9/23

Back to amazing days! We had kind of a rough start. We desperately needed coffee and wanted to get things to cook at JP's cottage for breakfast today and tomorrow, so we drove down to Roseau, where were knew there were coffee shops and a grocery store. Driving in Roseau is a little stressfull--we wanted Bailey's in that coffee. We found a little cafe and ordered bagels and cream cheese with smoked marlin and happy coffee. She looked a little confused when we asked for Bailey's, and apologized for not having any. We ordered Kahlua instead, which she promptly brought out in full glasses, on ice. Oops. Worst coffee ever.
Went to the grocery store and bought random stuff. Cereal, coffee, fruit, etc. Any time we spend in cities frustrates us, and we get grumpy. We are not here to be in cities or to drive on main roads. We are here to be in the rainforest and do waterfall rock scrambles. We want to be muddy and bruised. We want tired muscles. So being at some grocery super center is enough to make us more than a little testy. Let's get out of here and find a waterfall.
We did.
We went to a place called Trafalgar Falls; two beautiful, big waterfalls surrounded by Gulliver-sized ferns and giant bromeliads. There is a staircase sort of built into the hill, and if you want to get to the pool at the bottom of the Mother Falls, you venture off the trail and slippery-rock climb your way up. When we told JP about this little rock climb, she went wide eyed and asked how we did it without a guide. I guess having a guide never occurred to us.
We did just fine on our own, without any disasters or big falls. The waterfall was incredible. We got in and went as close as we could go, though the intense wind and spray to the face made it hard to get too close. I swear this place feels like a movie set.
We spent about an hour there, in love with the falls and the greenery. And then we left, back to the cottage and to say hi to JP. She has been here for three years now. It's been four since she worked in housekeeping with me at Maho. Her email handle is runawayhousewife, which is exactly who JP is. Fed up with suburbian life in Wisconsin, she timed it so she wouldn't hurt her daughter and bolted. Moved to the Caribbean, where she had spent some of her twenties sailing.
She is 50 something now, and is happier than I have ever seen her. She's got a lot, where she has a house slash textile studio. She does batiking and tye-dying all day. She has dreads and signs her emails with "Onelove," and she says things like, "I home now."
She has made plans for the three of us to have dinner at her friend's house tonight, so we have to be back by five. She has laid out two ideas for what we should do until then. One is walk around a freshwater lake sort of near here, and the other is to swim through a narrow gorge to a waterfall. Who needs lakes, really?
We get a tiny bit lost on the way, but manage to park at the rainforest tram and walk the rest of the way.
The only way we have found to get good directions here is to head towards where you should be, roll down your windows, and ask the next person you see if you are still going the right way. We have gotten more than a few raised eyebrows and one comically times "Wrong way, oui?"
It was difficult to know how to get into the gorge, as there was a lot of construction around it and one random set of stairs into some weird-looking water.
Asked and answered, and into the weird water we went. And holy. Shit. I have seen few things as cool in my entire life.. The pool turns into a narrow waterway, turquoise water into black with two rock faces steep and tall on either side, capped with the same gigantic, green ferns we have been seeing everywhere.
Before too long, your feet can't touch and I found that I was thankful (again) for my nerdy Tevas, which sort of acted like flippers. The water was so cold and so dark and if it weren't for the light coming in from the top, I would have thought we were in a cave. We heard water up ahead, so we kept swimming. It felt like something out of The Goonies. We could not see where we were headed and before too long, we couldn't even see where we had come from. At some point in our blind swim, we discussed the unlikely, albeit entirely terrifying prospect of a sea creature living underneath us, Nessie style. We wouldn't have known. And we would have had no defense. We allowed that kind of talk for maybe a minute. But we were already in the water, we were too curious to turn around, and it seemed like it would be a good way to go if that was our fate. So. Keep going. We couldn't get too close to the waterfall; it was way too strong and pushed us from it.
It was incredible. The rock faces were maybe 15 feet from each other, like some funhouse hallway. It twisted and curved and there wasn't much to hold on to. I am not sure how much time we spent in there, but it was the kind of place where you marvel every second.


We went to have drinks with JP's friend Elsbeth later. She, her husband and 5 kids worked a tugboat starting in the late 60s. She is, we think, in her 70s now and has turn what once was Trafalgar's premiere nightclub in an octagonal home with a beautiful wandering garden. We toured through and munched on watercress that we pulled from the ground as she showed us her avocados, dasheen, tangerines, coconut palms, coffee trees, cocoa trees, breadfruit, cinnamon and almonds. I would love to talk to her more; I can tell that she has a million stories.
We walked to a little snackette for dinner. A woman named Maryann made us fish broth, johnny cakes, salad and rum punch. These snackettes are little food stands. They stand in neighborhoods and are clearly a social hub. The women sat around and gossiped and ate, JP and Lisbeth complimenting Maryann on everything she had cooked, recommending this type of rum punch to us instead of the other. I played hide and seek with Maryann's son. Despite the fact that we have not felt unsafe on this island, Erin and I talked about how we never would have ventured here on our own. It's intimidating to be the minority. Well, that's a weird thing to say. We are the minority on St. John, as well. But it doesn't feel quite that way, and that island is familiar, so we do not even notice. Here, we notice. So do the Dominicans. It is sad to think about the things people miss and the things we have probably missed because we are unduly scared. But then, I got mugged when I wasn't as scared as I should have been of a place. One or the other, I guess.
Afterward, Erin, JP and I headed to a place called Screw Spa. A naturally hot sulphur spring belonging to a statuesque West Indian man named Screw, who descending from the ceiling of the front desk wrapped from the hairline up and the waist down in sarongs. When I say descended, I mean it. I think he lives upstairs, and the man slowly and deliberately used his considerable arms to drop from the beams above the desk. It was a sight.
Holy mother, is that place stunning. Red and white rope lights line stone grottoes where you sink into opaque, steaming hot tub water. He plays trance-inducing slow reggae and it is hard to tell if you can actually smell weed and incense, or if that's just what your mind is telling you that you should smell. The pools are steps, getting hotter as you make your way up nearer to the spring. The place glows, really, and the steam that rises from the pools clouds anything sharp. It is not the kind of place where you speak much. You just kind of float around and let whatever it is doing to you happen. It was surreal and awesome.
It didn't take much to call it a night after that. With jell-o muscles, we wobbled out and home and crashed early, ready for the six hour hike to Dominica's boiling lake in the morning.