Portsmouth, Dominica

Breakfast was pretty slow at our hotel in Antigua, enough so that Heather left to finish packing up while waiting for our food.

There was another guest (Nik) also waiting for a taxi at 10am, turned out he was on our flight to Dominica! We were both surprised as not many people travel there.

Our Caribbean Airlines flight was full, although it continued on to Trinidad where we figure was where most people were headed. (It’s actually the same leg we’ll be taking at the end of our trip).

It was really hot in the plane while we waited to depart. The flight attendant was using the safety instructions as a fan. The flight itself was only 45 minutes, with a great view of Dominica as we approached for landing. It’s completely covered in trees and volcanic peaks, Jurassic-park like.

It’s one of the smallest international airports we’ve flown through, smaller even than Sāo Tomé. (The population of Dominica is only 72,000).

For those trivia buffs out there, Dominica is one of four countries in the world with purple in their flag.

Immigration was straightforward, and then we waited for our luggage. They showed up on the conveyor before the AirTags could register (maybe not enough iOS devices around).

The car rental booths were a couple minute walk down from the airport. Our rental place (Courtesy Cars) was waiting for us. It took a bit longer than I expected cause they had to fill out the paperwork to issue a temporary local drivers license for me.

And so we were off in our Toyota RAV4, an hour drive to our hotel, Manicou River Resort. I had booked a standard but we ended up with an automatic :( and a rather beaten up one at that. At least we won’t have to worry about any minor nicks or bumps!

We had read poor reviews of the road conditions in Dominica. I didn’t find it that bad, about like Troödos Mountains in Cyprus, narrow roads, blind corners and steep drop offs.

We took about an hour to get close to the hotel, just as Google maps predicted. But there was no signage for the cutoff to the private road up the hill. We made a u-turn and on the way back asked someone for directions (across a small bridge and then turn left. Or maybe before the bridge). We took a left after the bridge, and from there I guessed directions based on satellite view in Google maps. The road sometimes disappeared in the tree coverage so guessing was involved.

The road was extremely steep, we couldn’t see the road in front of us at points. It was also single car width, fortunately no cars were going in the other direction as I’m not sure how we would have passed each other.

Finally we saw a sign, Entrance by invitation only, and we knew we were on the right track.

It was a little confusing as we arrived, as one of the hotel folks said to just park in the driveway and then helped us with our luggage. The mystery cleared up when we found out we were the only guests tonight (only three cottages survived the hurricane in 2017) so they were expecting us.

It’s an off the grid eco-lodge, solar powered and the like. (But with wifi in each cottage, lol). It’s built on the side of a 45* hill, with the downslope side of the lodge completely open. It was also facing the sun in the afternoon, and the combo direct sun and reflected sun from the ocean made it very hot. The overall effect was a bit more rustic than we’d prefer. But the view is amazing and it’s one of the top rated hotels on the north side of the island (the lesser touristed half). (Spoiler alert, we figured out how to keep it cooler the next day).

We showered and then headed over for dinner. There was a table of five other guests (just here for dinner) so it made for a livelier restaurant. We had a sundowner, watching the sun set beside Cabrits National Park, with lights from yachts in Prince Rupert Bay dotting the horizon. Very atmospheric.

We were really hungry when dinner was served, as we had missed lunch and didn’t want to mess with the access road again today to get into town for food. It was tasty, grilled chicken and a smorgasbord of other stuff. There were no bugs at all, which was surprising to us and also made it very pleasant out. It was still very hot in the room and it took us a while to fall asleep.