December 11, 2009.

We landed on the east side of Dominica, our luggage, camera gear, and a pillow in tow, and travelled about 2 hours by cab through the interior to Roseau, home away from home for the next three weeks. I was not prepared for how mountainous the island is, nor how lush. I mean, I had some idea based on photos and stories, but neither gave me a true impression of the island’s precipitousness. Everything is upwards or downwards. There are few spots that are what I would describe as straight or flat. After three weeks we left the island by ferry, and it was from the sea that I saw how the mountains jut almost straight out of the ocean floor like a series of cones.

Our drive to Roseau began along the coast, and it wasn’t long after the car started to head inland through the rainforest (the Central Forest Reserve) that I was struck by the overwhelming feeling that I had arrived in a Primordial land where everything was larger than life. The Land Before Time. One side of the road was often backed by mountain walls that were completely carpeted in plants growing on top of plants, the diversity more varied than my eyes could take in.

The bamboo that flanked the opposite side of the road was taller and denser than any bamboo I have ever seen, their stems at least five times as thick as any bamboo stake I have bought for my garden. I’ve never seen anything like it since, not even in Thailand where everything is grand. Over our three-week stay I would eventually come to learn how useful the bamboo is in giving the illusion of safety when traveling on these often impossibly narrow and winding mountain roads. Turns out they often hide what is a dangerous, if not deadly drop-off into the abyss. Sadly, a car did go off the road during our stay, killing the passengers inside. For that reason I can not imagine trying to drive myself around the island and was only too happy to leave that task to hired drivers and local friends who know the roads.

Epiphytic plants are a common sight on the island. Plants growing on plants growing on plants…and so on…

I laugh now at our hard made efforts to approximate living walls here in Toronto, while in Dominica nature makes it look so easy.

Sometimes we would come upon an area with open fields rather than cliffs. These too were thick and densely planted, populated with plants that seemed to represent the full spectrum of the colour green. Tree ferns dotted the landscape. I have seen my fair share of this plant, especially in the more mountainous parts of Cuba. But here, the tree ferns were, quite literally, trees. And there were so many of them! Perhaps our plane was actually a time machine and we had entered a Primordial world.

Davin trying out a grapefruit. He ate his fill on this trip. I am not a fan, but I did consume plenty of other citrus fruits, all of which were the best I have ever had in my life.

My exclaims of awe and wonderment seemed to amuse our driver. We got to chatting on the drive and he told us about a little parcel of land that he had recently purchased. He’d hired someone to clear it by machete to farm and asked if we’d be interested in stopping to see. Before our trip, I had read that because Dominica is so lush and fertile, people joke that if you toss a citrus seed out the car window on the way to one end of the island, a tree will have appeared there on your way back. When we stopped at our driver’s land I got to see first-hand the truth behind this notion. Grapefruit trees were growing wild and they were as abundant as the tree ferns. And not just here on farmland. I saw wild grapefruit, cacao, banana, and cinnamon trees throughout our travels and when I asked if someone owned this farm or that piece of land I was often told that it was most likely feral and owned by no one.

The view from the cottage we stayed in for 3 weeks. Unfortunately, there was a miscommunication and no one was there when we arrived. But that’s another story for tomorrow.

I wonder now, if in the fairytale, it was the soil and the land that was magical, and not Jack’s beans.

Read day 4 here.