Dominica is one of the least-visited countries in the Caribbean, but are travelers sleeping on this island nation? In my ninth letter to my son, I wrote about the good and the bad of the most unspoiled island in the eastern Caribbean.
Dear Kid,
Back in 2015, your mom and I took a trip to the Caribbean island of Dominica (not to be confused with the Dominican Republic) for our anniversary. We arrived on the island as boyfriend and girlfriend. We left the island as fiancé and fiancée.
A year earlier, neither of us knew anything about Dominica. After narrowing down our potential trip destinations to the Caribbean, we landed on Dominica for a couple of reasons: 1) it was one of the least-visited Caribbean islands, and 2) it offered an abundance of really-cool-sounding adventures in nature.
In hindsight, we made a great decision (turns out my spreadsheet-facilitated decision-making comes in handy sometimes!). We had a blast in Dominica, and not just because of the rock that I put on your mom’s finger!
By now, you know the drill – This is the part of the letter where I say something like, “Dominica is an amazing island escape, but there’s no such thing as paradise…”
In this letter, I dive into whether Dominica is an underrated travel destination by breaking down the island’s charming and annoying aspects.
THE GOOD
It isn’t crowded
Even before Hurricane Maria ravaged Dominica in September of 2017, Dominica was one of the Caribbean’s least-visited countries. The island’s rough terrain (mountainous, steep, rugged) and underdeveloped infrastructure (crappy roads, lack of public transportation, weak telecommunication networks) have prevented large-scale tourism development. This Caribbean Tourism Organization report contains tourism statistics from a small 2019 sample size, but it’s clear that Dominica welcomes a minuscule amount of visitors (~14k tourist arrivals in two months) compared to other Caribbean islands like Jamaica (~437k) and the Dominican Republic (~1.9m).
Many Caribbean islands feature massive chain resorts and crowded beaches. For this particular anniversary trip, we were looking for pretty much the opposite of that. Dominica DELIVERED.
In Dominica, you don’t have to deal with crowd-caused headaches like traffic, lines, or obnoxious beachgoers. Roseau, Dominica’s capital, is somewhat bustling (population – 16k+), but other than that, Dominica’s towns are small (population < 5,000) and quiet.
Dominica is what Hawaii probably was a century ago – a tranquil, tropical island getaway that boasts unspoiled nature and beautiful, uncrowded beaches.
By the way, as the Coronavirus pandemic lingers on around the world, Dominica has successfully flattened the curve (*very sincerely crosses fingers*). Turns out social distancing is easy when there aren’t many people around to distance yourself from!
The beaches are nice
What makes a great beach? This is a subjective of course, but I liked Dominica’s beaches because they’re clean, lined with curved palm trees, and for the most part, absent of crowds. It’s fun to be at a beach while surrounded by a bunch of other people having a good time (a la Waikiki), but for me, it’s therapeutically relaxing to be at a beach with no one else in sight.
I proposed to your mom at Batibou Beach, located on Dominica’s north coast. I won’t write about our engagement story here (it’s best that you hear about that magical and comedic tale in person). Besides a couple of people boozing at the outdoor hut bar near the beach’s entrance, we had the beach completely to ourselves. With nothing but sand, water, and greenery around us and our earbuds completely consumed by the sound of the tide, I felt transported back to a time when beaches weren’t inundated with a mishmash of towels, umbrellas, and sunburnt tourists. Batibou Beach holds an incredibly special place in my heart and I can’t wait to go back there with you and your mom.
There are rad things to do in nature
Yes – I used the word “rad” (I’m getting tired of using cliché travel adjectives, plus it was a great excuse to make a Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles reference, and yes, I did have those “rad badges” as a kid thanks to your Opa’s persistence in acquiring the coolest toys for me). Most islands have fun outdoor attractions like nature trails, hikes, and waterfalls. Dominica has all of these “standard” island attractions, as well as a few other distinguishing outdoor adventure opportunities.
In my piece for Lonely Planet on the waterfalls in Great Smoky Mountain National Park, I wrote about how every waterfall is a unique experience thanks to characteristics like speed, height, and ambiance. What I didn’t write about, due to the park’s subfreezing temperatures when we visited, is that my absolute favorite waterfall experiences involved swimming.
