolproof reminder to KEEP ON THE LEFT SIDE OF THE ROAD. The shifter is identical, unchanged in any way. This means that first gear is up and away from you, second straight down, third up and toward you, etc. It is not a mirror image. It's exactly the same as if you were driving on the other side, as if you were shifting from the passenger seat of an American car. You use your left hand to change gears. The clutch, brake, and gas pedal are set up the same as an American car. A snap, really, not too difficult, but I must admit I got used to it decades ago when I lived in Jamaica and had my own little Toyota Starlet.

I greatly prefer a standard shift on those winding narrow steep Dominican roads, where hyper-attentive driving is necessary 100% of the time. Beware of the deep concrete drainage ditches on the side of the road in many places. You can't swerve onto the shoulder where they are present. Twice, so far, my wife has burst into tears when she looked out the window of the car and glanced down several hundred feet to the rain forest canopy with only inches between our tires and the brink. If she opened the door she'd be gone. The rusted remnants of cars can be spotted down there.

You sometimes get to see flocks of parrots flying below you as you drive through clouds. Using an automatic transmission is less fun, but having your own transportation is the main thing. Otherwise you miss so much.

 

[mikeycanuk]

Thanks agilis! Maybe it's new but WinAir has a late flight out of SXM, leaving me a very comfortable 3hr connection using Air Canada YYZ-SXM. Might have to visit Dominica after all.

I rented a car in St Lucia, sound like similar driving. My wife couldn't relax, I could see her foot pressing into the imaginary brake pedal as I burned up the brakes on the suv. On NewYrs day a cab had ditched itself in one of those concrete ditches on the hillsides, lol. I would love to take my car on those roads, but I would probably end up dead... In St Lucia on the way back to the airport all the transport trucks were all back on the road after the holidays. They were passing slower trucks into blind turns going UP the hills in the interior..INSANE! :shocked2: The interior of St Lucia is gorgeous, it looks like Dominica is like that everywhere.