These are the mountain shrimp to be found in Dominica. The guy we met would dive under and bring them up to Mary at the edge of the pool. Mary’s job was to open his Louis Vitton purse and stuff them inside while making sure none of the other prisoners escaped. She only screamed once.

The waterfall over the pool is pretty spectacular. I would have enjoyed swimming under it a bit more if I wasn’t worried the whole time about having my toes nipped off.

I went diving in Dominica the day before we left. Most diverse coral life that I’ve seen in one spot. There were barrel sponges big enough for me to swim into. I didn’t, of course, because that would be bad. It seems that coral around the world is dying quickly as the oceans are warming up, being polluted, etc. (hippie story at: http://www.truthout.org/issues_06/041106EA.shtml) The coral in Dominica was generally in great shape with brilliant colors, but there were a few fields of lifeless white coral. Very sad if we won’t have much living coral in another 100 years. Here’s a couple big (10-12″) trunkfish I caught snuggling:
Right after diving, Mary, her brother John and I jumped another boat to whalewatch. Turns out that Dominica is home year-round to female sperm and humpback whales. We saw 6 female and calf sperm whales, including one grouping of three that we followed for a good half hour. They get crazy wrinkles on their back with age. We got close enough to one to have the guide prove to Mary it was a 40-50 year old whale, not a giant wrinkled pickle. Here’s another taking a dive:

We jumped over here to St. Lucia on Monday and spent our first day sleeping on a beach at Rodney Bay. The beach has a few resorts on it with jetskis to rent and parasailing boats coming in now and then. But it was reasonably quiet. Until the Fruit Man came calling. You can’t make stuff like this up. It starts with the blowing of the conche. Then you notice a ratty dinghy with all kinds of tattered flags coming right at you. Which is fine, except you’re on a floatie trying to nap and he’s got an outboard and a machette. Anyway, John picked up some mangos just to be funny and they turned out to be some of the best we’ve had.

More of a chicken of the sea than monster of the deep…

Dominica is a small rainforest island with 365 rivers and numerous waterfalls. Yesterday we went up to Trafalgar falls. On the short hike we came across a sulfur river with steam coming up from the yellow milky waters. After that the trail turns into a climb as we had to scale over boulders to get to the first freshwater pool below the falls. We tried to get to the base of the second fall above by following the water but came to a dead end of boulders too large to climb and too slippery to try. A guide was heading up there to catch shrimp for dinner so we made use of his services. That’s right, shrimp…in the mountains…under the waterfall. That in itself was reason enough to hang out with him. He took us to a side trail hidden from view and we clambered our way over moss covered rocks. The second fall was even more picturesque. The water fell over the cliff down alternating rocks creating a zigzagging cascade. The guide jumped into the lagoon and reappeared with mountain shrimps in hand. He kept diving under and never came up empty handed, or even empty mouthed. These were what we would consider jumbo shrimp and he said that under the log there were hoards of them, many much bigger. Some as long as his forearm and had razor sharp pinchers that could snap off fingers. Steve decided he would take the guide’s word for it and not investigate the validity of the claim.

After two days of fighting with the network bandwidth here in Dominica, I’ve finally managed to get pictures from the Virgin Islands and sailing up on the travelogue. Or maybe the bandwidth is fine and we’re just taking too many pictures…

There’s a bunch from the Carnival parades on St. Thomas, sailing in the VI’s and a few from our eco adventure on St. John.

Now we’re just hanging out and hiking around Dominica. Mary’s brother John flew into town today, so we rented a car to pick him up and check out some of the more remote parts of this little island. Driving here is nuts. Right hand drive cars on the left side of the narrow twisted roads covered in a patchwork of potholes, cars parked in the road and machete-wielding farmers walking down the middle. I think the roads in China may have been safer…

What’s the deal with the rubber clogs? Okay, so I can understand that the Aussie sheepskin Uggs that I saw back in Cali were popular for their cozy comfort and casual style which developed a bit of a cult following especially among the yoga crowd. But their rubber cousins, which I have seen on every island, are neon clunkers. They only come in parking cone orange, jaundice yellow, and pepto-bismol pink. The rubber is thick and heavy, looking like they were cut right from the tires of 18 wheelers. They’re the steel toed boots of beach sandals. They neither flip nor flop, more like a thunk with each step. They’re usually seen on tourists near the coast. But they couldn’t possibly be good for the beach because they’d act like anchors in the sand. You can’t even blame the tree huggers for this one because they’re not environmentally friendly; I saw one sitting at the bottom of Trellis Bay and even the fish stayed away from it.

If you have a friend suffering from this affliction, intervene and show them the mirror. This must be stopped before it spreads like bird flu.

119, 120, 121… ugh, there’s too many bites to count and they’re all very itchy. For the last week I look and itch like I have the chicken pox. Going to the Maho Bay Camps (www.maho.org) didn’t help because nature is protected in the national park and insects have feelings too; damn hippies. It’s built along the slope of the hill overlooking the bay with 114 individual tents and facilities connected by a maze of elevated wooden paths that wind through the trees totaling two miles long. It looks like someone wanted to live out their childhood fantasy of living in a tree house and they couldn’t stop after just one. The compound includes a ceramics workshops, pottery, recycled glass blowing, bath houses, restaurants, general store, beaches with water sports, hiking trails, painting, yoga, massage, and recycled paper making studios. Everything an eco-tourist or hippy could possibly want. I was worried they might get creative with granola, but we arrived on prime rib Friday followed by mussels steamed in a white wine and garlic sauce the next night and boy they were delish! Unfortunately while we were feasting at the outdoor pavilion watching the amazing sunsets, the insects were gorging on me like a Las Vegas buffet. 122, 123, 124…

We finished up our sailing lessons yesterday and are now certified by some crazy organization to rent big boats all by ourselves. We learned how to do a bunch of cool sailor stuff like jibe, tack and heave-to. Mary also learned the heave-ho and YMCA, but that’s a different story. Now we just need to find some crazy friends with a boat to tool around the islands with. Anyone?