Dominica’s Emerald Pool is tucked away in dense rainforest and is fed by a forty-foot waterfall. It was rainy when we visited the pool, so we didn’t get to witness the pool’s sunlight-accentuated emerald color. That didn’t stop us from splashing around the pool and dunking our heads under the waterfall like a couple of carefree kids having the time of their lives at a hotel pool. We were the only people at the pool for a while, but there may or may not be a story that involves me skinny dipping for the first time, then scrambling to grab my towel when an elderly European group of tourists emerged from the forest…
Like New Zealand, Dominica is a hot bed for geothermal activity. I’m always enthralled by geothermal pools; the sight of bubbling water and the sulfurous scent that smells like eggs never gets old to me. There was, however, one particular trail to geothermic pools that I enjoyed even more than the pools themselves. The slope of the path, coupled with the tall, verdant flora, had me feeling like I was on the island in LOST. Just like in LOST, we came across a random [and seemingly feral] animal on the trail: a cow. Like I did in much of Dominica, I felt like I was immersed in an especially wild, untamed area of nature (something that I never really felt while hiking in Hawaii).
Boiling Lake is the juggernaut attraction of the island. “Can’t miss” is such an overused phrase, but if I had to describe one thing on Dominica as “can’t miss”, it would be Boiling Lake.
At 8+ miles roundtrip with 2,500+ feet of elevation gain, the hike to Boiling Lake is one of those “you better be in decent shape and get good sleep the night before or you’re going to get your ass kicked” kind of hikes. It was the longest hike that your mom and I had ever done together (though not the most difficult – that honor goes to Volcán Concepción in Nicaragua). It was also the second muddiest hike that I had ever done (the first was Maunawili Falls on Oahu where I literally stepped out of my shoe because it stuck in the mud). As if the length and muddiness weren’t enough, the elevation gain was a pain in the ass as well. I very clearly remember gargantuan, mad-made steps that were like two feet in height.
The hike to Boiling Lake was just as rad (might as well milk it…) as the lake itself. We took the coolest hike pit stop that I’ve ever taken – a dip into a mini waterfall-fed hot spring. Later, we hiked across the Valley of Desolation, a volcanic area that tickles all of the senses: sight (steam vents), smell (sulfur), touch (vapor), hearing (hissing geysers), and heart (just kidding – I just needed an excuse to tell you that I once dressed up for Halloween as Ma-Ti from one of my favorite 90s cartoons, Captain Planet). The general dreariness of the valley had me feeling like I was on the path that Sam and Frodo took to Mordor.
By the way, as I write this and the Coronavirus pandemic prevents us from traveling, your mom and I are itching to break out of quarantine and find badass hikes like that to Boiling Lake because our recent walks have been limited to the confines of our suburban, cookie-cutter neighborhood.
Boiling Lake’s name is self-explanatory; it looks like a huge cauldron of boiling water! This flooded fumarole (an opening on or near a volcano that emits hot sulfurous gases) is the world’s second largest hot lake (the first being New Zealand’s Frying Pan Lake, which we came close to during our 2017 trip, but didn’t actually visit). As I looked down at the giant pot of bubbling, grayish-blue water, I couldn’t help but imagine how much it would suck to fall in.
Here’s a fun fact – I originally planned to propose to your mom at Boiling Lake! Our hike to Boiling Lake was scheduled to take place on our anniversary, but was pushed to the next day due to stormy weather. Intent on proposing on our anniversary, I called an audible and proposed at Batibou Beach. It worked out for the best (an engagement at Boiling Lake would have entailed the nonideal presence of our tour group).
History is more fun with an ocean backdrop
Learning about history can be a drag. I like history, as long as the history is interesting (a revolt or two never hurts for entertainment value) and is communicated through interactive or visually-stimulating exhibits. Dominica’s history is interesting enough, but the country’s history-focused sights possess one attribute that would make any history lesson more enjoyable: an ocean backdrop.
During our visit to Kalinago Territory, we learned about Dominica’s pre-colonial inhabitants, the Kalinago, through exploring native huts, artifacts, and cuisine. It’s always somewhat depressing to think about how a once-flourishing native population was all but wiped out by colonialists, but tropical weather paired with an ocean backdrop did wonders for our morale. I felt similarly about the Kalinago Territory as I did about the leper colony on Molokai, Hawaii (“Man, that’s awful that they were practically wiped out / had leprosy…but hey, at least they had these breathtaking ocean views!”).
