Gloria!

When I was young, I loved to read biographies, especially about the great explorers. Perhaps that is how this guy from a land-locked state ended up having an attraction for “tall ships.” Some of you know that I almost ended up attending the U.S. Coast Guard Academy after graduating from high school, which would have put my life on an entirely different trajectory. The Coast Guard Academy has a famous wooden sailing ship called the Eagle, that cadets sail during the summer for training purposes and to spread good will. Although I never sailed on it, I did get to tour the Eagle twice over the years (in Baltimore a few years ago and in the mid-'80s when I lived in Washington, DC). Although I didn't become a Coast Guard Academy cadet, the Eagle still is meaningful to me.

Yesterday, I had to go to the capital for a Peace Corps meeting, and to my surprise I saw the masts of a large sailing vessel looming above the city as my bus neared Roseau. Since I arrived early with time to spare, I ambled down to the dock to see this beautiful ship (that's me above, standing on the dock), and was invited to take a tour. It was the A.R.C. Gloria, a training vessel for the Colombian Navy with a crew of 150 (A.R.C. stands for the Armada of the Republic of Colombia). Just like the U.S. Coast Guard Academy's Eagle (which my Colombian tour guide knew about), it sails around the world to participate in tall ship celebrations and general good will missions, while providing valuable training to naval cadets. I tried to capture the entire ship from the dock in the photo below.

Here is a view of the bow area from the dock. Notice the angel figurehead leading the way.

Below is a picture taken in the bow once I was aboard the ship. The wood on the deck is immaculate!

The next picture shows the view looking straight up one of the masts, the tallest of which is over 40 meters high (133 feet).

I thought it was interesting to see the white metal framework surrounding the spinning marine radar antenna on the forward mast, probably to prevent ropes or sails from hitting it.

My guide let me see inside the officer's mess, which was far from being a “mess”—it was incredibly beautiful (and I hear the Colombian coffee they serve is excellent).

I was surprised to see the display cases built into the walls that have amazing examples of golden treasures from the ancient Incan civilization in Colombia (you can see one of the half dozen or so cases in the right center of the picture above). I can't fathom how much these gold masterpieces (of which you are only seeing a few in my pictures) might be worth! Although the reflections on the display case glass might be a bit confusing in the next two pictures, the lighting surely made the gleaming gold shimmer!

I thought the next one was particularly interesting. It is labeled as a votive raft, so I assume it held candles and represented a raft that they would have built and used. Little did I know that I would get an archeology lesson while touring this impressive ship.

While taking the picture below of the pretty Colombian flag flying off the stern, I glimpsed that the modern catamaran ferry boat which brings passengers to Dominica (including myself last August) was at its dock further up the waterfront (visible in the picture below).

After my tour and as I headed back the walkway to attend my Peace Corps meeting, I noticed that the futuristic ferry boat was leaving. I thought it would make an interesting picture to capture both these awesome ships together—one is a “Gloria-ous” example of the wooden sailing ships that once frequented this beautiful island, while the other is an example of modern ship-building technology. Each is interesting in its own way, and I'm glad I was able to experience both of them.

Finally, I wanted to share this last picture that I "borrowed" from the Internet showing this majestic ship sailing at sea, with an extra large flag flying off the stern. Isn't it a beauty!

“I'll take 'Odds and Ends' for $200, Alex”

I was able to do a lot of activities over the Easter break, and already shared stories about my climb up Mont Rouge, Cabrits National Park, and the large mountain behind the village. For this blog post, I'm going to consolidate several other activities (hence the “odds and ends” title, similar to an earlier consolidated article) from recent weeks into this one story.

---

I was delighted to recently meet up with a couple of friends from my hometown who happened to visit Dominica on a cruise. We arranged prior to their departure to get together at the Peace Corps office when their cruise ship docked in the capital city. It really meant a lot to me to see these familiar faces with whom I worked for many years (although all three of us are now Treasury Department retirees)! I enjoyed mixing my old hometown with my new home.

---

Not all that far from my village, there is a crater from an ancient volcano. The roadway which circles the northern part of the island normally runs near the coast, but as it gets close to the volcano, it starts climbing the heights and then crosses over the lip of the crater before running through the interior and exiting on the other side. As soon as you cross the top and begin descending into the crater, you begin to smell the sulfuric gases. Below is a panorama of half of the large crater.

