"rental car, de champ party, sulfur springs, bwa nef waterfall, bense pool, dinner at cabrits, roseau, screw spa, rain storm, attack of the killer cockroaches, banana split = delightful weekend!!!"
This weekend was filled with adventure after adventure. Actually starting on Thursday with a dinner out at Red Rock (a beautiful little restaurant/lodge right on the atlantic ocean with amazing views and even better food), the weekend began with a party and ended with killer cockroaches.
Friday morning I rented a car for our fun-filled weekend of whatever we could find to entertain ourselves. After celebrating the 2 year anniversary of De Champ after a full day of work (Mike was resting up for the weekend goodness), I collapsed into bed to wake up on Saturday ready to set out and see the world. We headed up the nearest mountain we could find and found some AMAZING views from the top (the road drives through a volcano and you can stop to see the sulfur springs that are still active). A short hike to the sulfur springs and sufficiently filled with sulfurness, we were off to see more views and the next adventure. We next came across a sign for 'bwa nef waterfall' at a bend in the road, grabbed the camera and headed up the gorge to see what this was all about. About a twenty-minute rock-river-steep embankment climb later, we found ourselves face-to-face with about a 50ft face spraying cool, crisp, mountain spring water upon us. It was beautiful and delightfully refreshing. The road-trip completed itself with a visit to bense pool (another mountain-river that has a large pool with nature-made waterslides). This walk was longer then the other two combined and really wore us out, but it completed a day full of hiking and seeing the nature that Dominica has to offer. Saturday night was the 4th semester banquet, so we guissied up and celebrated the success of some of Ross University's finest.
Sunday we both woke up rather sore and unsure if we could do 3 hikes again, so we decided a bit more of an urban adventure may be in order. We, therefore, set out to Roseau knowing full-well that on Sundays the city may well be completely closed-up (nobody works in Dominica on Sundays). We got 'lucky', however, and there was a cruise-ship in port. The experience of being a true tourist in the cruise-ship port is rather annoying...everyone asking you if you wanted to buy something, so we left rather quickly, but not before gazing at the gaudy souvenirs and walking through the Dominica Museum (it was actually pretty cool). Instead of hiking around freshwater lake (the original plan) we decided that an extended rest at screw spa was in order. Screw spa is a sulfur spa built right over some hot sulfur springs to harness the healing powers of volcanic springs. Having pools ranging from 'virtually boiling' to 'old bath water' we wandered from pool to pool until we were sufficiently pruney and refreshed.
We thought our weekend was full-enough, but a bit more adventure waited for us at home. Upon opening the kitchen drawers, we discovered that a family of cockroaches had made their home there...'killer cockroaches'. We sprayed and sprayed insecticides and slowly they began trying to escape their death...which meant that Cocoa was going crazy watching them scurry across the floor (rather slowly), and we were grabbing shoes and papertowels to crush the creatures before they took over the house. An hour or two creepi-crawli-ness (including one appearing over my head by the light fixture in the kitchen) later, and we decided that the only way to complete the weekend was with banana splits....and so we did :o).
