Day Eight - Dominica.

It was another beautiful morning as we slowly docked in Dominica (pronounced Doh-men-eek’-ah) with the colourful houses standing out on the hills.

The centre of this volcanic island is composed of rain forests and the clouds hung over the mountains all day, threatening a down-pour at any time. Luckily for us we avoided all the showers.
We hadn’t booked any of the ship’s excursions opting instead for a local taxi to show us the sights. We boarded a mini-bus with Win & Jim and four other passengers and were joined by a guide and Francis our driver. Like in the UK traffic drives on the left hand side but as most of the roads were very narrow this was not really relevant.The striking feature of the roads were their steepness with the gradient seemingly increasing with each turn of the road as we slowly made our way to our first stop Trafalgar Falls. These comprise of two waterfalls, known locally as the Father falls (tall and slim) and the Mother falls (short and broad).

The walk to and from the falls was through the rain forest and it was very hot and humid. We heard the songs of many of the 170 or so bird species that exist on the island but they were difficult to spot through the dense vegetation.
The next stop on our trip was the Botanical Gardens, a forty acre site located just outside the main town Roseau. Here we saw many colourful flowers...

and some strange tree specimens such as this, the Cannonball Tree.

The park was also the site of much damage when Hurricane Davis hit the island in August 1979 bringing a large African Baobab tree down on top of a school bus.

Fortunately the bus was empty at the time but has been preserved for posterity.
The final stop on our mini-trip was the lookout at Morne Bruce which gives a panoramic view over the capital and our cruise ship beyond. A perfect photo opportunity to end the trip.

After watching the comedian in the theatre we had dinner tonight with an excellent table comprising a mother & daughter from Toronto and a couple from Florida who had 14 grandchildren and 9 great-grandchildren. A throughly entertaining mealtime in total contrast to last nights company.
Tomorrow we move on to Saint Lucia.