Dominica - Antigua

I do apologize for the lack of a blog post recently, I have just been enjoying myself too much to sit down and write. So here’s what’s been happening on the Jangles boat:

Bubbles at champagne beach

We spent a few days in Dominica; which has been labeled one of our favourite islands. This island was formed by the creation of eleven volcanoes of which seven are still active. Almost the entire island is covered in lush green rainforests where waterfalls and streams abound. It is a truly spectacular island. We spent two days attached to a buoy in Rosseau Bay. The first day, we ruled out an island tour due to the massive cruise ship that had appeared overnight, meaning that the island would be overrun with tourists. So we opted for a tour the second day; which was definitely the right decision. Our first stop on our tour was to Champagne Beach. We all got into our costumes and walked with our snorkeling gear to the end of the beach. It is known as Champagne beach due to the little bubbles that rise from the seabed due to volcanic activity. We floated through the little bubbles; revealing a whole new world full of life below the sea. We saw many fish, some including: massive parrotfish, blowfish, trumpet fish, spotted eels and even a tiny rusty orange seahorse! We emerged after an hour and a half having spent longer at Champagne Beach than we intended too.

Jangles crew with Jangles lifejackets

 After tea, coffee and cake, we headed to Titou Gorge; made famous by the second Pirates of the Caribbean movie. We walked the ten minutes to the gorge, and then put on our life jackets. Our tour guide said we had to have life jackets as someone had drowned in the gorge recently. So our Jangles life jackets were put to use for the first time. Our guide told us that the water was not cold, only ‘refreshing’ but guaranteed the only word running through my mind once I got in was cold! We swam into this dark gorge in a single file. It was raining up ahead so big drops were splashing down all around us and one drop that splashed in front of me contained a red ant. Now this drop naturally splashed into my eye and the red ant bit me on the corner of my eye; leaving it burning and swelling. But this bad luck of fortune could not of stopped my enjoyment of this beautiful gorge. We swam about 5 minutes to the end of the gorge where this very powerful waterfall gushed down. We each took turns swimming against the waterfall and trying to touch the furthest rock so we could see we reached the end of the gorge. Once everyone touched the rock, we slowly swam back to the entrance; where another group was arriving. From the gorge, we went to lunch at the Rainforest café near the Trafalgar Falls. The food was good but nobody was overly impressed by it. They did have one very strong rum punch though. Again, it was a ten minute walk to Trafalgar Falls. Now Trafalgar Falls are twin waterfalls that the locals call the mama and the papa waterfalls. The papa waterfall being the taller of the two, was a hot water waterfall. The mama waterfall was a cold water fall. All the tourists stood at a balcony overlooking the two waterfalls; we ventured further to actually go and swim in the pools below the waterfalls. We had one French tourist who was yelling at us (In French of course) because we went passed a sign that said ‘proceed at your own risk’. Needless to say we continued walking and climbed over rocks to get to the cold water pool as the hot one was just too hot for us at that moment in time. Alex, Rebecca and I swam in the mama pool. After Trafalgar Falls we had time for one more stop – the Sulphur spring. We were shown the original source of the spring where it was too hot for human contact, so we went to one of the three sulphur spas. This spa had three bathtubs filled with warm water and more dripping down. Needless to say, this is where the four girls stayed whilst the men went exploring around. We went back to the taxi and arrived back to the boat after a very long day of exploring.

Going into the gorge

Trafalgar Falls

Sulphur bathtubs

We sailed up to Portsmouth; occasionally running around to reef sails as gusts of up to 33 knots of wind came through. We arrived late afternoon and attached to a buoy. The next day we arranged to go up Indian River to a small pub. Our boat had to be rowed up the river as it was illegal to use the boats  engine in the protected area. This is all a protected nature reserves and it would destroy the mangroves. Indian River is also another famous spot from the second Pirates of the Caribbean movie. It was about a 45 minute row to the pub, where the river becomes too narrow and shallow to continue by boat. The little pub offered passion fruit rum punch, lime rum punch, coconut rum punch and their special blend known as dynamite. We each picked a flavour and then once we couldn’t stand the mosquito bites anymore, we hopped back into the boat and rowed back down the Indian River. Great fun was had on the way back where some of us took turns in attempting a hand at rowing the boat, we all agreed that Jerome our tour guy was certainly the best.

Going down Indian River

 The next morning, we sailed to Antigua. It was my parent’s 26^th wedding anniversary, which we celebrated with a bottle of champagne and fish (the only one that we had managed to catch, thank goodness there are some fish in the ocean, we were beginning to wonder!) once we had arrived in Antigua. The dock was covered in super yachts of various shapes and sizes as they were having a week of charters; a yearly event in Antigua. Most of the super yachts cost around 200 – 250 thousand US for a week of chartering. Given the amount of super yachts I would imagine that there will be many events happening over the next week. . .

Fish for dinner