There is a spot in the middle where you can stop and hike a few minutes into the bottom, where the gases bubble up from deep within the earth. Fortunately, this volcano is old, and the magma is so deep that the gases have time to cool off by the time they reach the surface. Unlike other parts of this island, these are NOT hot springs, thus it is called the Cold Soufriere (which I think means sulfur, or sulfur mine, in French). This candid shot was sneakily taken as I was watching one of the smaller springs (sometimes called mudpots or fumaroles) and contemplating the journey these bubbles had just completed.

---

I went on a long hike up the “creek” nearest my little cottage (the locals don't call them creeks, brooks, or streams here—all moving water seems to be called a river). I have a student who lives near this creek, and he had taken me up there a few months ago. At a fork, we took the easier path and went up the right side. Soon, the creek ended against the high ridge, and we walked back down to the village on that trip.

On this recent day (pictured above), we took the left fork, figuring that it would also run out fairly soon, and we could say that we had been to the source of the creek that comes down from the highlands through our village. However, we kept walking and walking and walking—and since we were running out of time, we decided to turn around before we made it all the way to the source. I will look forward to someday hiking all the way to the top of this water source. In West Virginia, I always had a lot of fun “creek walking” (hiking along a creek, jumping from rock to rock and trying to not get your feet wet). It is even more fun here, since one doesn't need to worry about venomous snakes.

While in the upper reaches of this hike, we started seeing “fern trees,” as shown above I loved how the sky filtered through them, and took a picture even though I doubted that it would accurately reflect their beauty. However, I think this picture gives you a sense of how special these trees are. They seem like something the plant-eating dinosaurs probably enjoyed.

---

Finally, while school was out for Easter, I did a hike with the ten youngsters shown below. We followed a path many years ago had been a road leading up one of the hills behind our village. A hurricane in 1928 had severely damaged this old road, and most of the way was little more than a narrow, rarely used footpath along the edge of a steep hillside. Near the top, the path ends where a landslide in recent years had buried the trail with rocks and dirt. Thick vines and vegetation have grown over these loose rocks, making your footing treacherous as you cross the landslide. However, once across this obstacle, the old road is in decent shape at the top of the hill, and still connects to the main road. So here is my “crew” after we made it up past the landslide and onto the old road. The Atlantic Ocean can be seen in the upper left.

On Top of the World (or at least my village)

“What was I thinking?” I silently asked myself this question several times yesterday. [A few of you have pondered this same thing, questioning my sanity after I retired, joined the Peace Corps, and left the USA last year.]

Ever since arriving on the island of Dominica, I've gazed at the tall, rugged mountain behind our village. I've wondered what it would be like to hike to the top. I knew that if I ever got the chance to achieve this goal, I would always gaze up at that mountain with a new perspective of having conquered it.

Being from West Virginia, I had done some hiking up and down our hills over the course of my lifetime. During my pre-service training on the island of St. Lucia last summer, my class of Peace Corps Volunteers spent a Sunday hiking up Gros Piton, a huge mountain on that island (click here to read that story).

Gros Piton was a very challenging climb, but it is a major St. Lucia tourist attraction, with a well-maintained trail to the top. There is no well-defined trail to the top of our mountain. I knew I could not do it alone, but during a conversation with one of the men in the village, he said he would take me up there. He also told me about how there used to be a television transmitter tower on top of the mountain, which I thought would be interesting to see (the picture below shows me at the pinnacle, standing next to the small concrete block building that had been built at the base of the tower).

There is a big difference between hills here and hills in my native West Virginia. The Appalachian Mountains are old, and in weathering the centuries they have generally become more rounded. The mountains of Dominica, a “young” landmass built by volcanic eruptions, are much steeper and “sharper.” Below is a picture of the mountain behind our village, with the pinnacle being the left-most and furthest back of the three visible peaks. Notice the narrow ridges and steep slopes that converge towards the top.

Yesterday's expedition started off as just three adults, but one of my students saw us leaving, and insisted on joining us. His flip-flop started to break early on, so he hiked nearly the whole way barefoot while carrying his sandals in one hand. [The children here have much tougher feet that I do.] We took the road to the top of the village, which until yesterday had always seemed very high. Soon, I was seeing views of the village and the surrounding area that were at a higher angle than I had ever seen before (as shown below).