I’m a big fort guy (you had me at “gargantuan structure with throwback architectural style and cannons”). Naturally, we visited Fort Shirley, located on Dominica’s northwest coast. According to UNESCO, the British built Fort Shirley in the late 18th century to help protect the island from invaders.
In 1802, African slave soldiers took over the fort’s garrison for three days in protest of conditions and fear of being forced to work in the fields. While I was studying abroad in Ghana (eight years earlier), I visited the Elmina Slave Castle, a harrowing beach-side prison where slaves were held captive before being shipped to colonies around the world. It’s crazy to think that some of these slaves could have been sent to Fort Shirley on Dominica.
We visited Fort Shirley hours before our engagement. As we lollygagged about the fort grounds, I cherished the remaining time that your mom and I shared together as boyfriend and girlfriend. We pranced around that fort like we owned the place, taking wacky photos of each other with barely a care in the world. I like to think of the hours leading up to our engagement as our final moments together as kids. Fiancé and fiancée are such stuffy, grown-up titles.
The food is no-frills good
When I sit down at an eatery in a developing country, I’m confident that I’m probably going to leave that eatery content. While I do greatly appreciate the innovative, fusion-based cuisines often found in the developed world, I have a lot of love for the high-quality simplicity of cuisines in the developing world.
Give me rice or potatoes, a sauced-up protein, and fresh veggies. Throw in some beans, plantains, or fried cheese on the side. Hit me with that glass bottle of “not ice cold due to subpar refrigeration but cool enough to still be refreshing” soda made with real sugarcane. Sit me on a plastic chair, in front of a cheap table cloth, on an open-aired patio. Eateries in developing countries have won me over with, more or less, this same winning formula time and time again.
I’ve found that cuisine in the developing world is rarely revolutionary, but almost always satisfying. Dominica was no different. Like other coastal developing countries with bountiful access to fresh fish, Dominica knows how to cook and season that seafood to perfection and compliment it with just the right side dishes. Wash it all down with a freshly-squeezed juice or hard-hitting, flavor-infused rum, and you have yourself a delectable dining experience.
Sleeping in the Dominican jungle ain’t bad
Accommodation in underdeveloped, tropical areas can be dicey because of the heat, electricity inconsistency, and bugs (see: our stay in the Amazon). Our first accommodation in Dominica, Pagua Bay House, overcame all of these obstacles to provide us a picture-perfect stay. Our oceanfront cabana was luxurious, clean, and swank (is there such thing as a crappy cabana experience?). Pagua Bay House’s poolside lounge was the perfect place to eat the all-important, pre-engagement breakfast, as well as hold celebratory post-engagement video calls with our families back home. I loved Pagua Bay House, despite it being the place where I watched the Seattle Seahawks gift the New England Patriots a championship / fail to give Marshawn “Beast Mode” Lynch the ball consecutive times at the goal line.
Our second accommodation in Dominica, Jungle Bay Resort, didn’t feel quite as nice as our first (mostly because it was on the hotter, more mosquito-heavy side of the island), but felt more like an adventurous, immersive jungle experience because our villa was elevated up into the trees. Whereas Pagua Bay House sat on a clearing sandwiched between jungle and ocean, Jungle Bay Resort overlooked the ocean, but was actually part of the jungle (white noise, bugs, and all). Crazily, I literally found out minutes before I wrote this sentence that Jungle Bay Resort was destroyed in 2015 (six months after our visit) by Storm Erika, but reopened in 2019 (looking bigger and better than ever). During our trip, your mom and I talked to the resort’s owner; he was super friendly and ambitious, so it was awesome to hear that he bounced back in a big way.
A bunch of other good stuff
- It feels like Africa – Everyone remembers their first […time leaving their home country], and my first was Ghana. At the time of our trip to Dominica, your mom hadn’t been to Africa yet, but had read my Ghana blog and heard all of my stories from the great African continent. Upon seeing that the island is underdeveloped and that most of the population is black, I told your mom, “This is like being in Africa except on an island and everyone talks with a cool Caribbean accent.”
- People speak English – Since I wrote my letter about Taipei, I feel like I need to shout out the English language whenever a given population speaks it proficiently. Not only do Dominicans speak English (as part of the British commonwealth, the country’s official language is English), but they speak it well (at least compared to some of the older people that I encountered in India).
- Pirates of the Caribbean was filmed there – I geek out about anything related to movie filming in a location that I visit (like how a hotel in Dominica is still proud to show the room where Kiera Knightley slept, and how Johnny Depp lived on his private yacht offshore during filming). Hell, I hadn’t [and still haven’t!] even seen Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man’s Chest and I was still pumped to drift down the “Pantano River” (Indian River) and visit “Cannibal Island” (Valley of Desolation).
- It’s an excuse to check out Saint Lucia – Saint Lucia ended being a fine choice for our gateway island to Dominica. While Saint Lucia didn’t seem as lush and untamed as Dominica, we did have a fun couple of days there.
THE BAD
There are no direct flights from the United States
As of 2020, there are no direct flights from outside of the Caribbean to Dominica. On top of that, the Caribbean isn’t like the United States where there are several intra-country flights per day between major airports. From a given gateway island to Dominica, oftentimes there are only one or two flights per day. Sometimes, there are only flights on certain days of the week.
To get to Dominica from the United States, you basically have to get to a gateway island, then fly or take a ferry to Dominica. It makes sense that Dominica sees such little tourism considering how inconvenient it is to get there.
Sure – You could take a Caribbean cruise that stops in Dominica, but have fun with the few hours that you have to “explore” the country before having to hurry back to your ship. If you go the cruise ship route, you would probably only have time for one excursion and a rushed souvenir-shopping session (if you couldn’t tell, I’m not a huge cruise fan because of the limited time spent at each port, but hey – that could change in a few years when you’re a boisterous toddler and your mom and I are craving pre-structured, barely-have-to-do-any-planning trips!).
The ferry from Saint Lucia to Dominica sucks
Due to time constraints, we flew to Saint Lucia, our gateway island, then took a ferry to Dominica. Do you remember how a critter nibbled on my motion sickness Sea-bands case in Tanzania? Well, we bought those bands a year earlier for our ferry to and from Dominica!
Before our trip to Dominica, I had associated ferries with short, smooth rides in which you could comfortably lounge inside, grab a cocktail at the bar, or hang out outside while soaking in the views as the gentle winds caressed your face. Yeah, our ferry to Dominica was not that.
Everything about our ferry was actually fine, except for two critical factors: the duration and the waves.
The ferry from Saint Lucia to Dominica takes FIVE F’ING HOURS. I will happily spend that amount of time on a train, but spending that amount of a time on the ferry that I’m about to describe is borderline torture.
Out of all of the water vessels that I’ve ridden in my life, none have come close to our ferry to Dominica when it comes to the rocking intensity caused by waves. I felt like I was on the ship with Marky Mark in the Perfect Storm (during the part where, you know, they battle the titular storm). Okay – The waves weren’t nearly as big as the ones that Marky Mark’s character went up against, but our ferry’s consistent, roller-coaster-like movements were no joke.
Neither your mom nor I got sick. We wore our Sea-bands (those things are legit), took Dramamine (legit in a sense that it basically knocks you out), and chewed ginger gum (not sure if legit, but tastes good).
There was another factor that helped prevent us from getting sick: the ferry had televisions that showed back-to-back movies. For our first movie on the way to Dominica, we watched Vertical Limit. I was actually really excited to watch this movie, as I remembered being semi-traumatized as a kid by the opening scene. Speaking of mountain climbing movies, I was also perturbed as a kid by the opening scene in Cliffhanger. Both of these scenes are gut-wrenching, but I’ll end this “mountain climbing movies” digression on a positive note – I was inspired by the documentary Free Solo to stay in shape so that I can learn to rock climb with you (don’t worry – we’ll be much more careful than the knuckleheads in the aforementioned climbing movie scenes!).
For our second movie, we watched some obscure romcom in which a perky, middle-aged cruise ship employee courts a passenger on the ship he’s working on. My only memories of this movie involve the protagonist dressed in a suit, looking like a jackass as he carried around a platter while hitting on his love interest. Anyway, Vertical Limit thrilled me and the cruise ship romcom annoyed me. Both effectively distracted me from our ferry’s rocky movements.
