Time to Go

Time to leave Dominica.  There is a moderate-wind day tomorrow which will allow us to get up to Les Saintes.  We’ll hang around there and visit with Quest and then hug the shelter of the coast of Guadeloupe to get us up to Deshaise.  We'll stage from there to get back to Antigua.

We love this place.  Might be our favourite island.

 

Royally great lunch with Azaya at the Sawarma King

Excellent!

Seabird cooking at the PAYS BBQ

Yay!!!  Virtue and Vice

Cooling down at the Roti shack

Carnival parade.. such as it was

Shane and Mickie

Phil introduced himself.  His dad lives in Surrey near Guilford.  No, really!

Not really sure what to say about this...

Fixer-upper.  You could get it cheap!

Old gas pump.  Collectors back home would love this!

Copper rum cauldrons - just sitting beside the road.

The last few days have been really great!  Even though Azaya deserted us a couple of days ago, Mickie and Shane from “Virtue and Vice” came in.  Lovely couple… we always have fun with them.  We kind of bonded with them during our time in Luperon at the beginning of our Caribbean Adventure.

We had fun at “Carnaval” - which consisted of two trucks piled with massive speakers belching out some kind of sound.  BUT, we ate road-kill and drank lots of beer so it was fun.  Met Phil whose dad lives in Surrey, 30 miles from home.  He says he is coming to visit this summer.  Might even make it to the Pig Roast!

Breakfast this morning - mango, baby bananas and passion fruit

From the set of Pirates of the Caribbean - home of the witch.

Sammy/Dinosaur

Jelly Man - coconut entrepreneur

Rum punch

Where's the bus?

Jelly Man is up there somewhere

More rum punch - Jack, Gene, me and Dinosaur

Indian River Crew

Xanadu and Moody Blues

Indian River Bridge

Getting some "bush medicine" advice from Dinosaur

When we chartered down here years ago with our kids we took an “Indian River Tour” which turned out to be a bit of a bust.  A guy poles you a mile down a river in a river boat, you get to a shack and have some bad food and… that’s it!  So we’ve been resisting but today, along with Xanadu (Jack and Linda from Toronto) and Moody Blues (Gene and Suzie from Friday Harbor) we caved and did the tour.  AND, it was really good.  This time we had a great walk through the forest and then into a local farm.  Had some dynamite rum punch and learned all about the local bush medicine.  Our guide, Sammy (AKA Dinosaur) was awesome.  Started out quiet.  Maybe a little shy... but by the time we got to the grotto he'd found his voice and was great.  Then, we had a couple of rum punches and you couldn't get a word in edgewise.  Highly recommend Dinosaur.

So we are enjoying our sundowners, putting off getting the boat ready for our trip tomorrow… AND GUESS WHAT?  There’s a whale in the harbour.  Right close to the boats.  No, really!  And then this awesome sunset!

So we’re going to post this, stow the dinghy, put everything away and tomorrow morning we are back to France (Ilse des Saintes.)  YAY French wine, cheeses, baguettes, weird animal pate, mussels and speaking french. 

Good thing we are fluent and can enjoy scintillating conversations with the locals!