At the beginning, we were just working our way up a broad hillside. We came to one point where we were passing through a virtual sea of ferns that were nearly shoulder high, as shown below. It is so nice to not need to worry about poisonous snakes when hiking through such foliage, where you can't even see where you are stepping.

Eventually, we worked our way over to one of the ridges leading to the top. It was very tough to climb, with loose rocks, slippery green moss, fallen branches, exposed roots, thorny vines, etc. Often I was crawling more than climbing, using my hands to grab whatever I could to help me up the steep angle of the hill. It was beginning to seem crazy that we were climbing this mountain!

Most of the hike was under the canopy of the forest, limiting the ability to take good pictures of the amazing scenery we were seeing. However, at one point there was a clearing where I snapped this photo, looking down the coastline. This altitude lets one see much further down the coast than normal. Some of you may recognize (near the lower right center of the picture) the gray rocky point jutting out into the Atlantic Ocean that we call “Lion's Back” because it looks similar to the back end of a sitting lion, with the green trees filling in the lion's mane.

A lot of the hike along the ridges involved very steep slopes down both sides. One had to be very careful not to slip and fall. A few times our guide made suggestions about which side to favor, because falling down one way would be less problematical than slipping down the other side. Most of the time during these challenging sections, I didn't take time to pull out my camera, but below is one shot I took where we had to cross over a large rocky area, that had us crawling down for a brief period as we continued ascent. Notice the trunks of the trees on each side to get a sense of how narrow the apex of the ridge really was. Also notice that the machete (referred to as a cutlass here in the Caribbean) that our guide used to (somewhat) clear our path—and that my student is carrying his flip-flops in his left hand!

We finally arrived at the summit, and investigated the remnants of the old television tower. The picture below shows my student in the doorway of the small block building (which must have been very difficult to build, since the materials had to have been hand-carried to the top). [The first picture in this story also shows this small building behind me.] This small building is nearly as wide as the ridge--we passed it on the right side of this picture (because there was virtually space on the left side), and you can see how quickly the hillside drops on the right.

After climbing over two hours to reach the top, we headed back down the mountain. Climbing uphill can be exhausting, but going downhill under such conditions is no picnic. Sometimes I felt as if I were a slalom skier, zig-zagging down the hill by moving my hands from one tree to another. There were a few times where we slipped and fell, but fortunately there were no injuries (evacuating someone from that mountain would have been very difficult).

Part-way down the mountain, the ridge split, and we took a different route than the one we used for our ascent. We decided it would be easier to divert to a nearby small community (located higher above our village along the coast) and walk back home along the roadway. The picture above shows the view towards the north, where the biggest town in our district is located. Near the center of the picture is the large Catholic church located there (look for the green roof and pinkish walls).

Looking south off the other side, the picture above shows the view down the coast. You can see our guide with his cutlass at the bottom. Above his head and cutlass, you can see some of the houses in my village. In the upper right, you can see the conical mountain that seems so high when I've always viewed it before, but we are still higher than it is, even though we've probably descended hundreds of feet at this point.

The picture above is a zoomed in view from the same point as the pictures above. However, this one is special to me because I can pick out my house from this view (the Peace Corps prefers that I not identify my exact location, however.). It is fun to gaze upwards at the ridge now, because I can pick out this little clearing and remember what it was like to be up there "on top of the world."

Finally, we broke out of the forest (or bush, or jungle, or whatever you want to call it) into some former farm land (shown above). Soon we were on a small side road, and then we were hiking down the hill along the main road. It was an epic hike! It isn't on any tourism brochure for this island, but I had a great time and will always remember this day. I love exploring my local area! I will leave you with one last shot as we were coming down the narrow “spine” of the mountain, again showing how it slopes quickly down either side.

My Indiana Jones Day

Each night as I was growing up during the 1960s and '70s, we watched the CBS Evening News with Walter Cronkite. Reports from the Vietnam War were often thrust into our living room. Because of my interest in history and archeology, one of my vivid memories is film coverage of battles taking place around ancient stone temple ruins amidst the jungle. I was fascinated by the way the jungle was reclaiming the architectural efforts of man. I must not have been the only one fascinated by these scenes, as many Hollywood movies (Indiana Jones, Tomb Raider, etc.) have replicated similar scenes.

