Bristol Buzz: Discovering the North Side of the Island

One of the spouses, Anna, had her brother visting this past week. She rented a car which equals huge excitement for all of us! If we want to go anywhere here we have to arrange a driver and pay them more than we really want to and usually have to have a specific destination. So in effort to take full advantage of the freedom, Anna, Margo, Sam (anna's brother) and myself hopped in the car and hit the road. Most of the trips that we have taken on the island are on the south end of the island, so we headed north. Now we live on the Northern west side of the island but have not ventured to the north east side. We found that the people here are much nicer and more accepting, almost excited to have us here. In Roseau, the capital, it is a bit rough. They are used to tourists and are usually after money when talking to you. The people we met in the North side were excited to talk about Dominica and even more excited that we wanted to know about it. We ran into a man named AJ on one of the beaches we stopped at. He was hacking away at coconuts with his machete to get bait to go fishing for some red snapper. He is a retired school teacher and I can tell you that his passion for teaching did not end when he stopped working. We spent a few hours on the beach with him while he gave us more information about Dominica then I thought I could handle in a day. He talked about his childhood and how he carried fire wood from the mountains down to his home so his mom could cook. He was the eldest of his family and began teaching to make money at the age of 16. He was actually teaching kids older than him. So needless to say, AJ knows most of the people on the north side of the island. He cut open some coconuts for us while he continued to school us on Dominica. Let me tell you , machete's are a wonderful thing here in Dominica. They are an all around handy tool. Before moving on from AJ we took his phone number and made plans to have him take us around his old stomping grounds later in the week. We continued to drive up the coast which turns out to be one of the prettiest on the island. All was going well until Anna said, "um, guys, I wasn't paying attention and the gas light is on!" This doesn't seem like it would be that big of a deal except that there are roughly 10 places to get gas on the entire island. We were on top of a mountain fortunately and coasted most of the way to the nearest gas station, which was about 25 mins away. After getting gas we headed up to a trail called, The capuchin trail. This is a hike that takes you across the island on the north side from capuchin to pennville. It is about 5 miles one way. We decided to hike it. It was a pretty good hike, not too challenging but great scenery. There were lime trees, mango trees, banana tree's along the way so we had a snack. It was a great day.

The beach we met AJ on.. Vielle Casse