THE LOCAL WELCOME
While Dominica is in many ways a 'poor' country, with apparently fairly high unemployment, a lot of agriculture 'industry' and subsistence fishing, and the like, we never felt the slightest bit threatened anywhere we went, even walking through New Town on our way from the hotel to Roseau and back for dinner. The local taxis (mostly minivans) would stop at a wave for us just like anyone else, and we were greeted with smiles and hellos (or at least tired acknowledgement from those on their way to or home from work) on them and not 'isolated'. (A ride from the Anchorage/Evergreen/etc area into town takes only minutes and is EC$1.50 per person, but the walk at a mile and a half or so isn't bad either. A personal ride will cost you much, much more.) People on the street in Roseau would say hello, or offer directions if we looked lost (one very nice young lady on her way home from work actually said she'd take us there and made the stroll with us rather than just trying to point and count streets). I should note though that we intentionally avoided going into town on cruise ship days to make it very clear we were not off the cruise ship...I suspect those hordes get treated a little differently (more as marks to get a few bucks from on their few hours off the ship?).
There were a couple of beggars in Roseau at night, who were for the most part at least polite...they'd engage in conversation a bit, then hit you up for money, and leave if you either gave them some as we saw others do, or just say good night and head off if you didn't. There was one exception who was a little pushy, demanding cigarettes and saying something about 'big guys are better targets for a bullet' on our last night in town (I'm about 6' 2", 240 lbs or so), but I took it as more frustrated bluster than any sort of real threat. My wife got whistled and leered at a little when she wore something a bit lower-cut in front than she intended one night, but again it was no worse than you'd expect to see anywhere, and in fact much more restrained than a lot of places I can think of.
One thing to get used to is many people carry machetes on the street all the time. Machetes are digging tools, coconut crackers, prybars, etc. and are pretty much the 'Swiss army knife' of the island. Don't be alarmed if a boisterous but proud Dominican starts talking to you and waving around his machete, it's just punctuation. (One one such occasion the individual suddenly stopped, looked at the machete in his hand, held back-gripped with the blade against his forearm, and said more or less "Oh, excuse this please, I wasn't thinking how this might look." We had to laugh.) Like I said we we never felt threatened in any way. We clearly didn't blend, there was no question we were outsiders, but we weren't made to feel like invaders or "marks" and in fact were invited to attend a local fish stew type event, invited to come swim by some young kids on one of our long walks down toward Soufriere (I said I didn't have my swim trunks and they replied "go change, then come back!") chatted with a guy linefishing off the shore who'd landed a 3 foot gar, etc. At the worst we were treated with indifference, which some might find insulting but I found refreshing compared to getting some sort of tour or ride pressure. There is a little selling pressure if you go to the big produce market late on Friday night or (very early, reportedly it really gets hot about 5 a.m.) Saturday morning, but that's what the market is FOR, isn't it?
