Discover Dominica

By Bob Friel

updated 1:27 p.m. ET June 10, 2005

Five hours into the Boiling Lake hike — still three hours from getting off the trail, back to the jeep and into traction — I’m halfway up another heartbreaking hill and ready to throw in the towel. My legs are rubber, my feet are lead. I take one step, cramp, grimace, rest awhile, sweat, then take another step. Thirty feet above me, my guide, Clem Johnson, is literally hopping up the mountain from foothold to foothold. “C’mon man,” he calls in his Dominica-born, London-educated accent. “It’s all in the legs.”

Yeah, maybe it’s in his legs. I wish I had his legs. Actually, right now I wish I had just one of them so I could beat him senseless with it for showing off.

Boiling Lake is the king butt-kicker of Caribbean hikes. It starts out relatively easy, meandering along the spectacular Titou Gorge, before turning into a death march. Fittingly, the trail takes you through the Valley of Desolation, a steaming, hellish, volcanic landscape, before terminating at the bubbling lake itself, the largest of its kind in the world. It’s a worthy achievement to make it to the lake. I just wish they had a helicopter service to get you back.

Bob Friel

Dominica’s imposing landscape — a jumble of volcanic mountains shrouded in a billowing explosion of green rain forest — makes it the perfect adventure island. It’s Jurassic Park without the dinosaurs, although with parts of the interior so scantily explored, a whole herd of Tyrannosaurus could be stomping around up there and no one would know.

Hundreds of rivers flow down the mountains. Some, dipping close to the molten heart of the island, run hot. Where these feeder streams join a larger river, you find spots where the locals have piled rocks to create natural hot tubs. Upriver, deep in the forest, lie some of the Caribbean’s most breathtaking sights: thundering waterfalls, hidden lakes and clear green pools framed by exotic flowers and dangling vines.

You can spend weeks on Dominica doing one hike after another and still not feel you’ve even scratched the surface of all there is to do. And that’s just on land.

Dominica’s diving is every bit the adventure as its hiking. In Soufrière Bay, Johnson and I descend onto a site where the Atlantic and the Caribbean meet in a confluence of currents that sustains a raucous multiplicity of sea life. The underwater geography here was created by both the bold, violent strokes of seismic forces and the patient artwork of corals. Massive pinnacles of rock, the ragged edges of a volcanic crater, are smothered in golden sea fans. Gigantic black coral trees host dozens of tiny, juvenile trumpetfish, attesting to the fecundity of the waters. In one dive I find both the largest sponge and largest example of rare pillar coral I’ve ever seen. There are jawfish, mantis shrimp, pistol shrimp and fields of garden eels. On one small coral head, I see several species of anemones each with its own set of uniquely symbiotic species. The reef here is an uninhibited celebration of natural selection.

MORE FROM ACTIVE

Active Section Front

World’s scariest ski slopes Most roads closing for winter in Yellowstone Winter Trails celebrates 15th year with freebies The year of living dangerously Quest for the one-horned rhino America’s best hikes Colo. offers ‘snow virgins’ a free 3-month trip World’s wildest bungee jumping spots 10 places you thought you shouldn’t visit ... A new type of bachelor bash Active Section Front   Add Active headlines to your news reader: