Dominica – Day 1

Surprise surprise we didn’t go to Hawaii or the Bahamas this summer! We went to Dominica, please don’t confuse it with the Dominican Republic. I could tell you a million reasons why we changed things up, but I’m not and we will leave it at that.

Our morning started with me doing the 200m dash at 4 a.m. The car service guy couldn’t find our house. Even though the GPS had him turning on to our street, he didn’t see a street sign so he decided not to follow the gps. Luckily he slowed down enough I could catch up to him.

We landed around 2 p.m., grabbed our car rental and headed to the rental. The rental is just 23 miles from the airport, but the roads are so narrow and windy it took us 70 minutes to arrive. My arm was gripping the car window so hard it started to cramp up. The roads here are like the road to Hana and have more holes than the roads in the Bahamas.

We arrived at our rental, checked it out and headed to find a grocery store. Let’s just say the closest grocery store didn’t meet our expectations. We got oatmeal for breakfast and nothing for dinner. On our way back we hit up the local farmers that hadn’t left yet.

A man also came up to us offering us a stalk of bananas. We tried to explain to him we could only eat a hand of bananas, not the entire thing. He finally gave into us and cut off two hands of bananas.

For being travel weary we did a decent job of picking up some fruit and veggies. We got passionfruit, soursop, mangoes, okra, onions and well bananas.

We didn’t pick up any dinner, so we walked down to the beachside restaurant, Keeping it Real. We had chicken and mahi mahi with a local beer. The portions were huge and in U.S. dollars, it was $40.00. It was a steal.

Sunset was hazy due to the Sahara dust blowing in. It was still lovely no matter what. There is a weather system moving in, so we need to keep an eye on that.

Tomorrow we go to the capitol to try to find a bigger grocery store and hit up more local farm and fishermen stands. If we are up to it maybe find a short hike.