Internal Clock

One thing that I love about summer back home is that it's daylight until 9pm during the longest days. This is great for everyone. Hang out longer, kids play outside with each other longer, and enjoying the coolness of early evening while it's still light and pleasant outside. Oh how I miss those days. An interesting thing occurred when I arrived here... See, Dominica does not abide by daylight savings time. :( So no long days for me anymore. Here, on the longest days in the summer, it gets dark around 6:30pm. Now that "winter" (yes yes, I definitely use that term loosely) is starting to begin, the days are getting shorter. (I know time changes back in the states this weekend, so I guess I can't complain too much!) So now sunset is around 5:40pm and by 6pm it's pretty dark. Grrr... (And all the stores close at like 4-5pm anyway, so there's NOTHING to do once there is no light.) Though it does get light much earlier here (usually around 5:30am). I'm usually at work by like 7:45am, which would NEVER happen back home in the states. I was lucky to get out of bed at 8am (here it's 6am) and be at work by 9:15am (now I'm at work before I was out of bed back home). Crazy. And I'm not any more tired from it. (It's amazing what early morning sun and roosters crowing will do for your sleep patterns~ oh and the goats too.) I did mention to my parents that I feel like I'm getting old (or becoming more like them). At home, they're usually in bed by 8-9pm and up at 4-5am (if they're lucky). I will admit that on more than one occasion I've started to fall asleep on the couch between 7-8pm and then wind up in bed by 8pm (and then proceeded to sleep until 8am...I was REALLY tired in my defense). Back home I never went to bed before 11 or 11:30pm. Here, if I'm not in bed by 10:30pm, there's a big problem. I figure part of this new internal clock thing is a consequence of getting old (and I really don't want to age myself), but I'm going to attribute it to this crazy daylight schedule the islands have. So if anyone ever desires to actually come and see me, then they can enjoy pretty sunsets, but REALLY early ones!

Shaking at the Knees

So when I was younger (and much more naive), I said that I wanted to experience (and live through, of course!) every type of major natural disaster, just to say I had. This includes hurricanes, tornados, earthquakes, floods, volcanic eruption, and the like. Some of these events just don't happen in NC, so I was basically outta luck. Got the hurricane thing down to a science. They're really not that bad. Just a lot of rain and wind (don't drive in it). I missed the big flood at home (had just gone off to college a month earlier), and tornados happen, but very rarely so "Twister" will have to suffice.

Being in Dominica (which is essentially the top of a volcano), I get to have earthquakes now. Granted, they're pretty much tremors (lasting a second or two) and they haven't been huge (just rattled the house a couple of times), but nevertheless they are still unnerving. And apparently the shallower ones (the ones you hear but don't really feel) aren't tectonic, but magmatic (hehe, I just quoted "Dante's Peak"~ I know too many movie lines!). I hope you have seen the movie "Joe versus the Volcano" with Tom Hanks and Meg Ryan (1980's movie, not great but entertaining). In this (disclaimer: from what I remember), Joe (Hanks) discovers he has an incurable disease and takes a trip to an island where he is to be the sacrifice. He's going to jump into the volcano on the island to appease the volcano gods, so it doesn't erupt and the island will continue to survive and prosper. On the way there, he and Meg Ryan happen to fall in love, and she obviously doesn't want him to go through with the sacrifice (I promise, you'll see where I'm going with this in a minute). So when Joe (and Meg, bc they're in love and obviously if one dies, they both have to) are jumping into the volcano it decides it's going to erupt and they get shot out of the top of it into the ocean. They watch as the island sinks and everyone is killed except them (they survive with some high tech luggage that floats, but anyway...). The point is, if Dominica decides to erupt, then I want to be that person that makes it off the island and is sitting there watching it sink (this is the only stipulation, dying isn't an option). The reason I'm getting all these earthquakes is apparently bc the side of the island I'm on is really close to a fault (it runs in the channel in between Dominica and Guadeloupe), and the north side of the mountain close to me (I'm on the south west side of it) is supposed to eventually fall off into the ocean and take out Guadeloupe with a tsunami (if that happens, maybe Dominica will actually make the nightly news and people will have heard of it!). So, I'll keep you posted on that situation. :) Until then, keep in mind that you might be in for a "rolling good time" if you come visit!

