The alarm sounded at 6am. We had one hour to shower, have
coffee/breakfast and be ready for Lawrence of Arabia to pick us up (from our
boat) at 7am for our River Boat Tour.
It was lots of time to ‘veg’ before heading out.
It was a little surprising to see how prompt
Lawrence was. At exactly 7am, he was
along side our boat and ready to go. I
was kinda expecting ‘Island Time’ and didn’t know what time we should expect
him!
The Indian River is part of the Dominica
Parks System. No motors are allowed on
the river. Lawrence had to row the
entire length up and back. It reminded
me very much of some of the rivers back in northern Florida (where I used to
cave dive). The branches overhung the
river and made a dark canopy of green not far overhead. I said a silent prayer that we wouldn’t see
any spiders or snakes as the river narrowed and the branches hung so close to
the water, which we had to push through them at times. I could just envision me being your typical
female and screaming and crying if a snake fell into the boat! Luckily, my prayers were answered and it was
an uneventful trip in those aspects J
We saw some of the coolest looking root
systems of the Bloodwood trees. The
muddy banks were crawling with land crabs.
Since it is a national park, these are protected and have multiplied in
numbers. They were everywhere you
looked.
Have you watched the Pirates of the Caribbean
movies? Remember when they went up a
river to visit the witch? Well, this
was that river and here is the cabin they built for the movie. It fit in perfectly with the eerie shadows
and darkness.
The river continued beyond where we stopped
but it got shallow and narrow (at least that’s what we were told). We reached a river bar and got out to look
around. Lawrence said during peak
season, there would be over 200 tourists stopping here at any given time. Today, it was just the three of us. Very cool place and would have been
interesting to see in the peak season when it was hopping! But the solitude made it seem spooky and fit
with the atmosphere surrounding us.
We would highly recommend Lawrence of Arabia
if you are ever in this area. He was
very professional, gave a wonderful narrative of the river, and was very
friendly. Soulmatie gives him an
A+. The cost for the tour ($25 US/per
person – includes the $5 park fee).
Thanks for a great trip Lawrence.
After the tour, we were dropped back at our
boat. Lawrence had pointed out the
market that he said has very good fruits/veggies. He offered to take us but we choose to go on our own so we could
be at our own pace.
We bought quite the assortment of fresh
veggies (2 huge cucumbers - $1.00, 1 super sweet pineapple - $3.00, a small bag
of onions - $1.00, a small bag of
potatoes - $1.00, a large bag of leaf lettuce - $2.00, (5) green peppers and
about (10) small sweet peppers - $2.00).
Total price $10 US … great fresh veggies to supplement our diet and go
with the bananas and tomatoes we’d bought yesterday. Yeah!!!
We decided to head south along the Dominica
coast to the capital city of Roseau. We
are hoping to find a guide to take us on a waterfalls/rainforest tour tomorrow.
The guidebook says/shows that you can anchor
just south of town in about 10 feet of water.
Well sure you can … if you want to be up on shore with your first swing
at anchor. First off, it was all
private moorings (not mentioned in the book).
Secondly, we sailed the coastline looking for that 10 feet of
water. We stayed within about 100 feet
of shore and didn’t see anything less than about 70 feet (unless you were at
someone’s mooring and then it dropped to about 40 feet). The elusive 10 foot anchorage evaded us.
As we approached the area, one of the boat
boys (Sea Cat) approached us and asked if we needed assistance. Since we planned on just anchoring, we told
him no but that we’d get with him later to talk about tours. After our unsuccessful trip up and down the
town looking for a suitable anchorage spot, we called him on our VHF. It took a bit for him to finally respond but
he did come out and point us to a mooring.
Now, these moorings looked scarey!
They were just bottles tied to a line (no fancy balls like in the other
mooring field). At first, we weren’t
even sure if it was a mooring or a crab trap!
But he helped us tie up and surprisingly, we held through the night.
BUT … it was horrible! We pitched and rolled our way until finally,
daylight broke. We got very little
sleep, partly because of the motion and partly because of the fear of breaking
the mooring and ending up crashed on shore!
We couldn’t imagine another night like this so about 5am, we untied the
line and set ourselves free. We were
headed to Martinique!
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