1/19/11- Dominica



Hi Guys,
 Sorry I haven’t updated you on my adventures in Dominica. We’ve been back on the ship for two days now, but it’s been pretty busy with classes and ship life. Dominica was AWESOME. First of all, it is not pronounced in the way I am sure you are all reading it. The stress is on the second “I” in the name, so it is pronounced “Do-min-neeee-ka.” It looks silly, and we catch ourselves saying it the wrong all the time. We woke up at 6:15 on our first day, and filmed the ship arrive in Dominica. We wouldn’t be docking until 8 am, but we could already see the island. It was rainy and foggy, and we were worried that it would be bad weather all day. We took pictures of the island, and of us on the ship. People were allowed to get off the ship at 8am, but groups that had SAS trips leaving right away got to get off first. We left around 8:35, and met up with our canyoning group. Richard and Liz brought us up in two vans to their guest cottage. It was so beautiful. We looked around for a while, and then started getting ready. We had to put on full body wetsuits. We also had wetsuit jackets. Next they harnessed us up with a bunch of gear. We also had helmets, and Catherine and I had decided to buy a Go Pro camera that we could video our rappelling with. We were able to switch the camera from helmet to helmet so we could get both of us. We had a 20 minute training, where each of us practiced rappelling on a 5 ft wall, and then we were off to the canyon. 
We had to hike for about 10 minutes before getting to the start of the water. I was more nervous about falling on the rocks while climbing to each spot than I was about the rappelling. There were fifteen of us, so it took a while before it was our turn. We quickly learned that it was way better to go first, because you could swim in the water below while you waited for everyone to catch up. When it’s your turn to go, Richard hooks you up to all of the ropes, and they have a guy waiting for you at the bottom as well. You hold the rope in one hand, at your side, and give yourself slack as you repel down the waterfall. It didn’t take too long to get down on the first one, and everyone cheered when we got to the bottom. Once I was down in the pools below, I could see that people were jumping off this big rock into the pools. We took lots of pictures with our friend Brandon’s waterproof camera, and people started doing flips off the rocks. 

Some falls we rappelled down, and others we just jumped off of. I think the highest one we rappelled down was thirty feet, and jumping was 25. It was so awesome, and I’m so glad we decided to do this. It was not a Semester at Sea sponsored trip, but I’m hoping more people hear about it for the next voyage because it was one of the most amazing things I’ve ever done. I’m putting together a video of all our pictures and video. 
They had lunch for us when we got back, and we got to try some of the homemade chocolate they had just made that morning. I tried coconut chocolate and mint chocolate. We celebrated that night at all the bars and clubs they opened up on a Sunday night just for us. 

I spent my second day wandering around the town by the ship. Before Semester at Sea announced Dominica as one of the islands on their itinerary, I had never heard of it before. It is one of the world’s best-kept secrets. I hope all of you get to go there at least once in your lifetime. The people are all so nice, and the island is gorgeous. The cottages we went to before rappelling would be a perfect getaway, and definitely a top ten place to stay. I will try and upload our footage of canyoning as soon as I get to an internet café in Brazil. We are currently 20 minutes away from entering the Amazon! We will be going up it for 3 days before we get off in Manaus. 


Here’s the link if you want to check out the website for our canyoning tours and guest cottages:
 www.extremedominica.com