A lesson learned

So today I officially went on my first hike in Dominica. Sure, I've done trips where there have been some hiking, but pretty short ones (~30 min). My idea of hiking is 2-3 hrs. worth of hiking. That's what I'm used to from back home. 2-3 hrs. is essentially 5-8 miles in NC. Granted, it's pretty darn flat, so it's not that difficult, just long. So today was my first long hike since I've been here. I hiked the Capuchin to Pennville Trail, which is like 8 km (or 5 mi for all you non-metric folk). Now, in the guidebook this hike is rated a 2 out of 5 (in my mind I was actually thinking it was a 1 while we were on it and I was about to go ballistic on the writers!), where 1 is the easiest and 5 being most difficult. I had asked around and people said it was a pretty easy hike. I've now learned that all these scales and opinion are REALLY RELATIVE!! This was not my idea of an easy hike (not what I had imagined at all), but I definitely wouldn't call it difficult either. It was a moderate hike. All in all, there were parts that there were a lot of hills (especially at the beginning), but the last 1/2 was more even or down-hilled mostly (which really helped). We completed the hike in around 3 hrs (maybe a tad bit longer). If we didn't have to wait for a few REALLY slow people in our group, we definitely could've done it in 2-1/2 hrs easy. The guidebook (if you're wondering which one I'm always referring to, it's Bradt's Dominica) says guide is recommended...well, I think it should be required! At some places its pretty well marked, but there are numerous forks and ultimately the trail is pretty covered and hard to see. I had thought that I would only need one time and then I could remember the way, and that's totally not the case (sorry Matt, when you come down and if you want to do the hike, I'll find us a guide!). Also, it just so happened that it rained the majority of the time (downpoured at one point). This is typical in Dominica and I figured that it probably would rain, especially since it had been raining off and on since the night before (that's okay, we really needed it!). By the way (tangent coming), people never cease to amaze me. One of the guys (obviously one of the two we waited on) actually brought an umbrella on the hike. I'm sorry, but you're in the elements in the middle of the jungle...live a little! Anyway, this in my mind was supposed to be one of the easy hikes here. I was using it to gauge my ability to go on the harder hikes that are around (Boiling Lake- which is rated 5 and is 3 hrs each way, etc). So I think the lesson learned here is that there's no way that I'd survive the Boiling Lake hike, so I should just kiss that option good-bye. I might try a 3 hr. level 3 hike, and maybe if I'm ambitious a 4, but only if it's less than an hour. Not all people's minds (and bodies) have the same idea of easy!! I'll let you know the next hike I partake in!

Dodging bullets

So okay, not really bullets, but you'll get the idea soon enough...

Anyway, I'm from North Carolina. So most people in the states will appreciate this. Back home when you learn to drive, your parents teach you specific things about driving at night. Namely, white-tailed deer are abundant in NC and you learn to drive cautiously and to look out for the reflections from your headlights in their eyes. Thanks mom and dad!! That's saved me and my car driving at night back home. Now, being in Dominica, something that is lacking is deer. Or really any native mammals to be exact. However, this doesn't mean that you don't have to pay attention while driving at night (the potholes will eat your car, seriously!). So instead of trying not to hit deer, here you try not to hit crabs. Land crabs to be exact. Now back home, crabs on the beach are quite small (as they generally are here too). You have to go to a restaurant or deep sea fishing to see big crab (or just watch Deadliest Catch on Discovery channel, especially during King Crab season~~ yes, I know I'm a geek, but that show is AWESOME!! I love you Phil and the Cornelia Marie!). However, the land crabs missed the tiny crab memo apparently, bc those suckers are huge!!! (And not fast either, though at least they'd beat a turtle.) When I say huge, I generally mean about the size of a dinner plate. Not too shabby! So, while at this point, I technically still haven't driven a car in Dominica, I'm learning what I have to look out for when I do start driving. Once I embark on that experience, believe me I'll blog about it! Until next time...dodge those crabs!

My new favorite hobby

So most of you know that back in the States, I was into rock climbing. Unfortunately Dominica (being a volcanic island and all) isn't conducive to rock climbing. Believe me, I've tried. Most of the "rock" here is like sandstone (as soon as you try to put any weight on it, you fall right off). However, it is apparently a good island for canyoning (canyoneering to some). You may be wondering, what this is exactly. Well, it's rappelling (abseiling) essentially. Though here, it just isn't off cliffs, but down waterfalls! Awesome, I know!! So the canyoning trip I went on this past weekend was to the Titou Gorge, which is a little west of Roseau. We went with Extreme Dominica (check out their website) which is in affiliation with Cocoa Cottages (you REALLY need to stay there if you just want to get away from it all and experience living in the jungle in luxury). Anyway... we get there and changed into our "gear." "Gear" being full-on wetsuit (long sleeves and legs- HOT in Dominica), helmet, climbing harness, shoes, and life jacket. (I admit I was thinking that it was REALLY overkill at this point.) After a brief training session, we then drove to the middle section of the gorge and started our adventure. (I've got pics posted on Facebook so you should check them out!) Luckily for me, it came quite naturally (I guess with my climbing experience, though I'd never really been a fan of rappelling) so I was pretty efficient and fast. We rappelled down around 7 waterfalls ranging from 15-30 ft. high. There were places we jumped (if it was deep enough) and they were 5-15 ft. high. There were also a few place (2) that we were just lowered down (didn't really know why). In between waterfalls we trekked through the gorge (for my Australia peeps, think Northwest trip through the gorges up there, but green instead of red!). The gorge was about 60 ft. deep (from what I remember, maybe more) with a river running through it. It was pretty shallow in some places, and in other, you definitely had to swim! (At this point, I was glad I was decked out in all that gear!) We were probably in the gorge for 3 or 4 hrs and I wish it were longer! The hardest part of the whole thing was the hike back out! Since we were going down the gorge the whole time, we had to climb back out, so it was 20 min. of scrambling!!

So now I'm hooked on canyoning. I found out that they divide the gorge into three sections. The middle is the easiest (DONE!), the first part is the intermediate one (on my to do list, hopefully before Christmas or just after), and the last part is the Advanced one, this one includes a 260 ft. rappel down Trafalger Falls (REALLY want to do this!). So, if you're planning on coming to Dominica and you have a sense of adventure, you HAVE to put this on your "To Do List!"