Travel Guide

Link: http://www.fuegoyagua.com/index.php/eastern-caribbean/dominicaphotos/?blog=8

The emerald paradise island of Dominica in the Eastern Caribbean

The island paradise of Dominica is notable for both its pristine natural beauty and for being home to a living Carib culture. This video discusses both some of the natural features of the island and the cultural legacy of the mountainous, rugged and wildly beautiful terrain - the continued existence of the Carib population - a culture that was almost entirely eradicated on all other islands. In particular, the video retells the story of Massacre, the town named after an English officer called Philip Warner murdered his Carib half brother as a signal to commence the bloody slaughter of the local indigenous population.

Lookout from Brimstone Hill Fortress, St.Kitts

The tiny West Indian state of St. Kitts & Nevis is an exemplar of the principle that human beings find it hard to find something that is too small to fight over. Now a very attractive and peaceable nation of just over 40,000 people, the history of this island mirrors that of the Caribbean region as a whole: Europeans arrive, eradicate the indigenous population, fight amongst themselves for control over their new possessions and import vast numbers of slaves from Africa to work the land. In this video post, I look at what St.Kitts’ tourist attractions of Bloody Point and Brimstone Hill say about the history of the island. In particular, this video discusses the arrival of British explorer Thomas Warner, the formation of the first British and French colonies in the Caribbean, the massacre of the local Carib population, conflict between the French and British for control of the island and the arrival of African and Irish slaves to the island. As an aside, the local museum calls the Irish “indentured servants” but as they were sent here under duress by Oliver Cromwell, the title “slave” that Wikipedia uses seems to me to be a fair one.

Caribs Leap, Grenada

Caribs Leap at the North end of the island of Grenada is the location of one of the most remarkable and desperately sad events in American history. In 1651, the last remaining Caribs on the island jumped from the cliff to their deaths on the rocks below rather than surrender to the French. This collective suicide of men, women and children marked the extinction of Carib culture on the island.

Winding roads around St.Kitts

The Caribbean islands of St. Kitts and Nevis together form what is the smallest country in the Americas (a total of 261sq.km and a population of about 42,000).

Visitors will encounter these islands as warrens of winding roads, beautiful coastal views, an often impenetrable local accent and intriguing local history.

The principal tourist attraction of Brimstone Hill fortress is a hugely impressive monument to both British military excellence and the shameful European exploitation of slaves throughout this region. In constructing fortifications such as Brimstone Hill and working on plantations, slaves brought from Africa (and another 25,000 Irish slaves sent to the islands by Cromwell) helped make St.Kitts for a while the richest per-capita island in the region (today, St. Kitts and Nevis ranks relatively highly - 54th in the world - in terms of Human Development).

St. Kitts (also known as St. Christopher) was the first Caribbean island to be permanently settled by both the English and the French. The two nations shared the island between 1627 and 1713, working together to exterminate the indigenous Kalinago population (a slaughter that is commemorated in the name of the Bloody Point area), before turning on each other to fight for exclusive control of the island. After the Treaty of Utrecht, the British established control over the island of St. Kitts and from 1883 joined it to Nevis as a single administrative unit.

Even though the bigger of the two islands, St.Kitts can still be circumnavigated by a car setting out and returning to the capital Basseterre in only a couple of hours. But despite their relative small size, these islands together provide a stimulating insight into the Caribbean’s past and present. For more information, view this video post.

Wild and beautiful - Dominica

Dominica (not to be confused with the Dominican Republic) is an emerald jewel of the Eastern Caribbean. Unlike some neighboring Caribbean islands that are renowned for their beaches, Dominica’s splendor is inland. Crossing the island’s 754 sq.km is mostly accomplished on roads not much grander than narrow trails. These thin arteries carve their way through thick rain-forest and a verdant mountainous terrain that reaches an elevation of almost 1,500m.

Dominica is almost impossibly wild and beautiful. Dominica’s human inhabitants have (so far) left a respectfully minimal imprint on an island that mostly retains a pristine bio-diversity. Visitors exploring the island are assailed with the pungent odors of dense vegetation and sulphur pools.

English and French patois are the island’s languages - with English being dominant. In Dominica’s pleasant capital Rousseau the Fort Young hotel, which at $100 claims to be the island’s premier hotel, provides a snapshot of the region’s history. The French originally constructed a fort on what is now the hotel’s site in 1720, the British captured it in 1761 and soon after began constructed an improved fort, the remnants of which form part of the modern hotel structure.

A short trip from Rousseau are a number of sulphur spas such as Screw’s. Get-away-from-it-all accommodation is also available around the sulphur spas at places such as the Bamboo cottages, which serves a famous and delicious “Bullet” rum punch and promise its clientele absolute discretion (secrets must be difficult to maintain amongst the island’s 69,000 local population).

For me, Dominica is close to being the earthly manifestation of paradise. I highly recommended this island to anyone who wants to feel the raw pulse of nature in all its untamed intensity.

A video post about some of the island’s history and culture (notable for the continued existence of the Carib) is available here. Photos are available here.