Rescue & Roseau (row-zow)

Roseau, Dominica

Monday March 3, 2025

Interesting morning today! We woke up in time to be ready for today's tour. Then we turned on the TV to look at the map and see how close to port we were, and it showed that we were no where near our port, or even to Dominica. Assuming that the map was just experiencing technical difficulties we kept on our morning routine. Then came the Captain's announcement - Our ship, and other ships in the area, were taking part in a nautical search and rescue operation, looking for a missing fishing boat! Evidently the ship had been notified around 3:00 am, and assigned a grid to search. We were just finishing up our grid area, but we were now about 2 hours away from Dominica. We never heard if the fishing ship was rescued, but we hope they were.

The crew, especially the excursion department, now had two hours to reschedule and rearrange everything before we got into port. Our tour was just postponed 2 hours, the ship was given permission to stay in port later, and it seems like most everything has been rescheduled. Kudos to the staff, and the tour buses in Dominica, to make all this work, and smile through it all!

To start with, Dominica and the Dominican Republic are two different countries, on two different islands. In 1978 Dominica was granted independence from Britain. Dominica is the only Caribbean island to retain a colony of its pre-Columbian population. Over 2,000 Carib Indians (Kalinago) inhabit a separate area on the island. The Dominican Republic is a different country, on a different island in the Caribbean, with a strong latin American influence on its culture.

Both countries do celebrate Carnival, and today we saw some Carnival activities taking place in the streets.

Some Fun Facts about Dominica

• Dominica has one of the highest percentage of Centenarians per capita in the world

• It was a filming location for "Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man's Chest"

• Dominica’s national flag is one of only two national flags to incorporate the color purple

• Dominica has the highest concentration of volcanoes in the world with nine active volcanoes. However, eruptions are rare because pressure is released through the large bubbling hot springs on the island.

Our tour today was an old style trolley ride through the city.

Here are some of the highlights from the tour:

Visit to the Botanical Garden

We saw huge stands of Bamboo Grass, which they export to other countries. And we learned the bamboo stalks can be made into Firecrackers!

This is a sausage tree. The "sausages" are not edible, and at full size they can weigh up to 20 pounds. So walking under them is not advised!

Other Places:

Here is the official Treasury Building for the country.

This happened during a hurricane many years ago, when a very large tree branch landed on a school bus. There were no students on the bus, and the tree branch continued to grow, so they just left it all as is!

This was seen near the port area in Roseau, Dominica. No comment needed....

That's it folks! Tomorrow is our last port in Totorla, British Virgin Islands. We don't have a scheduled excursion, but we plan to venture into the town! Thanks for following the blog this trip! We sincerely appreciate your comments and support!