As always on these islands – even on the US Virgin Island of St Thomas - English customs reign supreme and they drive on the left. And even though Dominica had a period of French influence when some of the place names were decided, we held the island when driving became fashionable.
Clearly a poor island, Dominica was very lush with stuff growing everywhere. Some parts of the island get 300 inches of rain a year – that is a lot, but it remained dry when we were there. We did see rain showers in the distance off Barbados when we left there, but we avoided them and the sun shone for almost all of every day.
The bus crushed under the tree was a gift from the Canadian people and was only 10 days old when the hurricane struck. Fortunately there was nobody in it.
Dominica is quite mountainous and suffered a devastating hurricane only one year after independence from us. With a population of only 80,000, it must be a difficult country to keep viable financially. There was a beautiful viewpoint over the capital of Roseau and we could see their new cricket stadium, built by the Chinese for about £10m. They were proud of the fact that the West Indies would be playing Australia in a test match there later in April. We also visited the Hibiscus Falls in the central part of the island where once again free rum punch was on offer and had a general drive around.
There was a lot of talk on the island about an incident a couple of weeks before when the Celebrity ship ‘Summit’ had visited. Apparently there was a large party of gays on the ship who were touring with a travel firm called Atlantis. When it was moored up, it seems that two gays did something very inappropriate (twice running) on their cabin balconies in full view of the shore and the local taxi drivers objected and the police were called. The two men were hauled off to spend a night in the cells, then appeared next morning before the local magistrate who fined them each $900 on a much lesser charge than they could have faced. They were then marched off to a cashpoint to get the cash for the fine and they then flew out of Dominica. The ship had already left and I imagine that their cruise was over. Dominica’s fledgling tourist industry is now worried about a backlash against them from some people in the gay community when they feel that they were only upholding normal standards of decency.
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