A week later, I was intrigued by what the back-to-back movie showing would be on our return ferry to Saint Lucia. As the first movie started playing, I was excited and had high hopes that I would be treated to another obscure thriller. I was bewildered to find that the first movie shown was, again, VERTICAL LIMIT! Watching the same movie twice in one week was actually surprisingly effective in distracting me from the massive waves (“Oh crap, he’s about to fall!”).
I did feel a sense of dread while I watched Vertical Limit the second time around because of the likelihood that the same boring-ass, cruise ship romcom would again be the second movie played. Alas, my fear came to fruition. Sitting through the crappy romcom for the second time in one week really sucked, but we persevered. Seriously, ferry – Did y’all really only have two VHS tapes that you played on every trip?
I haven’t taken many ferries in my life, but here are my ferry experience power rankings:
1. Larkspur to San Francisco (good times en route to San Francisco Giants games)
2. San Diego to Coronado Island (I have fond memories of taking this ferry with you Lola, Opa, and Auntie to bike around the island)
3. Sausalito to Angel Island (I have another fond memory of looking down on the line to board and spotting our Murphy cousins weaving through the crowd to surprise your Auntie and me)
4. Buenos Aires to Colonia (there was a lot of space)
5. San Jorge to Ometepe (as the ship looked like it was built in the early 20th century and pumped out a ton of black smog, we felt like we were on a slave ship)
A bunch of other bad stuff
- The roads suck – Crappy roads (i.e. unpaved, crappily-paved, or crappily-maintained roads) suck for a couple of reasons. First, it just isn’t pleasant to bob up and down on a bumpy road. Second, to avoid popping a tire or veering off of a crappy road, you have to drive much slower than you would if the road weren’t crappy. Although Dominica is a relatively small island (~300 mi² vs. Oahu’s ~600 mi²), it took significantly longer to drive around the island than it should have because of poor road quality. For most of our drives, I felt like I was on the bumpy Matterhorn ride (that’s another Disneyland reference for your Opa!).
- The mosquitoes are a nuisance – Dominican mosquitoes aren’t nearly as bothersome as their counterparts in the Amazon, but we still had to lather on the bug spray and slumber under a mosquito net to fend off would-be blood suckers.
- Bargaining opportunities are meager – In my previous letter, I wrote about how I swindled my way into great deals on souvenirs in India. Such fruitful bargaining opportunities are much rarer in Dominica. After a string of successful souvenir bargaining sessions across almost a decade of international trips, I was shut down completely by the markets in Dominica. I attribute this to the fact that the markets where I shopped were located near a cruise ship port. If shop owners know that many gringo tourists will pay the first price offered to them (in large part because the tourists are on the cruise’s “get your ass back on the ship or we’re leaving without you” schedule), there’s no reason for them to offer any leeway for bargaining.
THE BOTTOM LINE
Despite my “we got engaged here” bias, I have no doubt that Dominica is an underrated travel destination. Your Bahamas and Dominican Republics of the Caribbean may capture a lot of the tourist traffic, but Dominica offers a just-as-incredible island getaway experience.
Dominica is underrated because of its picturesque beaches, luxurious jungle accommodations, and radical […dude] outdoor adventure opportunities, all of which can be enjoyed amidst an uncrowded, unspoiled jungly beach environment.
There are legitimate reasons why tourism in Dominica hasn’t exploded though: there are no direct flights from outside the Caribbean; ferry trips to the island are long and rocky (and apparently show movies from an extremely limited VHS collection); and the island’s infrastructure is still very underdeveloped compared to other Caribbean islands.
The island’s cons didn’t stop me from loving Dominica. The only thing that I’m genuinely disappointed about is that our favorite Beach Boys song Kokomo didn’t show Dominica any love (although they do make up for it by having Uncle Jesse playing the drums in the music video, and yes, that’s two letters in a row in which I’ve made a John Stamos reference!).
Love,
Dad
P.S. I wrote this letter during my first weeks back to work (although remotely due to the pandemic) following my second half of paternity leave. As I write this sentence, you’re passed out in your crib (you’ve probably inferred by now that the only time that I write these letters is while you’re sleeping) with your hair spiked up like a mad scientist. These days, I’ll often look at that rapidly growing hair on your head and wonder, “Have you been taking Rogaine?!”