Sunday December 17, 2023
Hi All! Well the word of the day is WHALES! Who knew there were whales in the Caribbean?? I thought I was in Alaska with warm weather!!
Today we were in Roseau, the Capitol of Dominica. This is like what the Caribbean was like 50 years ago. Very natural and not as commercialized as some of the other islands. Again, we had amazing weather with highs of 80 with a nice breeze (except for our tour up into the rain forest where naturally it rained for a few minutes!).
Funny thing about it’s name, in 1493, Christopher Columbus first spotted the island during his second voyage to the Americas. Because he saw the island on a Sunday, Columbus named the island Dominica (Latin for “Sunday”). Dominica is the youngest island in the Lesser Antilles, and it is still being formed by geothermal–volcanic activity, as evidenced by the world’s second-largest hot spring, called Boiling Lake. The Sisserou parrot, also known as the Imperial amazon, is critically endangered and found only on Dominica. It is the island’s national bird and is featured on the national flag.
Our morning excursion was a whale watching trip. We saw a ton of whales! These were all sperm whales which are some of the largest in the world (avg length of 67 feet!) and they have the largest brain of any whale. Moby Dick was a sperm whale! We even saw two traveling together and they both dove down and showed their tales at the same time! I got it on video but the picture we got was close but not perfect. It was like watching synchronized swimming!
For the afternoon we just found a driver on the pier who took us around the island. We went up to the rain forest where we saw a waterfall, saw the hot springs (the island is volcanic so lots of boiling water underground with the water temperature getting to 250 degrees!) and also saw several rainbows. It felt like we were driving thru a jungle and most of it was so rural and undeveloped. Like I said, the Caribbean 50 years ago!
After that, we were exhausted and took a nap! Lol. We had dinner tonight in the Italian restaurant with our friend Barbara that we met from Buffalo. She’s traveling solo and told us she appreciated us hanging with her tonight. She was very happy her Buffalo Bills won today and rumor has it the Panthers squeaked out their second win! Woo Hoo!
After dinner we went to the show called Kaleidoscope of Klassics which was very good. It had songs from all the big names and had us tapping our toes the whole time. I’d have to say for being a small ship, the singers and dancers are very good.
After the show we pulled some slots and went to the disco. On to Bequia, an island in the Grenadines that we’ve never been to. We’re excited to check it out! Hope everyone had a great weekend!
The Wandering Italian 