Day Something or Other

So, where were we? Tiny, murderous crustaceans. Ok.

Apparently, when faced with physically insurmountable odds, Erin and I will forever be undeterred. When I say that we were holding onto tree roots to stay upright, our Teva-ed feet slipping on the mud under us, I mean it literally. We could call part of this hike a climb and not be lying. But we wanted to see these secret pools, damnit, and we had time to spare. So, really, why not? To be honest, I am not sure how many times we went down one path-looking thing and had to turn around because we couldn't get past it. The number is fairly large, I'm sure. At one point, we saw bare footprints in the mud. They were headed opposite way that we were headed. We are still not totally sure if that was a good thing or a bad thing, but we kept going.
We FINALLY found a pool. We think. I don't really know if we were where we should have been. The thing is, this river is long. And we have spent so much time climbing up and down on its boulders and trying not to slip on its algae-covered stones, and there are pools all over the place. The right ones, the wrong ones. Pools with strong currents. Pools that are too deep to feel totally comfortable jumping into (though we do, anyway), pools that are cold and clear, pools that are tiny or huge or easy to get into or impossible to get into. The whole river is full of pools. This one seemed fairly unremarkable, all things considered, so we probably never found it. There was a whirlpool involved, and we got a picture of me sticking my toe into it to test the super-strong death current. And that was that.
The trek back wasn't as bad. Nor as interesting, obviously. If it weren't for Erin, I would still be lost in the Dominican jungle. But the girl knows how to navigate, and we made it back in one piece. Super dirty, covered in mud, bruised and 4 hours later than we thought we would be, but in one piece.
We made it back to the hotel, where we said goodbye to Nigel and Girl and went on our way from Hibiscus Valley to Roseau, which is the main port of Dominica. The plan was to drive North along the coast, so we could see more of the island. We could have driven straight across, but that sounded dull. We thought we could get to Roseau, where our friend JP has a guesthouse, in maybe an hour. First, we had to stop in Wesley, where the airport is, and switch out our rental car. The one we had made strange shrieking noises when we braked. This is a volcanic island; there is a lot of braking.
Car switched, we saw a fruit stand near the airport. We have been talking about getting fruit from one of these stands since we got here, and this one had avocados the size of our heads, so we stopped. Oops. As I try to haggle with the woman behind the table over the price of avocados a couple of guavas,and some orange thing I had never seen before, Erin was getting really impatient. Really, really impatient. There was an older woman of questionable mental capacity standing near her, and I heard them talking a little, but didn't pay much attention. Oops number two. The next thing I know, this tiny old lady has her nails dug into Erin's arm and is trying to get her to go into the house behind this whole operation. Bad news bears. We grabbed the avocados, which I am sure I paid too much for, and bolted. The lady came to the driver's side window to tell me about her sick mother and beg for money. It took driving off and wondering if I was going to run her over to get away. Pretty intense, really, and not awesome.

The Dominica travels are sort of a work in progress. The thing is, I was tired every. Single. Day. All of them. So I didn't write as much as I probably should have and I am writing a lot of this in retrospect. Which is, well, exhausting. It makes me want to get to the parts I wrote when I was there, which I know to be accurate and not shaded or stained by however many months have passed since. So, I will stop this one and say that we spent four incredible hours in a car getting taken advantage of by locals, buying approximately twenty starfruits (by accident), seeing our first Dominican black sand beach, taking cell phone pictures at a Pirates of the Caribbean sunset, getting horribly lost multiple times and finally finding our way to Roseau, which confused the hell out of both of us. I can talk about these things, but racking my brain to try and write them is too much right at the moment. Now I am going to return to the things already written for me. Because I feel lazy.