We also had the great fortune to hook up with a Dominican resident as a result of my endless "we're planning on going to Dominica...any suggestions?" queries on Wetpixel. "Izzy" as he goes by is apparently a pretty big deal from what we gathered, although little of that from him...although not a native Dominican, he's clearly very engaged in the island and in making it a successful and fun scuba destination. He's an MSDT, apparently trained many of the dive masters and instructors on the island, helps run one of the dive shops up north (Cabrits area?) is a photographer with his own site (maintained with Simon Walsh of Nature Island Dive as well,
Images Dominica - Underwater Photography, Fine Art Photography, Dominica Photos, Stock Photography, Dominica Photography), does the marine biology training for the land tour guides, is involved in the hotel and tourism association on the island, penned their tourism webzine, was involved in the creation of the marine preserve, is one of the chamber techs and volunteer 'divers' at the on-island recompression chamber, helped scout many of the island dive site selections, etc. etc. He was variously referred to as Izzy, The Mad Scientist, that crazy guy from the UK, etc. He didn't tell us much of this, we heard it from his dive students, his friend Woody, the boat drivers, etc. He mostly was full of funny dive stories, fish and marine flora ID, local info, photography advice, hilarious rants and raves about politics and cruise ship people and where to go and what to try...you could hardly keep up. Solely based on a couple postings he saw from me on Wetpixel about wanting to try and shoot TiTou gorge with an underwater rig, and a couple of exchanged emails as a result, he joined us for a shore dive, for a day of boat diving, drove us up to and participated in a photo shoot at TiTou (bringing his own D40 in a wetbag for the swim into the canyon, and his son as an additional model / reflector holder), recommended an excellent overland tour guide for us (Woody at
adquatics@yahoo.com) and drove us up to Screws in Wotten Waven for an evening's relaxation in the hot sulphur springs with his wife and son and another friend, etc. He shared some of his shots with me (I won't be posting them for obvious reasons as they're his work, but they're quite good) as well as gave me a lot of tips on mine. It wouldn't be exaggerating to say the entire trip was made better by his enthusiastic and entirely uncompensated (well, I left him a partial bottle of Scotch snagged from SJU duty free on the way in, but he never asked for it!) friendly greeting. Hopefully I haven't horribly embarrassed him at this point (fat chance!) or exaggerated much about his contributions to the island or our enjoyment of it (fatter chance).
ABOVE-WATER ACTIVITIES
If you've gotten this far and don't know Dominica bills itself as "The Nature Island" in tourism brochures, please quit reading here and do some Googling. There is a huge amount to do above-water. Not much of it is the sort of vapid westerner thrill-seeking stuff like parasailing, jetsking, ziplines, etc. although there is a little of that (one zipline operator, a couple river rapids/tubing operators, and one that offers what they call 'canyoneering' which is a combination of swimming, hiking, and rappelling along some of the steeper points of Dominica's many rivers, and Al Dive has watersports as well). There are huge waterfalls all over, most with swimable pools. Titou gorge is one smaller example of these that's neat for its nearly cave-like enclosure (the walls are steep and very narrow, with so little opening to the sky above it lives up to its "little throat" name translation). There are hikes both lazy and difficult, including the well-publicized hike to the Boiling Lake thru Desolation Valley. There are rain forests...in fact half the island still looks forested. There are hot springs and the requisite 'spa experiences' that have sprung up around them in the village of Wotten Waven. There is fishing to be had as well as whale watching and party boat charters.
We didn't do too much, too far off the beaten path until late in the trip, having spent most of our mornings diving and afternoons lazing around. We did hit Titou, and Screw's as mentioned above, but we only spent one day really going around the island with a guide (Woody of Adventure Aquatics,
adquatics@yahoo.com). He took us to a couple of different waterfalls (one more of a neat cascade along the Diamond River), some scenic overlooks, and three different beach or bay areas, the last of which we hung out at for a good part of the afternoon. He also kept up a running discussion of history, descriptions of all the smaller towns we went thru, and the like. Very nice and bright guy. It really put our 'long hikes' along about a seven mile stretch of coastline up to then into perspective...I guess from the airport transfer we 'knew' how large the island really was, but lost sight of that just diving along a fairly small section of the offshore slope. Dominica really is huge as Caribbean islands go. And don't let people tell you "Dominica has no real beaches". It does, they're just small, secluded, and almost completely uncommercialized. It was really cool to drive up (and onto...Woody has a Land Rover) a beach, find fresh dropped coconuts if you wanted (they were all over), and even see new coconut palms sprouting all over and older palms tipping into the sea with worm tracks and algae growth. The beaches were a dark black and tan, kind of a 'golden brown' sand mix, with a little surf but not much. Our favorite of this type was Battibou (sp?) Bay, which supposedly is in the radar of the Four Seasons for a hotel/resort. When we arrived there with Woody we more than doubled the occupancy count, and when we left I think there was only one family that had arrived after us.
One other high point for me, low point perhaps for others regarding above-water activities:
there is currently not a single golf course on the island. So there. Keep your fertilizer and pesticide off the reef, damn you.