Andrew appeared promptly this morning, indeed 30 minutes early and we bustled about getting together our bits and pieces for a day’s sightseeing: cagoules, camera, copious quantities of water and caribbean dollars.  Our first port of call was Customs to check in and out after a very long ride in his pirogue across the vast open space of Prince Rupert Bay.  Customs turned out to be less formal than we are used to, Bob filling in the multitudinous forms at the customs man’s kitchen table.  Normally pristine in their startling white shirts, this man was in contrast green from a good Saturday night partying, his friends threatening to return for a repeat performance tonight apparently.  Even his two dogs, Port and Customs, looked somewhat jaded.  He was obviously a conservative and thought that the Dominicans had gone for independence too early and that the latest government were wasting money on a spend spend spend campaign.

Our next port of call was the Indian River, one of 365 rivers on Dominica.  It was gorgeous being paddled between banks of lush vegetation, artistically twisted trunks, enormous land crabs, being flashed by a variety of birds, kingfishers, humming birds and herons ending up at a surprise tranquil bar in the middle of the jungle where a very nice lady doctor greeted us and made us all a Dynamite, a variation on rum punch but even stronger, while her two delightful children argued over the IPad.  The whole family returned down river with us where we saw twice as many birds, or perhaps that was just the Dynamite.

Andrew then handed us on to Winston for a land tour.  He was an advocate of the socialist way of government and thought all the spending on the poor was a really good thing.  He applauded all the investment from “friends” such as Venezuela and China but couldn’t see that they would be looking for anything in return, ever.  We set off and took in the usual photo opportunities, and numerous diversions to look at villages, admire their schools, health centres and churches, including very proudly Winston’s own village and home. Apparently Mr Wesley himself visited Dominica to set up a village named after himself. 

We partook of lunch in Calastrie where we tucked into delicious anonymous fried fish and salad washed down with a compulsory beer, Bob’s Heineken and mine local, something got lost in translation, overlooking the Atlantic ocean with the mesmerising waves racing in over reefs making it hard to hear anything else. 

We then drove on down the Atlantic coast to the Carib reservation, the only one in the Caribbean for the original Bronze Age settlors of the islands, it seems that the Europeans enslaved or killed the others on the other islands so there aren’t any left to be reserved.  We had a fascinating potted history of the Caribbean guided by a lovely girl whose roots were Carib, visible through her Asian features, although there appears to have been considerable racial intermingling.

Our last stop was the Red Rocks, a curious anomaly of a volcanic fissure with smooth red rocks undulating on either side in curious mounds and curves.  It reminded us of Petra as there was even a carved out cave. Winston proved a friendly and helpful guide and spontaneously bought us a bunch of apple bananas from the roadside as we headed home.

We arrived back in Portsmouth to be met by Andrew, who looked as if he had been having a very relaxing afternoon indeed, who spirited us back across the bay as the sun set.  We are now back on board after our busy day, settling down with Gerry humming cheerfully in the background, beer in hand, working up the energy to put on the spag bol for supper.  A good day.