Dominica

        All right, finally time for a quick overview of Dominica. We arrived at around 7am and were allowed to get off the boat at 8:30.   Of course everyone was extremely anxious so a decent size line formed and Hassan (previously known as Asan – I can’t spell), Ashley and I stepped foot on land at around 9:45.  We wandered around town a bit and instantly noticed something strange: everything, and I mean EVERYTHING was closed. It turns out Dominica is over 85% Catholic so on Sundays the city literally shuts down.  When getting off the boat we had been overwhelmed by probably 20 different tour guides trying to take us on different adventures but in an attempt to take it easy we had avoided them. We then realized that was all there was to do.
        We made our way back towards the boat as Ashley and Hassan both had FDPs and I caught up with my friend Tatiana and two other people, Cassie and Alex whom I had never met.  In about a second a tour guide named Kelvin approached and said, “Want to go to the waterfalls?”  After agreeing on a price of $15 per person for 3 hours of touring around the island, we figured why not? (PS – all of the tour guides has special shirts and ID badges to show they were registered with the visitor center so he wasn’t a random dude trying to kidnap us).   
        He drove us to two waterfalls called the Mama and the Papa while giving us a brief history and tour of the island. Dominica is seriously gorgeous – just sprawling hilltops of lush green rainforest with rivers, waterfalls, hot springs and sulfur springs throughout.  We got to the waterfalls and he said showed us to a trail we had to pay $5 to walk. He said “I’ll wait for you here, it’s a quick 7 minute walk to the pools.”  Uh – yeah, maybe for a 6’ Dominican man!  It was a normal hike for a while, but then in order to get to the waterfalls we had to cross streams and huge wet, mossy boulders!  I followed the group about halfway up but then decided to stop because I hadn’t realized I would be hiking and was not dressed for the occasion – a huge back-back, a dress, sandals and a camera around my neck. I wasn’t willing to lose any part of that equation, especially my ankle, so I waited behind while Tatiana and Alex climbed to the top.
        After the waterfalls we jumped back in to the car and continued our tour of the island. My personal highlight was when driving past a river and what did I see… a man in tattered clothing standing in it with a HUGE SNAKE!!!! I screamed STOP!!! And Kelvin slowed down and said oh, he will make you pay $1 to hold it. And I was like “That’s his pet…? And I can hold it…? For $1?!?!?!? Hell yeah!” Everyone else in the car winced in disgust, but as soon as they saw how badass I looked with that boa around my neck (see facebook pictures) they got right on board and held her too.
        We then took a drive through the botanical gardens and head back to the boat for our afternoon tours.  I went snorkeling in Champagne reef, which is named that because of all the bubbles – I think I said this already.  It was cool; I met some other fun people from my trip and saw some sweet fishies. No sea turtles unfortunately but my favorites were the Stoplight Parrot Fish, the Trumpet Fish and the Trunkfish.  The damn trumpet fish (which is ridiculous looking if you’ve ever seen one) kept swimming along the top of the water and popping up next to my face and scaring me!
        After snorkeling we headed back to the boat to get ready for our first night out.  I rushed to take a shower and look cute to meet my friends at the pier at 6. I arrived at 5:45 just to be safe.  At 6:15 still no one, and I was being hit on by a super creepy English dude with a rat-tail. Luckily at 6:30 Hassan came out and rescued me.  It was a back and forth fight for my attention for about 5 minutes, then the English dude realized I couldn’t even understand what he was saying let down did I want to join him for a drink, or a shag, or whatever English people do.
        I told Hassan how depressed I was that my friends blew me off and we decided to get a drink before meeting the rest of our group at 7 to go to the bars.  We walked to J.R.’s and got what Dominica is famous for, their “rum punch.” This was a whole lot of rum with maybe a droplet of punch. It was STRONG!  The bartender told me to take a big sip and he would water it down with juice, but even after that it was like pure rum… but good rum.
        We got back to the boat to meet everyone around 7, and Mackenzie and Mia (the girls I was supposed to meet) arrived a minute later. They were like “Where have you been?!” and I was like “What… where have YOU been?!” It turns out they were waiting at the bottom of the boat, and I was waiting at the end of the dock.  Ha, ha.  Luckily all was forgiven and we headed to the bars.
        Our group was lucky – we headed out early so we were the first people there. We hung out, danced a little, had some drinks and as soon as it became overrun we jumped in a taxi with Greg (one of our others friends tour guides from earlier in the day) and he took us to the Crazy Coconut, the big Dominican club. It was empty so we had it to ourselves for about an hour where we continued to drink, dance to Lady Gaga, etc, until it became overrun with other SAS kids and we were all too drunk to keep drinking anyway, so Greg took us back to the boat.  We went up to the top deck, got drunk food (grilled cheese, pizza, burgers) and passed out after a wonderful first day.
        My second day was not nearly as exciting. I woke up pretty hung-over and met the group to make plans. We had a bunch of differing opinions about what to do and I could sense the drama starting to unfold so I decided to do my own thing.  I went to the fruit market, walked around for a while then found a cute Internet café where I went on facebook to upload pictures. I wandered around town a bit (I didn’t go more than two blocks from the boat so there were other SASer everywhere, don’t worry) and talked to some of the locals. I talked to one old man named Avon who told me about his kids who were at school in the US.  We had a long conversation about work ethic, finding what you want to do and the importance of happiness. It was really nice and I was successful with one of my first port homework assignments – have an extended conversation with a local). 
        After our talk I went to a bar and drank some orange juice (lame, I know) before spending some time in the sun and buying souvenirs.  My goal was to buy a pair of earrings in every country but I couldn’t find any that I liked so I bought a couple of CDs instead.  I haven’t listened to them yet, but the girl working at the store suggested them to me as her favorite Dominican artists so I am excited to give them a listen.
        I eventually met up with a couple friends and we headed back to the boat around 4 to avoid being late and getting “dock time.” There is often times a line to get back on to the ship, and if you get back later than the “on board time” (in this case 6pm) even if you have been waiting in line for 2 hours, you have dock time in the next port. That means for every ten minutes you are late you can’t get off the ship for three hours.  If you have something scheduled it doesn’t matter and you lose your money.
        Anyways, that’s about it for my Dominican trip! I think that’s about all that’s going on on the boat right now. I’m still loving my classes, my professors get more hilarious each day and everyone is really cool.
        Hope all is well at home – send me emails!
        xoxo