The trail to Middleham Falls on the Caribbean island of Dominica is all wet leaves, slippery black stones and steps formed by tree roots. It could be a path in Middle-earth, shrouded, dark and green, fit for hobbits and fairies. Where the sunlight penetrated the canopy, rainbows formed in the fog, close enough to hit. Here and there, hummingbirds drew nectar from huge flowers.
The goal that day in January: a 200 foot forest waterfall filling and filling little pools on the valley floor, where I could – as one does in the secret hot pools and secluded waterfalls of Dominica – take off my clothes, slide into the water and commune with the hummingbirds like a fairy queen.
Dominica, 29 miles long and 16 miles wide at its widest point, is one of the wildest Caribbean islands. Former British colony, it is located in the eastern Caribbean between Guadeloupe and Martinique. Many travelers base themselves in its capital, Roseau. Thanks in part to its rugged topography, bisected by a volcanic mountain range with Jurassic-looking conical peaks, the island was the last Caribbean island to be colonized by Europeans.
Even today, to reach and get around this tropical bastion, a New York Times 52 Places to Go in 2024 pick, you need a taste for adventure, patience and a strong stomach. There are few direct flights from the United States and once you land the journey doesn’t end. Getting around the island in a rental car, getting to accommodations, hiking, snorkeling and visiting local experts, usually involved long, nauseating journeys on narrow ribbons of concrete carved out of the mountain jungle over the last century by pickaxe, shovel and wheelbarrow.
Instead of ups and downs
The island is a big draw for hikers who like a challenge: walking almost anywhere beyond the coast involves going up or down. Boiling lake, a flooded volcanic fumarole and popular attraction, lies at the end of a strenuous three-hour trek from the village of Laudat. The government is building a cable car, expected to be completed by the end of the year, which will take visitors from nearby Laudat to the lake in just 15 minutes.
Even after the cable car opens, hikers will be able to choose from a network of mountain trails, including the 115-mile trail Waitukubuli National Trail, which traverses the entire island in 14 stages and takes six days to complete. (Waitukubuli is the indigenous name for the island.)
Dominica, which calls itself the Island of Nature, has sought to protect its wild side. The route to Middleham Falls is one of dozens of marked and unmarked trails around the 17,000 volcanic acres Morne Trois Pitons National ParkUNESCO world heritage site.
Offshore, the government has opened a new reserve for sperm whalescompleting a marine reserve which protects corals and reef animals. And locals joined the effort. In the last year, Simon Walsh, who runs Immersion in the Island of Natureand his fellow divers painstakingly applied amoxicillin-based putty to corals that showed signs of hard coral tissue loss diseasewhich has been spreading in the Caribbean for about a decade.
My travel companion and I snorkeled the coral reef near the Bubble Beach dive shop (so named for the tiny bubbles from the volcanic springs rising up from the sand) and easily spotted the white medicine outlining the spots damaged by the illness.
Mr Walsh had plans to save some of the specimens from coral bleaching, a devastating phenomenon linked to climate change, by transferring some to tanks to protect them from another summer of record water temperatures. But a tragic turn of events has jeopardized this effort.
Mr. Walsh ran both coral rescue projects through a non-profit organization called REZDM. The organization, born after Hurricane Maria devastated the island in 2017, received much of its funding from Daniel Langlois, a Canadian philanthropist who had built an off-the-grid resort near the town of Soufriere. Last November, Mr Langlois and his partner were killed, a rare crime on a largely safe island. Police have charged the American owner of a nearby estate, who had reportedly argued with Mr Langlois over the use of a road that ran through his property, and a Florida man with murder. Mr Walsh does not know whether the projects will continue to receive funding.
A garden wherever you go
Dominica receives up to 250 inches of rain per year, fueling crystal-clear streams, waterfalls, and thousands of acres of lush forest. Hurricanes such as Category 5 Storm Maria have devastated and reshaped the island repeatedly over the centuries.
The silver lining of all that rainfall is the Edenic ecosystem. Much of the island looks like a wild garden. Spectacular flowers peek out from the intense green almost everywhere. Birds of paradise and other dazzling flowers sprout like weeds. Grab a handful of tall grass on the side of the road, crush it, and inhale the lemongrass. Pluck a berry from a tree and it might be one of half a dozen types of cherry. Twenty-pound globs of jackfruit, rock-hard and encased in bright green, elephant-hide-like skin, hang from the branches.
