The two day stay in St Kitts meant we missed out on visiting Antigua which was a pity as we were really looking forward to going there. However, the last day of our trip was absolutely fantastic. On board ship you could book cycling tours and this is what we did for Dominica.
The bikes were really easy to ride with gears that even I could figure out how to use. At home David has a bike with high faluting gears whereas I have the basic 3, maybe 5 gears like what they had in days of old.
There were about 18 of us on the tour which was probably slightly too many, as we spread out over a large area, especially with some people not being as fast as others. This meant the tour guide who stopped periodically along the route to explain things either had to wait ages for the last person to arrive or start talking before everybody was there.
One of the stops was at the botanical gardens where we saw this tree which had blown down on a school bus during a hurricane.
The route took us through many villages with many of the locals shouting hello to us as they sat on their balconies or on the steps of their houses. The route also went alongside the sea and as it was the weekend there were many local children swimming and playing in the sea, who also shouted and waved as we went by.
The bike tour had an added element of snorkelling and soon we arrived at Champagne Bay where we were going to go in. The bay got its name because it lies on a natural fault in the earths crust and there is volcanic activity below which sends bubbles up through the sea floor. This also heats the water up in that area.
Now, I was a bit panicky about this, as you may already know me and snorkelling don't really go well together but I was determined to give it a go. I knew it was mind over matter and know the theory of not using your nose and breathing using the snorkel mouthpiece but actually doing it is another matter.
As it turned out that wasn't my first hurdle! First of all I had to get into the sea, now I am rather coy about wandering around in my bathing suit and usually try to get in the water and cover myself up as quickly as possible. At my local swimming baths I carry a towel discretely in front of me to benches by the pool then slither in the shallow end and basically crawl along till I get into a decent depth of water. Here, I was expected to change into my togs, go for a ten minute hike ( maybe exaggerated the length here) scramble over rocks before getting into the sea.
I also had to do this all without my glasses on so everything was a blur, which might have been a good thing because in my mind, and I know it's daft, if I can't see people properly they can't see me.
Once we got to the water front I made sure me and David were nearly the first ones in. Firstly, so I was covered up but also so David could help me practise snorkelling while others were getting in. Incredibly on the whole I managed, I had a couple of blips where I think I may have put my head down too low and water went in the tube but overall I coped and it was amazing. I can see why David likes Scuba diving so much, we saw lots of different fish, anemones and corals. We were snorkelling on a coral reef. We even saw cannons which had been sunk long ago and of course we saw the bubbles and could feel them coming out of the sea bed.
Too quickly our snorkelling session came to an end and then we had to get out of the sea, which graceful as ever I managed to slip and fall back into, stubbing my toe on the way. Then we had the long walk back in our soggy suits to the changing room.
At the changing rooms there were trees which had loads of iguanas in them, there are at least 5 in the tree in the photo above.
This bigger iguana first of all was perched on a tree stump then wandered through the foliage to be beside us, where it is in the picture below was where we were originally standing.
It was a fantastic day and a great end to the holiday, we went for a short wander through the town in the afternoon, where we saw lots of colourful buses and where bizarrely a woman repeatedly wanted to braid David's hair, she didn't offer to do mine once!
No comments:
Post a Comment