Escape From The Frozen North

Jan 28, 2005

Greetings from Dominica - Nature Island of the Caribbean. We arrived here yesterday to spend a week with our friends, Rachel and Oliver. They have a lovely house and some "cabins" on a beautiful spread outside of the capital city of Roseau.

We left frozen New York City, awaking at 3:00 am so that we'd be ready when our Georgian (as in the country of Georgia)car service driver, Thomas, picked us up at 4:30. He was on time and in half an hour we were at the American Airlines terminal at JFK. Boarding went smoothely. We were flying to San Juan, Puerto Rico - there to make a mad dash for an American Eagle prop plane to the island of Dominica.

Don't confuse Dominica with the Dominican Republic (which people do all the time). The former is in the Lesser Antilles and, more precisely, it's part of the Windward Islands (as opposed to the Leeward ones). Check it on a map to find out where we are. Suffice it to say we're in a different time zone. The archipelago of islands down here stretches, like a backward comma, to the south and east. Our island is squeezed between Guadalupe to the north and Martinique to the south.

Our plane approached the airport, which is on the northeast Atlantic Ocean coast by heading into jagged and rugged mountains, making a U-turn and then (scarily) navigating to touchdown on the runway situated in a narrow valley. The "airport" was a little clump of buildings. We walked down onto the runway and then to customs, then to luggage claim. Of course, we had made a mad dash to make our connection in San Juan but our luggage was more lethargic (or perhaps their handlers were). One bag made it, two were back in Puerto Rico (and should arrive today ... hopefully).

Our gracious host, Oliver, was waiting outside to take us home to the other, Caribbean side of the island. Fuhgeddabout it! Oy, a ride from hell. First, Dominica, made independent from England in 1978, drives on the "wrong" side of the road and the driver sits on the "wrong" side of the car. Always a little disconcerting. But the roads. Well, that's something else altogether. About wide enough for one car. Twisty, turny and cars negotiate these very mountainous byways at very high speed. We held on for dare life, putting our imaginary brakes to the floor of the car at every crazy turn and dip in the road.

We arrived to paradise. A gated estate with beautiful flora all around - papaya, pumpkin, bananas, coffee, cocoa, star fruit, pineapples and palms. Rachel and Oliver have created a lovely B&B with a few charming cabins for guests to reside in and a pool to swim in. It's a work in progress and construction is proceeding on another building which will have more rooms and, perhaps, a dining room. Rachel has been owner and architect and the buidlings are lovely and open and airy. Last night we lay down with the sounds of tropical birds cooing us to sleep and the warm air with its tropical aromas flowing over our very exhausted bodies. Not content to let sleeping dogs lie, Rachel and Oliver took us to a jazz club in town where we imbibed a few drinks and listened to some great music. Then back to our manse over crazy roads at high speeds and to bed for sweet, needed sleep.


A view from our cabin. Tropical paradise.


This is the dining/living section of our charming, airy cabin.


A view of the grounds, pool and cloud-shrouded mountains.


Bonty Henry, the gardiner at Rachel's place makes an offering of star fruit for our breakfast on Friday.