Tues, Wed & Thurs – 24^th, 25^th & 26^th December

Much to Fiona & my great relief, Christmas Eve morning brought torrential rain and it was agreed all round that the trip to the Boiling Lake was off, which would give my slightly achy legs a day to recover.  Instead as we were now up at 0600, we were summoned to the market by the wonderful, beating drums.  So set off to mosey around the market and through the town, where we disturbingly came across a house with some interesting animal jaw bones hanging on the porch - on closer inspection they also had a human skull with the top sliced off dangling alongside!  So a social day developed and as we were no longer going walking, we invited (well Ruffian did), Brisa (UK) and Sarah Lane, an American boat with the lovely crew of Skip and Madeleine on board for supper.  Unfortunately this ended up being steamingly below decks as the rain did not let up but we all enjoyed the varied dishes provided, particularly the tasty Breadfruit & Pork curry conjured up by Fiona.

Christmas Day dawned (through grey skies and drizzle) with to our total surprise, Il Sogno belting round the corner in the early morning having set off from the Isles de Saintes to join us for the festivities, which began with champagne and presents on Serafina.  Ruffian showed us all up with individual monkey fist key rings made from red dynema - they carry a drum of the stuff on board (their Sadler 34 stores a whole different set of necessities on board!).  And Rob and I were also given very elegant extra presents of a lime green handbag and salad servers.  We were shown up as we had invested at the cheapo Chinese-everything-shop and bought big wand bubbles sets and elastic-band launched aeroplanes for them......and some very smart deep sea fishing lures.

Then the party transferred to Il Sogno, where the early morning sailors, Karene and Craig now got to host the even larger than planned Christmas meal.  We had decided that the full on British extravaganza was beyond us and it was to have been a BBQ but as ever at the moment, the weather wasn't looking too hopeful so we cooked below decks but managed in the end to eat in the cockpit.  Fiona, Iain and I were pacing ourselves (and deeply regretting not doing full justice to Craig's delicious pudding wine and sipping rum) as our mega walk was now rescheduled for Boxing Day.   

So, Boxing Day was another early start for us although Alexis did not appear till after the 0600 promised pick up.  We then drove to Serge's house to get him moving.  Serge was to be our guide for the day; he used to do this as an occupation and has decided at the grand old age of 57 to get fit again and was using our trip as a trial to see if he could manage the climb.  He has also embraced the CATSS lifestyle which is no Caffeine, Alcohol, Tobacco, Salt or Sugar.  We set off on a long slow drive to the south of the island, the three of us itching for a faster journey as the longer it took to get there, the longer we were likely to be walking in the heat of the day; but we were horrified to see the huge landslips on the road up behind the capital, Roseau, to the trail start.  Dominica has been experiencing very unusual amounts of rain and we saw cliffs of hundreds of feet created from landslips on Christmas Eve.  On St Lucia and St Vincent there are reports of more than 20 deaths due to the weather.  Amazingly already workers had made the roads passable and by the time we descended the roads were completely cleared!

We parked up and set off at 0935 hours crossing the narrow walkway over a fast flowing river and passing alongside the Titou Gorge before turning into the rainforest and heading upwards.  Basically the route is up one mountain and then down, across another river, called the Breakfast Stop, up another mountain and down into the Valley of Desolation then another up and down/along to finally reach the Boiling Lake.  And it really is all up and down, I reckon the amount of walking along the flat was a few hundred metres!  But nearly the whole track is constant steps (apparently 24,000 steps) built by the rangers out of the hardwood growing alongside.  As there had been so much rain there were some very muddy areas and the places where a step was missing the ensuing gap was as up to the top of Fiona and my thighs, so quite a scramble. Fiona and I had taken the precaution of borrowing Rob's walking poles and have become complete converts, they made a hell of a difference - I would have spent a whole lot more of the trip on my hands and knees, than I did.

At the first river, Fiona and I took off our boots to cross, loathe to get too wet too early;  Iain and Serge sloshed through, although since Serge was doing the walk in a pair of jelly shoes with the toes cut out as they were too small this may have been a blessed relief.  It really does put our affluence in perspective.  Throughout the trip out we were alternately in rain, driving rain or within the cloud with that special smell of sulphur to remind us of our ultimate destination.

I think the worst bit of the walk was the descent into the Valley of Desolation where the steps give out as it is too steep and you end up scrabbling through a stream/waterfall bed desperately trying not to slip down the cliff-face.  The valley is an open area of amazing colours:  the rocks vary from orange to deep red, yellow or white with the sulphur and a strange electric blue rock in the streams.  And all of it covered in steam from the boiling thermals (varying from heaving mud to spattering boiling water) within the streams running through the valley;  the water is hot enough to scald and in fact one of the guides had brought eggs to boil in only a minute in the water.  There also seemed to be a fascination in daubing your face in blue mud, a treat we avoided.

The downside to this long walk is that to get to the start of the trail at a reasonable time, then complete the walk before sundown at 1730, all the walkers arrive at the important destinations en masse and as it had been Christmas Day and the day before had been a washout there were probably 30 walkers all converging together on the sites.  We were particularly keen on the pushy group of American hotel guests who forged ahead through you literally, or walked so close on your heels you were permanently anticipating them taking you away with them as they tripped.  Fiona and I had perfected the snail pace with extended stick as a foil whereas Iain did the full on demand for space followed by  aggressive snarls.

The Boiling Lake was then a further 40 minutes’ walk away and the only description of it is awesome!  It is the second largest flooded fumarole in the world (largest is in NZ) which is formed by a fissure down to molten lava that boils the water collected above it.  The round lake is  200' across and a milky white/grey and in the centre, the middle literally boils - not at all the gentle bubbling I had expected.  The edge has been measured to be between 82-92 degrees C and its depth in the centre is unknown.  So not surprisingly it is covered in a cloud of steam and you have to be swift in photo taking as the cloud is blown away.  Serge was surprised to find that you can no longer walk around the lake as the path has fallen in since he was last up there. 

We quickly ate our picnic and started out to get ahead of our lovely fellow walkers, passing the German walkers already stripped off and ensconced in one of the warm pools below the valley.  By this time the rain had stopped and we were congratulating ourselves on how lucky we were to have the perfect walking weather:  The rain hadn't been so dreadful that our steaming bodies had required our waterproofs, and it was still relatively cool - we weren't at all sure how well we would have coped in normal sunny conditions.  And the return journey is back out the way we came but now the worst patch was a scramble uphill  over the rock face and the nasty deep mud, which is a bit easier and the river level had already dropped a bit so we paddled across with our boots on. 

The walk took a total of 5.75 hours including the half hour for lunch which we were rather pleased with, although towards the end I was definitely feeling tired which became even more apparent when I started to step down the steps without bending at the knee which has a sort of launching effect!  We had been looking forward to a swim in the Gorge at the end but when we arrived it was swarming with a less than attractive hoard from one the cruise liners anchored in Roseau bay.  So we compromised with a paddle in the road ford by the car park to clean our boots and cool our feet and found to our shrieking surprise (yup Iain has a nice girly one too) that little fish came to nibble our flaccid white feet.

The heroic Serge then drove us round the capital pointing out all the sights.  The city was pretty closed up for the Christmas holiday so it all felt very exclusive and it is quite wonderful just how proud the Dominicans are of their so recently independent (1974) country.  We arrived back at Portsmouth just after 1800 to be ferried back to the boat by Alexis, the "boat boy" who had arranged our trip.  Rob then treated us to a BBQ of sausages and grilled bananas for pudding - we of course were extremely poor company and passed out shortly after.