Friday 6 April: We have a rental car today so we are up ready to go by 9am, including wetsuits, flippers, life jackets to swim the Titou gorge. We plan to leave all the gear in the dinghy but sense prevails and we carry it all into town where we will pick up the car. It gets pretty heavy after the 20 minute walk in the hot morning sun.
The car is a beaten up Honda CRV @US$55 a day. But this is standard it seems across Caribbean. Oh how we long for European prices and quality for hire cars… but not European marina, mooring or fuel prices! Enough of those in the last 2 years, thank you very much.
We set off in the car, which actually has the most chilling aircon yet, out of town and up into the mountains. First stop is Trafalgar Falls where we buy a 1 week pass to all the government sponsored attractions. The site is a well laid 10 minute hike up to a viewing platform (all nicely redone after hurricane Maria) that looks over twin cascading falls, father Fall with 150ft drop and Mother Fall 75ft drop. They used to have a nice pool at the bottom, but the hurricane filled that with large stones and the pool is now completely gone. Quite impressive even so. And the best bit is we are all by ourselves.
Then further up the side of the volcano’s foot hills we manage to find the Titou Gorge. A very nice guy, Essa, advises us where to enter and what to expect. But Oana has already read up and we knew the flow is hard to swim against and the water cold – hence our wetsuits and flippers. As we get in the water it is at first bracing and Glen enjoys capturing Oana’s face as the cold water first enters her wetsuit. The entrance to the gorge itself is only about 1 metre wide and the sides tower 10-15m above us, almost blocking out the light. It’s a bit spooky as we swim inside, against a gentle flow. The swim to the waterfall at the end is 70m and the further we get the stronger the flow against us. Good job we have flippers. At the very end, where the waterfall enters, we can barely swim to, and once you have got as close to the falls as possible there is nothing to cling onto, so you quickly get wooshed back down the gorge.
Just before we swim out another family swims in with children. Very quickly they realize it’s not the place for children who are struggling. Back out of the gorge we hang around in the pool till the family comes out. The sun has come out now and appears to give shafts of sunlight into the gorge – so in we go again, as usual armed with our GoPro. Once we are out of the water and getting dry, we chat to the other family. It turns out that they are from the catamaran moored right next to us in the bay. They are an Israeli family with 2 young boys and they are on a circumnavigation for the last 3 years. They just have to cross the Atlantic and get back to Israel to complete their voyage. It’s obviously very interesting talking to them.
Then we chat to Essa and look at the multiple things he has crafted for sale. We find out that 3-hour trek up to the Boiling Lake starts right here at Titou Gorge. He says we don’t need a guide and proceeds to describe to us both the way and the dangers. Once in the crater area there is apparently boiling mud either side the trail that will severely scold your feet if you step in it. We decide that we will come back and do this hike tomorrow. It’s sounds like quite an adventure.
We then drive right up to the top, as far as the road goes, heading for Freshwater Lake. On the way up we find multiple places where the road has clearly been covered in landslide debris from Maria. Up at the lake itself we find the air very fresh at 3000ft. At this level it’s clear the devastation on the forest, where most of the trees are bare stumps with a few new leaves growing out of them. The lake itself is nothing special, but the empty visitors center has some very well presented posters of this Trois Pitons National Park, the geology, fauna and flora and most interesting the Boiling Lake. We are even more interested to hike to it now that we read about it.
On the way back down we are rather hungry. We see a sign to Syem-Zee hotel and restaurant so we take the track up to it. But as we approach it’s clearly been put out of business by Maria. We are just turning the car around when the owner comes out to chat to us. He tells us all about the hurricane and shows us around what was once his 15 room hotel before the 250mph winds ripped through it, taking the roofs off and blowing out windows. He was not insured, poor him. He offers us to buy it, as is, for $1million!
We drive all the way back down to the town, stopping occasionally to view other hurricane damage – like half a house in the river bed, the other half taken by the huge boulders that came down river.
Once at Roseau town we turn south and drive to Soufrierre and onto Scott’s Head which is the last village on the SW point. Both these villages have been very hard hit by Maria, especially those buildings near to the shore. And it seems they still don’t have running water as they are all queuing around a single stand pipe, washing clothes and collecting water. We really feel very sorry for them. But on the other hand each village has lots of young guys just hanging around, doing nothing other than sipping beer and smoking the obvious, all apparently oblivious of all the clearup and reconstruction work still desperately needed to get things back to normal. We guess they are just waiting for the government to act for them. Hm, we think it will be a long wait!
At Scott’s Head we attempt to go across the cobbled beach causeway that joins to a small island. But in doing so we give the bottom of the car rather a hard time as the boulders bang against the chassis. Once back on the hard road there is a rather loud squeaking noise coming from the front driveshaft. Ooops! Well, there are advantages to renting a wreck – they probably never notice just one more squeaking noise!
Having found nowhere to eat out, obviously, we go back to Cloudy Bay for a late lunch while we watch another glorious sunset. Tonight is Friday, when these towns usually come alive, so we drive into town mid evening to see what’s cooking. We do find a couple of bars that seem lively, but their music is the usual very loud black music and they are already too drunk to have any sensible interaction with. We are also a bit annoyed at how many guys come up to us asking us to buy them a drink, or just plain asking for money. Glen has a craving for chicken wings, so we go to another place and order some. The DJ here is playing slightly better music, but not enough to get our mojo going! Annoyingly, the wings are still not delivered after 45 minutes and when Glen goes into the kitchen to see what’s happening, he gets a telling off by the bar lady! Eventually they do appear, just moments before we walk. Again we leave the local evening scene rather disappointed. It just doesn’t do it for us. Anyhow, we need an early night. Big day tomorrow – the long hike. And we want to be walking by 9am. It’s been a great day and we sleep very easily.