I give you the Armada of Four:

Acedia – a Freedom 38 captained by Melissa friggin Kalicin of Boston,  Aggressive – a C&C 38 captained by Nils and Lisa from Maine,  Alpha Crucis – captained by Megs and Tom from Wisconsin,  and good ole Gaia – a Pearson 42 by yours truly and Mike

Most of the boats we see in port are French, Canadian, and some Scandanavians…. But in this port there’s a good contingency of us Americans holed up together. A few of us have been leap frogging each other from port to port so it’s about time we adventure together.

We called a taxi driver named Martin the day prior to drive us to a few of the sites. Everyone seemed to know Martin …. EVERYONE… it’s a small community on Dominica… or wonderfully serendipitous…

For example: On our first day Mike & I explored part of Dominica and grabbed lunch near university campus, while figuring out which vendor to grab a local meal from, a couple from Canada voiced their opinion to us, encouraging us to try the fish in one vendor. We curiously wandered over to them and began talking about the local university, what they liked about Dominica, how long they’ve been studying here, etc. We ended up with a few recommended hikes and a taxi/guide we had to use, his name is Martin. A few days later, Aggressive and Alpha Crucis happened to meet the same pair of Canadian medical students and they, again, advised to use Martin as a guide…. And as Alpha Crucis and Aggressive strolled out to the street they asked the first taxi driver if they knew who Martin was…. Sure enough…. The man said he sure did he was Martin. Now this may be some very complex tourist ploy but…. they were Canadian and you can always trust Canadians…  Martin ended up being about $80-100 USD less expensive than if we had hired a guide from our anchorage area.

We started the day with a hike to Middleham Falls. The hike was a thousand shades of green, held together with a thick jungle canopy and made strong by enormous tree root systems; it was as the Canadians described: ‘national geographic’. The world around was wild and diverse; the trail on the other hand, was neat and tame. As an avid hiker, Mike & I were floored by how well the Forestry, Wildlife & Parks Division maintained the trail. It was completely manicured the entire way! What do I mean by manicured…. When mother nature didn’t create an easy to hike/hop trail, steps were made in the dirt/mud and held in place by notched logs which even had supports to keep them from sliding. Unfortunately this made it very accessible to foreign cruise ship visitors which came in droves of other tourists. I’m all for people getting outside and appreciating nature… just not in droves while I’m visiting… After the Middleham hike we visited Freshwater Lake and TiTou Gorge which was particularly amazing. We swam through a slot canyon that lead to waterfalls…. Mike and I attempted climbing the sides multiple times. Lastly we visited Trafalgar Falls, which was pretty neat. It’s actually two beautiful cascading falls, called mama and papa falls. Hundreds of giant boulders turned in every direction made for a fun river bed to climb over into the pools below the falls. We all enjoyed a nice quick dip before heading home exhausted and hungry.