The sound of my alarm filled my ears and I glanced at my watch which said it was only 6:01.
“Turn it offfffff.” Groaned Sally turning on to her side.
I turned it off and sat up quickly seeing my hiking boots. We were going to hike to a boiling lake, which was something that I was looking forward to sense we got to Dominica.
After changing quickly I shook Sally.
“Wake up Sally” I said and started to walk out of the room.
“Whhhhhhhyy.” She moaned.
“We are doing the hike..”
“Oh yeaaaaahhh. I’m up.” She said cheerfully sitting up. That was a fast of emotions I thought with a smile as I got some breakfast.
A few minutes after we were all ready, sunglasses, sunscreen, water, snacks, and Willie’s “hiking gear”, one of Sea Cats(tour guide) workers came to pick us up with CarpeVentum. Two really nice people as well as cruisers.
We went to the car and from the second that Sea Cat started taking, I knew that this would be a super fun hike and worth every penny (or ECs in this case.)
We got to the hike and we started off. We learned all the trees, plants, and edible things going up the first 45 min.
We got into the Nation Park zone and some came to one of our first long stops.It was a overlooking the town. It was pretty foggy though since it was raining the whole hike so far, but it felt nice cause it was hot earlier. That stop Sea cat gave us all some “rum punch” aka passion fruit juice. It was in a slushee and super good. We made some passion fruit juice the other day too.
We continued our hike through small water falls and some places Willie was almost vertical when he was jumping down. We made it through a couple of hot springs and came to a large hot spring valley. It was called “the Valley of Desalination”. There was lots of little mud pots, little geysers, and lots of hot springs. It was like Yellowstone packed in one with no fences. There was steam coming out of the ground in some random places and in some places the water was boiling while in other places it was warm or even cold.
“Face masks, get them from this volcanic ash.” Sea cat chanted and smeared some of the volcanic ash on each of our faces. I will post some pictures….
After we all had our mud masks on, Sea Cat took out a container of raw eggs. I was confused when he put all of the eggs in a bag.
“How do you want your eggs, over easy or hard boiled?” Sea cat asked going over to a little geyser with the bag of eggs.
We answered over easy and in one minute we all had an “over easy!” egg. The outside was black because of the volcanic sulfur and apparently that was super good luck in some places hence, it would make you live longer. The egg was super good. One of the best soft boiled egg I ever had. So now I can say, “I ate an egg from Dominica cooked in boiling sulfur vent geyser thing.”
We hiked through the steam vents, boiling water streams, cold water streams, and lots more random hot spots. The water then started trailing to a waterfall. My eyes widened as I realized that the waterfall was the path. There was only a little drop that time, one we could all easily hop down, but you could tell that there would be bigger ones. We continued hiking through the warm water. Well “we” consisted of everyone but Willie. Willie was hoping on the land scaling the side of the river because he thought that all th water would be hot now. The water felt nice warming your feet but not too hot. The rocks were beautiful. The rustic orange color of fall met with deep and light yellows to make a breathtaking combination or rock colors. It looked like someone took the colors of sunset and sent them down the river, painting the rocks as it went on.
Then we came to the drop. I saw a rope dangling from a couple of trees. I looked down at the 15 feet drop. It was pretty smooth with a couple of small footholds. Malone, SeaCats helper went down first using the rope and just sliding down. Ooookkkaaaay then I thought as I held on to the rope. I slowly started sliding down the slope my hands tight around the rope. Finally I found a foothold and I looked down realizing I was only a couple of feet off the bottom. I jumped the last little bit still holding on to the rope. I let go of the rope and high fived Malone.
“It wasn’t that hard!” I called, turning around. Only then did I realize I was encouraging Willie. How in the world was he going to get down? I thought… I saw SeaCat hold on to Willie’s harness and then Malone was on the bottom. Willie did a jump type slide thing and Malone caught him and put him on the ground. I let out a breath. Fewwww. That was nerve wracking , I thought. Heidi started down and soon everyone else made it down easily.
Willie ran ahead and then the rest of us followed him. The trail had a steep up hill right away but it smoothed out a little bit. Soon we came to a little stream coming out of the land next to the trail. Sea cat took two elephant ears off of the tree. He put the first elephant ear on the little stream making it into a fountain that came out of the leaf the next cup he folded into a cup. The cup worked all the way and didn’t leak at all. He filled up the cup with water and asked if anyone wanted to drink from the “magic cup”. Sally drank some of the water and it was super cold she said. I didn’t have any but the cup and fountain were super cool!
We kept on hiking getting closer and closer to the sulfuric steam coming out of the mountain. It seemed like that we were almost there. I peeked around the corner and was happy to see the end of the path! The boiling lake is going to be right here. We all sat down and waited for the fog stuff to go away. It went away in a few minutes revealing a big lake that was boiling. It looked like a humongous pot that was boiling only in the center. There was a huge bubbling thing in the middle causing the rest of the lake to go up and down! It was super cool!
Sea Cat made a super good salad and salted cod salad type thing with bread. It was really good! We ate lunch and talked for a while. We also had some more passionfruit juice! After we were done eating, Sally and I found a pit of volcanic ash mud and we dug some up to save for making into face masks. I will post some pics…..
Once everyone was re energized, we started going back down. It was mostly the same except that we stopped at some hot springs to go in them. We were all, very tired by the time that we reached the first river. After lots of fun and hiking, we made it back to the trailhead.
Right next to the trail head there is a beautiful as well as cold gorge! There were deep greens draped against dark gray rocks and the pretty light blue color. We all went in getting very refreshed. If you swim up the gorge the current get stronger and super hard to walk at the end near the waterfall. That being said it was with the beautiful view of the waterfall. We dried off after we were done with swimming and headed back to the boat. What an amazing fun filled day!
Bye till next time!☀☀☀❤❤⚓⚓
The one and only
Lucy