One would think that living in the caribbean you would island hop all the time. That's SSOOO not the case. I too naively thought that I would be taking weekend trips all the time to the neighboring islands (Guadeloupe and Martinique) and that it would be easy to do so. Nope! I have finally taken a day trip to Les Saintes (part of Guadelopue) and it was fun but not as exciting (or easy) as I thought it would be. See there are ferries that go from Dominica to Martinique, Guadeloupe, and St. Lucia, but they are kinda expensive and the schedules are not conducive to weekend getaways. Plus a lot of the time I can't find anyone to go with me and do I really want to go by myself?? Granted I did take a nice 4 day trip to Bermuda by myself and had a blast, so there really shouldn't be any problem. But I did go with a faculty group from school so I just showed up at the appropriate time with my passport and everything else was already pre-arranged. We (about 30 of us) sailed on a large catamaran (no sails). The crossing from Dominica to Terre de Haute, Les Saintes takes somewhere from 1-2 hours depending on the speed of the boat and the roughness of the seas. Now, I took some dramamine (actually Gravol, which is the canadian version of dramamine) on the way over and was fine, plus the seas weren't that bad (they way back was a different story, no drugs and rough seas = not a happy Kristjan). We didn't get to spend a lot of time there, but it was nice to be in a place that was a bit more civilized. Got to go shopping for (French) clothes, eat gelato (AWESOME!), eat nice French food, and walk around a bit. (We started to rent scooters, but that lasted about 5 minutes before we gave them back.) I think I would go back for a long weekend next time. It is a bit of a hassle because you have to change currency (Euro) and they pretty much only speak French (and I don't) so it's a bit tougher to get by. It was nice to have enough Canadian friends who spoke at least some French to help translate. So I think in the future I may try to do a bit more exploring of the adjacent islands but definitely for a longer time frame. I'll let you know what happens. (In the picture from left to right- Janelle, Mike, me, Orla. We are swimming in the bay in Terre de Haute, Les Saintes).
