February | 2018 | Toodle-oo!

Unfortunately, internet has been extremely difficult to come by – finally got this post up and will slowly add photos as I can…

We returned to Dominica to find rather more boats in the anchorage than when we were there in December and more and more arrived over the coming days – with over 40 boats anchored or moored each night by the time we left a little over a week later.

While we were there a bunch of cruisers got together to assist the Dominicans in their rebuilding efforts – at the communal food pantry ‘The Lambs Feast’ at the local radio station and simply helping locals out with whatever project they were up to. I had an interesting morning with John and Chris from Saphira Blue and Mark from Calypso K, assisting a gentleman called Alexis and his cousin Monty put a new roof on Alexis’ house. What we did in a morning together would certainly have taken them a couple of days.

We also did a fantastic hike to ‘The Boiling Lake’ with John and Chris and with Martin and Lydia from Cheglia, guided by Sea Cat. This had to have been the most interesting and most arduous hike I’ve ever undertaken. We left Toodle-oo! at 6:00am, were at the trail head at 8:30 and didn’t get back for another 8 hours! The route took us over a big hill and down, across a river, up a mountain (and down again ☹) across the valley of desolation and up to the boiling lake. The second largest in the world and it is BOILING! The trek was very steep and quite challenging, but along the way we got to enjoy fresh pineapple, rum punch, fresh boiled eggs (boiled in the fumaroles) a blue mud pack and lunch at the lake all courtesy of Sea Cat who provided a wonderful dialog about the flora and fauna along the way. Anyone considering this hike will be well pleased if the go with Sea Cat.

Unfortunately, the hike took it’s toll – in the hot steamy and wet conditions, Laurie’s camera (which I had chosen to bring instead of mine) suffered a death and the card is unreadable – so no photographs ☹

We bid adieu to Dominica and enjoyed a brisk sail down to St. Pierre in Martinique. There were a couple of OCC boats anchored around us and we had sundowners aboard Toodle-oo! with Jeff and Macia from UJAM’n and Neil and Helen from Milvinia. We had already decided we wanted to hike Mt. Pele, the large volcano that last erupted in 1905 ? killing about 30,000 people in St. Pierre. As it turned out, Neil was planning the hike the following morning, so we opted to join him.

Last year when we attempted this walk with Peter and Patty (Serendipitous) the weather was awful and we called it quits at the first major ridge we came to. Turns out that ridge was not even half way to the top… This hike was another strenuous effort – taking over 5 hours – but this time we had perfect weather and the sights on the way up and from the top were breathtaking. We completed the walk with Neil and with Fletcher, Kristopher and Ward from ‘Lovely Cruise’, a younger family taking a 12-18 month sabbatical…