Dominica

I'm back from Dominica and Grenada and the trip was easy and fun. I flew LA-NYC-San Juan, Puerto Rico-Dominica. On the flight down the two-engine propeller plane ran low on fuel and we had to land on the island of Guadeloupe, the country north of Dominica. I was feeling mighty disappointed. It looked just like Oahu — every opening crowded with houses, every well-paved road lined with development. Well, that's what I had been afraid of — so near the East Coast of the US and western Europe. How could the Caribbean have escaped the fate of popularity and mass tourism?

We take off and continue south over a sapphire sea. After a while we are over a mountainous green wilderness. The plane banks dramatically then drops swiftly into a deep gulch and brakes hard on a new asphalt runway hacked out of the jungle and ending abruptly at the beach. No hangars. No airplanes. No town. No visible roads. Welcome to just-opened Melville Hall Airport, Dominica. You walk to Customs & Immigration. It is painted a nice bright yellow, some of the plywood counters still unpainted. It looks endearingly amateur. The Customs people are nice; the inspector asks what is in my oddly-shaped bag and I tell him snorkeling gear and he smiles and says, "Welcome to Dominica."

I rent a little Suzuki jeep and head out into the jungle on a narrow and very potholed road which is the highway to town, about 30 miles and a one and a half hour drive. I don't know which way to turn at the first ",T" but a guy waiting there says he is going to town and will show me the way. His name is Michael Christopher. We talk about the jungle we are passing through, food prices, politics, cooking, farming… I mention ganja and he says, Want to taste some of ours? I say, Heck yes, and off we go to his village and climb up to a very rustic cabin entwined in birds and flowers, the home of a Rastaman my age named Michael Joseph.

The Michaels are soon at all-men-are-brothers. Eating grapefruits off the tree. I have been in Dominica a little over an hour.

So about then Squashie climbs up. He knows where the guesthouse I've booked is. It is just a bit south of Portsmouth, Dominica's second-largest city. He tells me the best way through the city, the rivers I'll have to cross. I figure I'd better get moving because this far south it gets dark about 6pm and it sounds like a long way. But this is a small world and everything is relevant. The City turns out to be about 5 miles away and is about half the size of Fort Bragg. The guesthouse is a few minutes south of the city right where Squashie said it would be, just a couple of hours sooner.

A single cabin. Very spartan, mosquito net, at the beach, $35. The cannonballs falling intermittently on my corrugated metal roof during the windy night turned out in the morning to be ripe mangoes which made a splendid breakfast. I drove left-side on a terrifying road to a cove where some guys were building small boats near an easy-access reef.

Safe, clear water, lots of corals that I have never seen. Dominica is said to be one of the top ten dive sites in the world and I headed south for more.

The road south is cut into cliffs like Big Sur, but maybe 12 feet wide, deeply potholed, sometimes very steep and tightly wound around obstacles. Few people can afford cars so the light traffic is mostly trucks, buses and taxis driven by pro drivers who make crazy moves work out. Usually. Although the burned-out wrecks pushed off the road into the jungle every so often are hard to ignore.

On the sea side villages appear in coves and on the flats of river mouths. On the land side is a wall of rampant vegetation over vertical rock. It takes a long time for me to get down to the southeast and the capital city, Roseau. It's about a 6 by 8 foot block walk, maybe 15 minutes to walk across.

Roseau is vibrant and picturesque beyond my description but I'm on a mission so l pass through and continue south to Scott's Head Marine Reserve. The road gets very rural, ever more lush, narrower, then scary steep down to an aquamarine bay and tiny, gorgeous Soufriereits' church steeple rising through coconut palms. Then a long climb around the next headland and: The Caribbean I had hoped for, but never really believed would still exist.

Scott's Head village curves around a shingle beach which ends at a big rock, the southernmost point of Dominica. The village had no functional tourist facilities and dusk was upon me so l ask a guy if he knows someone who might rent me a room. He takes me to see "Big A." Big A sits like a budha in his substantial-for-the-community home wearing a gold earring, clearly The Man. He offers me a whole house. We agree on 60 Eastern Caribbean dollars, about 20 of ours. He instructs Mrs. Big A to show me the place — a spotless two-bedroom home, fully furnished. Except. There are no towels, or washcloths, or soap. Or toilet paper. But I, ex-Boy Scout and budget traveler, have one of each.

Happiness. In the village, at one with the People.

Next morning, after a good breakfast at clean and orderly Roger's Restaurant — the only restaurant — I snorkel the Marine Reserve, a nowhere site (of course hyped in all the guidebooks and dive mags).

Rule #1: Don't locate a marine reserve 200 yards from a remote fishing village. But the village! My god, it is one of the most beautiful places that I've ever been in. Brightly painted wooden boats. maybe 14-16 footers. made right there on the beach. Guys hanging out in sheds and under palapas talking story, repairing nets, dicking around with outboard motors. I wander the road. The beach side is coconut palms and boat stuff, the land side a jumble of textures and colors — ancient slave cabins next to pastel bungalows. An old lady wearing a man's hat stylishly, as do most women in Dominica, greets me as we pass, as does almost every person that I've encountered in this nation. Heaven.

I had read about a place called Champagne Beach. Columns of warm bubbles rise from the seafloor, supposed to be a great dive site. I looked for it when driving south from Roseau but couldn't find it. Now driving back up the coast looking carefully, but nothing yet. I found a rare place to pull off the road for a break. I forgot to mention that the Michaels had insisted that I take two grapefruits and a generous handful of weed.

The weed, their name for it, was time travel: narrow brownish green leaves, seeds, sweet musty smell. Mexican, circa 1968. So I had packed appropriately, had a nice little beater jeep, things were going well. Just over the edge whilst leaving a pee I see a paved trail, invisible from the road, with a sign: Champagne Beach.

The way has been made so easy. Maybe a quarter of a mile of boardwalk and gravel to a slip-in site. No people. I swim out into the shoals of bubbles delighting in the sensation. The reef fish like the warm active water as much as I do and are at their flashiest best. I drift out into deeper water in that trance you can get in when conditions are perfect: warm water, no waves, 100 foot visibility.

I'm down to about six breaths a minute in 20 to 40 foot deep water. It feels like flying over a submerged landscape of cliffs and gorges covered in the fantastic shapes and colors of hard and soft corals. Vivid yellow tubes, lavender seafans, gorgonians, staghorns, barrels — things which look brittle and static are actually swaying, beckoning, enchanting me in the undersea wind. Then I sense the presence of large animals, a wave of primordial fear as I turn to encounter aliens in black spacesuits with dials and gauges. They swim to the bubbles, they look at the fish. But they are walled off from the experience by their gear. I used to imagine taking up diving but now I feel so free, light, intimate. This is the best snorkeling of the trip and I come back again in a few days and it is just as fun.