Tom's Visit: Aba Wavine Cyrique

We had a visitor on our little island of Dominica! Kyle's friends from high school, Tom, came to visit and we had a blast showing the island off to him. I should have kept count, but so many times Tom would just stop, look around, and say, "I can't believe you guys actually live here!" Since Tom lives in New York City, Dominica was a nice, relaxing substitute to all the noise and buildings in the city!

I went to get Tom from the airport, as well as our friend's husband who was coming in for the weekend. I was so nervous, because knowing how carsick I get, and how awful the ride is to and from the airport, I warned Tom that I didn't know what kind of condition I would be in. It turned our great - even after being in the transport for 2 hours, I didn't feel the least bit carsick!

Tom warned us he would be taking a lot of pictures, so all the pictures I post on here are probably his. He even took pictures of the plane landing - which is an adventure in itself since it looks like you're flying over Jurassic Park, and the runway dead ends right into the ocean...

So, the first night Tom was here we gave him a quick tour of campus before it got dark, and then headed for Dominica's finest: Perky's Pizza. We had to get to bed somewhat early, because on Friday we went to Aba Wavine Cyrique, which is a waterfall that lands right on the beach on the Atlantic side of the ocean. To get to it, you have to scale down the side of the cliff using some ropes and tree branches & roots are your guide - no harnesses! I was told if you were at all afraid of heights, you probably shouldn't go. Well, truth is, I am very afraid of heights at times. But thank goodness, I was fine the whole trip and we were all pretty excited we made it down!

We went with a total of about 14 people, so it took us awhile to get down the whole way. We started off walking for about 15 minutes on a path carved out by steps made out of tree trunks. Our legs were shaking by the time we got done with all of the steps, and we hadn't even done a majority of the descent down!




The path down started with a rope tied around a tree, and you pretty much grabbed on tight and started going down backward.... So if you let go, you were a goner. For some reason the song "Free Falling" by Tom Petty kept playing in my head...

There were about 5 "rope sections" of the hike, where you were pretty much vertical going down. And when the rope wasn't there, we were surrounding by plenty of huge tree roots and plants to grab onto. Completely safe, people... I mean, we did have a tour guide named Theo. Now the fact that we only saw him for about 3 minutes as the three of us were going down may make a difference.

It was really neat, because the further we climbed down, the more of the ocean we could see. It was such a gorgeous day and the water was a beautiful blue. The view of the water was definitely worth all the work climbing down!

Finally we made it down to the beach! Our guide cracked open a coconut, so we feasted on that as we took our final trek across the rocks to get closer to the waterfall.

The waves were HUGE, and as you can tell by the picture below, one ended up getting the best of me... was soaked! But it was worth it! Normally you'd be able to go right up to the waterfall, but because the waves were so high, you'd have to risk it and swim through the rough waters. Well, Kyle and Tom took the challenge and swam over to a rock right under the waterfall!

We got to swim in the water for about 45 minutes and then we decided to head back up. The climb up took almost half as long, and we were all amazed that we were back to the top in no time! This was definitely one of our favorite things we've done in Dominica so far!