Submitted by Kayla Angeline on the 2018 winter session program in Dominica sponsored by the Department of Geography and Department of Applied Economics and Statistics…
We are now well into two weeks of our program and we have had some very exciting excursions this week. One of my favorites was a hike called Middleham Falls. It took about a 20-minute van drive to get to our trail head, from there we embarked on a long hike led by our enthusiastic tour guide, Colombo.
Our guide is very knowledgeable and has a lot of information to share with us about the island. He was born in Dominica, but also spent some time in the United States, where he attended Penn State for his undergraduate degree. During our drive to the trail, I noticed a few mudslides that occurred after Hurricane Maria. They were still working on clearing some of the roads in Dominica.
This makes traveling around the island a little slower, waiting on the traffic to be able to pass through. The trail wasn’t quite what I was prepared for, it was very muddy, steep at times and involved some scrambling. It took us about a 45-minute hike through the scenic mountainous terrain and led to a viewing platform of a 275 ft waterfall. It was beautiful, definitely worth all of the mud! The falls led to a crystal-clear pool of water that made for perfect swimming conditions. The trail took us a little longer to navigate because some of the trail was damaged due to Hurricane Maria and it hadn’t been entirely restored. Our tour guide was very helpful and knew exactly where to take us!
After we returned to Roseau from our hike, we went to one of our group’s favorite restaurants on the island, the Fort Young Hotel. This is a restaurant that is more formal, where you can sit down and you are waited on. Most of the other restaurants on the island are carry out. They tend to have more Americanized cuisine, which was a nice break from all of the fried chicken we have been eating. I decided to get a fresh salad and the pasta bolognese. My roommate and I split the blueberry cheesecake, which was my favorite! Everything was all very reasonably priced; I ended up only spending 20 of American dollars. Tipping the servers is already included in your bill when you dine at this restaurant. This is a question we all had when we arrived on the island. Professor Seraphin is a born local and suggested tipping 5-10 percent when it is not included in the bill already. This was interesting to me, because in the U.S. we usually tip a minimum of 20 percent. The venue is also very relaxing, half indoor and half outdoor seating, so you still feel like you are outside enjoying the beautiful island views.