Many of these wild plants are also grown in fantastic private gardens. Jungle Cove Resort Soufriere claims to have 75 different tropical fruit trees in his yard, a number we doubted until its owner, Sam Raphael, walked us around for 45 minutes, popping and tasting dozens of species. On the edge of Roseau, the entrance to the 40 acres Dominica Botanical Gardenfounded in 1889, it features a tree whose branches, leafless when I visited, sprout large, soft yellow flowers resembling peonies: a great beauty with a whimsical name, buttercup tree.
TO Papillote wilderness retreat, we were able to spend the night in a garden. Located a few hundred meters below Trafalgar Falls, a double waterfall, Papillote predates many other eco-friendly features on the island. Its owner, Anne Jno Baptiste, arrived from New York in 1961 and purchased the land, including the 40-foot waterfall and steaming volcanic springs, to create a botanical garden. She is now 94, modest about her garden and philosophical about the challenges. She has survived five major hurricanes. “We had some landslides,” she says. “You see, everything changes. That’s life. Simply pick up the pieces.
The refuge is a charming, ramshackle landmark with a few plain rooms. Steps wind beneath orange and pink Day-Glo flowers and giant ferns to a secret garden. Twice a day, we would go down and find out what standing under a 40-foot waterfall does for sore shoulders, then dive into a warm pool for a long soak. Our accommodations also had a perpetually bubbling tub of volcanic hot water inside the bathroom. Our room cost $130 a night (as with many places on the island, we paid in US dollars, worth about 2.7 East Caribbean dollars, the local currency).
Ambitious plans and growing fears
The historian Lennox Honychurch He is among the islanders concerned about the government’s plans to expand and modernize tourism infrastructure. Like many Caribbean islands, Dominica is conflicted between the demands of wealthy snowbirds who want luxury accommodations and easier air access and environmentalists and advocates of a smaller, sustainable local economy who fear losing out.” natural” of their island.
In addition to the cable car to Boiling Lake, builders are working on a large, new international airport, about an hour’s drive from the capital, which is expected to be completed by 2027, according to Samuel Johnson, chief executive of the International Airport Development Company of Dominica. And the government expects to welcome half a million cruise ship visitors each year. “Their dream is to have big, opulent hotels with marble lobbies,” Mr. Honychurch said.
Denise Charles-Pemberton, tourism minister, did not deny that she wanted more tourists and more direct flights. But she insisted that the government is also focused on protecting the environment. “We want our visitors to be responsible, to understand that our vision is to be a great destination, and when they come they must be respectful of nature,” she said.
For now, high-end accommodation and food are available, but they are not the norm. Some high-end resorts serve great meals, but at prices that would raise eyebrows even in Miami or New York. The best food options in terms of taste, price and atmosphere are roadside shacks and kiosks with outdoor tables.
At Soufriere, we bought plates of takeout chicken stew for about $5.90 each in shed size, pastel blue Teachers’ place. We ate stewed fish ($15) on the porch River Rock Café and Bar, with breathtaking views of the Roseau River flowing through the forest. The best meal we had was the chicken roti (about $4.80). Vado HotSpota bright red cargo container along the road.
Dipped in stardust
One rainy afternoon, after a day of hiking and snorkeling, we decided to check out the volcanic pools of Ti Kwen Glo Cho (patois for Coin de l’Eau Chaude, or “hot water corner” in French), in a river gap between two imposing walls of greenery. For about $18.50 for the two of us, we entered and found our way to a series of concrete-lined steaming pools, nestled among low palms, ferns, and birds of paradise.
We joined a group of other international visitors in the largest pool and soon found ourselves cooking together like a global soup. We boiled over until we couldn’t stand it anymore. Steam rose from bright red bodies lying on the edge of the pool, cooled by tiny drops of rain. Drowsy, ecstatic, practically narcotized, we lay on our backs as the sun sank behind the mountain, the voyeurs began to scream in the shadows, and the sky turned starry black. “We are stardust,” I thought, remembering the lyrics to the Joni Mitchell song “Woodstock,” as I looked up at the sky.
Just a day later, in the cold, gray winter of the Northeast, surrounded by traffic, fast food outlets and ATMs spitting out bundles of dollars, I couldn’t help but think back to that mesmerizing sunset at Ti Kwen Glo Cho and finish the verse say the song: “And we must return to the garden.”
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