SMC Dominica: Day Three: Dominica, Finally!

Today's video by team Sisserou:

Day Three: Dominica, Finally!

We arrived! Our stay in Martinique was far too short, as it truly only involved a night of sleep, breakfast, and a fast hustle to the boat dock to catch our next catamaran. This trip was much rougher than the rest, but only one of us really suffered any motion sickness. Perhaps the fact that we decided to eat lunch on the boat contributed to the suffering of our teammate . . .?

In any case, we arrived into Dominica in bright sun combined with a light mist that meant we got to see a lovely double rainbow over the port as we arrived. Wow. Seems like a good omen.

We wrestled our enormous luggage load for the last time (it will be much reduced the next time we move it from place to place), and were pleased to meet our host Charles Williams, the immediate past chief of the Kalinago (Caribs). We learned two very important things on the way up to the Territory: 1) the pronunciation of the country itself IS, in fact “dom-ih-NEE-kuh” and the pronunciation of the people/Territory is “CAR-reeb.” We think.

Make that three important things that we learned as we drove up the hills, as we also discovered that the land here is beautiful, just as we had heard. The landscape is full of volcanic mountains that are covered with lush rain forest, so every corner brings a new combination of deep and bright greens occasionally speckled with bright orange flowers or ripening mangoes. Green is certainly the predominant color that surrounds us no matter where we are.

After a lovely dinner from Charles’ wife Margaret, we caught up on our backlog of daily video projects, though we are experiencing trouble trying to post them. (presumably by the time you are reading this note, that problem will have been solved).

We are in a hillside inn that looks out over the ocean, with sea breezes wafting through continuously. We each have our own bed, we have toilets that flush (more often than not), and we have so far had electricity whenever we wanted it. We have agreed to go scan our new worksite first thing tomorrow, so we hope that the blogs will start to get more interesting from there.

Also, check back in a day or two and we should have had time to backfill some of the highlight pics from the day so far.