Day 5: Whale Watching and Roseau

We drive back down to Roseau to explore the town before whale watching in the afternoon. Maybe it's because I haven’t seen other Caribbean port towns to compare it to, but Roseau is hardly the “pastel colored oasis” our guide book describes it as. It’s a little too dilapidated and chaotic for an oasis, but it definitely is interesting.

Most of the shops in Roseau are small, some of them no more than shacks with a few dozen canned goods on the back shelf. A small Chinese population runs a scattering of tourist trinket stores, laundries, and restaurants. The emphasis is on necessities and basics, there simply isn't the purchasing power for more. Many stores have ancient cash registers, scales and display cases.

The restaurants look empty of either food or people, so we explore the streets for a bite to eat. We follow the locals to the favorite places – a bakery selling tasty fruit tarts and coconut cakes, a street vendor selling smoked fish sandwiches.

We meet in the afternoon for the whale watching trip. It our first time whale watching and we figured that Dominica was as good as anywhere to go. Our boat is fancy and new, the crew is friendly. We see about 10 sperm whale in our three hour trip (there's a resident pod of sperm whales that live right off the coast).

Mostly, it's fun talking with the other passengers and just being out on the water. Andrew doesn't seem to mind the unlimited rum punches either.

The fishing village of Soufriere.

We spend the night at the Anchorage Hotel and Dive Center. It's the one place we don't like - it feels like a big, impersonal hotel. Even if I was a hard-core diver, I wouldn't want to stay here. The room is stuffy and although there's an air conditioner, I open the patio door and windows anyhow, risking mosquitos. With such beautiful weather and in such a beautiful natural place, turning on the air conditioner just doesn't feel right.



A SCUBA boat docks at our hotel.

The sun over a small island.