Toronto, Canada

Dominica was a nice place to go for a week. It's the first time we've traveled in the same time zone, which was nice. There was enough variety between hiking, snorkeling and birdwatching to keep it interesting. Staying in two locations allowed us to see the north and the south end of the island, without having to spend too much time driving around.

The highlights included:

• Snorkeling in Soufriere Bay and seeing turtles, squid and octopi 
• Birdwatching with Dr Birdy in Syndicate Nature Trail
• Lunches at local snackettes and restaurants
• View from Manicou River Resort

It's not that easy to get to Dominica, which is probably why we enjoyed it so much. They don't have an airport that can handle larger jets, so you either need to take a ferry or fly from a neighbouring island. Dominica was listed in a recent Conde Nast article on how new airports will make it easier to reach bucket list places, so we were lucky to get there before the airport gets built.

It was pretty easy to avoid the cruise ship crowds. Aside from seeing the 18-deck cruise ships in the distance, docked at Roseau, we wouldn't even have known when the cruise ships were in port. (Also I had googled when planning the trip so knew exactly when ships were in port, and how large, it was in our itinerary). I always find it odd how the most popular sites are super-crowded yet equivalent sites are empty. For example, Champagne Beach is a very popular destination with cruise ship folks because of the bubbles that come up from underwater geothermal activity. Bubbles Beach, five minutes down the road from Champagne Beach, with the same geothermal activity, was completely empty. Anyways it worked for us, as we saw turtles and an octopus at Bubbles Beach.

A few other random observations: We used snorkel hoods for the first time, and they were great! Kept our hair out of our eyes, and protected our heads and back of necks from the sun. We picked these up at MEC. The road conditions weren't too bad, the internet had suggested otherwise. Mosquitoes weren't an issue either -- maybe it was too windy.

On the flight from Dominica to Port of Spain we had a great cloudless view of a number of other Caribbean islands, which got us thinking about future trips. Most of them are on the cruise ship circuit, and almost all have decent road infrastructure (also, they are mostly flatter than Dominica) so there's not really any off-the-beaten path places on these other islands, although it's all relative.

Overall it was an excellent week-long vacation!