Recently I got to see something similar—the ruins of a British military outpost built in the 1700s that had been abandoned about a century-and-a-half ago. If you look close in the picture above, you can see me standing next to the roots of a large ficus tree that is towering above this old stone building. Below are more pictures showing how the jungle is reclaiming what man had once built. It is somewhat startling to be hiking through the forest and then find yourself among these eerily quiet ruins.

This is a panoramic view taken from inside one of the buildings.

Here are a few of the abandoned cannons I noticed along the way.

During the course of the day, we encountered seven different snakes, such as the tail of one shown below slithering into a crack in the mortar between the bricks in this wall. The fact that there are no venomous snakes on the island of Dominica makes exploring jungle ruins much less worrisome—if there were copperheads or timber rattlesnakes (as we have in my home state of West Virginia), this hike would not have been near as fun! I nearly stepped on a couple of them!

There were also bats hanging from the ceilings in some of the ruins. It is hard to see them because of the poor lighting, but here is a cluster that was hanging around together in a vault.

There are also some incredible views from some of the “lookouts” on this peak that overlooks the bay at Portsmouth. Below I am pictured next to a small mortar cannon.

Next is a picture looking out on Prince Rupert's Bay and the city of Portsmouth. This was the view from the small mortar cannon above.

Next is a view from the opposite side of the hill, looking north towards the island of Guadeloupe, with the beach hundreds of feet below.

Finally, here is a panoramic picture that shows the narrow isthmus that connects the twin peaks of Cabrits National Park to the mainland.

I had previously visited Cabrits National Park back in September, and shared some pictures of the restored fortifications, but here is an example showing cannons that have been returned to their original condition. Some of you might be interested to know that the settlers who were bound for Jamestown stopped in this bay on their way to Virginia in 1607.

They have done a good job with the restoration work on the main fort and its nearby buildings, but I'm glad that they left some of the other scattered buildings in their natural state of deterioration. What I witnessed on my explorations in the forest provides a good example of power of nature to take over what man leaves behind.

Thanks for coming along with me on my “Kuribbean Quest.” I ended my time at Cabrits by walking over to the beach at Douglas Bay. It was yet another great day in Dominica!

Morne Rouge

On Sunday, a group of us hiked up Morne (or Mont) Rouge, the tall hillside adjacent to our village's beach. It was steep, but the views were magnificent. Here is a picture of me taken part-way up the hill.

For a brief portion, there was a trail—but you had to watch your step, because one wrong step could result in a fall down the hillside.

The picture below shows a particularly challenging spot, where you had to cross a slight ridge on the hillside. Everyone seemed to choose their own path to get over this obstacle.

Below is a view of one of the oldest students who led up on this trip, showing him far above us as we zig-zagged up the hill.

Here is a view looking down on the beach area. If you look close, you can see two of our fishing boats pulled up on the sand.

Below is a tilted picture, which gives a wider view, showing more of the village (on the left side) as well as the beach.

As we neared the top and were off the rocky cliff and in the scrub brush forest, it began to sprinkle. The kids didn't need umbrellas, because they just used the stem and leaf that grows plentiful here. The leaves of this plant are huge—about two feet in diameter.

We were able to find a clearing at the top that gave us a great view of “L'islet,” as shown in the picture below. You can also see some of the red rock that gives Mont Rouge its name.

While in the bush, the kids were excited to find “red eyes.” Supposedly, the evil spirits (“secoya”?) in the forest eat these hard berries. So far, I have yet to see any of these monsters. If I do, I'll be sure to turn it into a blog story!

To get from the ridge that Mont Rouge is connected to, we had to work our way down a steep hill that had experienced a landslide during Tropical Storm Erika. The loose soil made it quite difficult to keep your footing.

After crossing the creek at the bottom, we then had to climb up a steep hillside to get back to the main road. Although difficult, it wasn't quite as bad as climbing the “cliff” of Mont Rouge at the start of this hike.

We finished our hike by crossing another ridge and dropping down into a small river valley that leads back to the village. The boys loved showing me a “swimming hole” where they could jump into the water. It was a refreshing way for them to end this fun trip.