Here in St. John, we found an eco-tourism campground just off the beach that rents permanent tents. They’ve got what seems like miles of boardwalk that run up and down the surrouding hills to connect all these little tent-cabins tucked away in the trees. It’s kinda like being an ewok, but with less fur and living a little closer to the ground. The worst part is that it is absolutely crawling with hippies. They’re everywhere… I think this net connection is even solar powered…

Mary’s looking for our next hotel, so I get a few minutes to add to our inland empire stories. From our lazy existance in Las Galeras, we headed to the more popular area of the northern coast. The serious resort towns up here are Cabarete and Puerto Plata, so we tried out a smaller town in between called Sosua. Right. The small towns up here are just sloppy resort areas for foreigners with less money. The beaches are great if you don’t mind the shacks along the waterfront selling everything you don’t want. Except the bars. They’ll send out all the beer and Cuba Libres (rum and coke) you can handle straight to your chair on the beach all day for $20US. Maybe that’s not so bad…
The fun thing about towns like this are the crazy foreigners you meet in the hostel areas. Between the crazy wannabe-IT guy who owns the hostel and wants to rip everything Microsoft and Norton off your computer before he lets you on the WiFi, the Louisana guys looking for a good time, the Canadian bartender who just wants a tip so he can down another beer, the old American who came down looking for a good time and apparently found it is cheaper to marry than pay for every visit (yet he still had a noon ‘massage’ appointment) or the Brit who traveled the world and then founded the seemingly popular and respected Dominican Website www.dr1.com. The last guy actually seemed pretty normal…
Needless to say, the next day we headed out to calmer waters. Literally, it turns out. We wanted to see a bit of the interior now that we’d seen nearly the entire norther coast, so we headed for Jarabacoa which is on the way up the mountains to Pico Duarte, highest point in the Caribbean at 10,500 feet.
Jarabacoa is like Tahoe. Beautiful mountain town with pine trees and near-alpine meadows. No lake, though. Like Mary said, we did the rafting thing. Maybe I expected a bit of white water excitement since we’re in the middle of nowhere and our lives are worth nothing here. But it was more like beer floating. 87 adventurous foreigners with neon bracelets that proclaim “One more free mai-tai!” bused in for the day from their comfortable lounge chair on the sands of Puerto Plata resorts accompanied our float down the river. No offense to the parents who may be reading, but once the gray-heads show up to a rafting trip, you know it’s going to be Rafting Miss Daisy at best.
OK, I’m being negative. We did get wet and I was able to set my paddle down and take pictures while we went through the “white water” sections. So it was fun. We did meet a couple guys from Minnesota who talk like my Dad and a model from Milan who’s here to get a boob job. If only we had video of the gestures Mary and this girl made while trying to get the point across. That 30 seconds was quite a bit more invigorating than the whole raft trip.
Next day of hiking was more our style. We hopped a moto (can’t call it a ”motorcycle” in good counscience if it’s just 100cc) out a few miles to the waterfall trailhead. We stopped twice and twice I burned my calf on the muffler. The injuries are moving higher…
We walked up to Salto Jimenoa which is claimed to be the waterfall background for the helicopter landing scene in Jurassic Park. Neato. Couldn’t find a dinosaur in my swim, though.

Oh – Looks like Mary found a home for us in Martinique, so it’s time for dinner. That was the deal.

We left Las Galeras on 4-21 and headed inland. Internet availability is sparse and we´ve got a ton to upload as soon as we get access. These internet shops just don´t cut it. We went to the center of the island where the mountains are and did some river rafting and hiking to waterfalls. We´re in the capital, Santo Domingo, now and are leaving for the Virgin Islands tomorrow. There we´ll catch the end of their Carnival then jump onto a boat to sail the blue seas. Wonder if there´ll be WiFi on board. Ugh, laptops… can´t live without them, but can´t fit them in our backpacks. I guess if we learned to share then we would only need one.

I finally posted a few pictures of Las Galeras on the website. Head back to prefectlife.net and check out the Travelogue. I’d try to write something mildly entertaining for you, but Mary has been waiting on me to head to the beach and find a color other than pale for the next set of pictures. So you’ll just have to wait.

Every town has its stories and this is just one of many that we have heard about this one. Twenty years ago the French midget came into town and bought land from the locals for “a pair of shoes”. Over time he developed and sold the land to foreigners for a pretty peso, including the land under our hotel. Well, the country has a controlled title system similar to the states, but disgruntled ex-owners and their relatives who feel they were short changed have made attempts to reclaim the land. So it was that we walked out to the garden one day and noticed a barbed wire fence blocking our access to the beach where there was none the day before. The owner sent his lawyer out within a couple of days but the fence stayed up. Why doesn’t someone just cut it down we wondered? Apparently the guy responsible for the new land line was a known ‘pimp-daddy’ (in your best French accent), dealer, and killed a man in town by stabbing him. So the fence stayed up. Yesterday the fence was taken down for the party this weekend and today the fence is back up. So from our balcony view machete beats paper.