Click on it to get a bigger version. Looks like I missed a bit in the middle, plus people were moving around and I hand-stitched this in Photoshop without bothering to correct for lens distortion, how much I moved, etc. The free stitching tool I found looked easy enough but didn’t produce anything, and I didn’t feel like shelling out for the pro tools for something that’s probably not quality enough anyway. So you can totally see the edges, but the effect is OK.

This shot is from our first big rest on the way to boiling lake. This is the highest point of the hike, and you can see the steam of the Valley of Desolation and Boiling Lake on one side and the Caribbean on the other. The people pictured are Sam, an amateur botanist who could frighten professionals, my brother Dave, a third of Reid, a retired orthodontist who nonetheless shamed me severely on the hike, our guide Rennick, who had just pulled off a 1550 on his SATs and will soon be going to school here in the States, and John, a badass birder who, despite our schedule, was up every morning before dawn to walk around Springfield Plantation to find birds.

Click on the photos to see a larger version.

This was the first sunset I saw from the veranda of the main building at Springfield Plantation, where I stayed.

How about this guy? A male Blue-headed Hummingbird, taken in macro mode, from a distance of about sixteen inches. He was pretty calm. He was also mid-preen, but you can tell the underside of the beak is bright red.

This is a cuttlefish, relative of the squid. Bird owners will know them from the little bone in their head which is used to provide a calcium chew for their feathered friends Caribbean Reef Squid. But they’re really beautiful in the water, just swimming along. I’d guess they are 10 inches to a foot long at most.

Here’s a Pan-Tropical Spotted Dolphin jumping in the water on Christmas day. We had no whale sightings, but then again, I didn’t care much because I wasn’t hiking. The previous day, I looked like this:

I spent Christmas Eve sweating and stinking of sulphur. There’s a hell-to-heaven metaphor in there somewhere.

I had earlier worn that shirt for another tough hike, to Middleham falls. Here I am earlyish in the hike, posing in front of a gigantic bromilliad (sp?):

More as I select and make them Web-friendly.

One last entry before I board the bus for the airport. Dominica, it’s been a wild time. There was sorrell rum punch, a fatally-injured boa constrictor, a non-fatal crash, a grueling hike through sulfurous vents, rain, sun, and sunburn. And a fair amount of poker.

We learned, we laughed, we cried–particularly when I got the repair bill for the rental…well, I cried at any rate. I think other people felt very good not to be me.

I got to know some very nice dogs and their Canadians, met a couple of friends I hope I’ll show around DC soon, heard risque stories from a grandmother over the aforementioned poker, and saw more fish than I can remember, let alone identify, along with no whales.

I ate more fish than I’ve eaten outside of Japan, learned the toungue-numbing joy of Karl’s Hot Sauce, saw the Oral Lodgings establishment, which is named for its proprietor, Oral Roberts (not that Oral Roberts) and advertises self-catering rooms. We learned that you must not eat Sukie’s bread by chance, but only by choice. We were admonished not to crush the crabs, and Kubuli, well, the best you can say is that it’s the beer we drink. Sigh.

I saw a rainbow every freakin’ day, and learned to appreciate why tree ferns are the ultimate end point in tree evolution.

Not bad, Dominica. Now get some sleep!

So, this driving on the left thing isn’t as easy as I thought. I pulled out of a roadside stop to swing around the opposite direction but ended up on the wrong side of the road–and despite the mantra “you’re in the middle, not on the edge” I ended up staying there just long enough to swere and barely avoid a head-on collision with an oncoming car. I did take out the front left end of mine and creased his side entirely, and rendered my Suzuki undriveable.

It could have been so much worse…and it might not have been my fault but been a head-on anyway–lots of people were passing around blind curves earlier in the day. Nobody was hurt in either car. But it puts that guy in a bind for the next bit until he can get his car repaired, and it means I have to go through some more stuff after going to the police and enduring the “investigation” in the sun.

I’ll have some primo sunburn, but that’s the worst thing physically that happened. Obviously, I’m not too happy with myself or the world, and even though I know intellectually that it’s a very understandable and simply an unlucky mistake, I can’t help think that I’d already thought to myself that I’m in the danger zone because I’ve relaxed.

Sigh. Such is life, and nobody’s hurt–that’s what’s important. But I can’t pretend it doesn’t suck.

Today started out with a whale and dolphin watching trip that basically became a dolphin and cuttlefish-watching trip, as the whales were spending Christmas further out to sea. The cuttlefish, of which previously I’ve only known from feeding bones to Squeak, are pretty spectacular-looking animals: rainbow colored with brown tentacles.

This afternoon has been devoted to nothing. I’m sitting around the plantation, looking out over the water, a rum punch in my hand, and it’s 78 degrees.

Not bad, not bad at all.

So I celebrated Christmas Eve by kicking my own ass on a 10 mile hike with 1400 feet of elevation change, but with three or four ascents and descents. I am so frigging tired now, but in order to go whale watching, I’m supposed to be driving people at 7:15 AM.

The hike is pretty amazing, and hopefully I’ll be able to post some good pictures, but it was exhausting. I did better than I had any right to, as I haven’t been hiking as much as usual this year. The boiling lake (yes, we hiked into an active volcano) was rather misty, and the bubbling mud I’d seen before in Lassen in California. But still the views and stark sides were pretty phenomenal…we would change 750 feet of elevation in a few tenths of a mile, and we did it over slippery and sulphury rocks.

I did get a photo of a Mountain Whistler, a pretty and cool-sounding bird that inhabits most of the forests in the mountains (it’s a rufous-throated solitare for those playing the home game). I saw a few others, but mainly I sweated and got mud on me. It was an accomplishment–you’ll understand why better once the photos are posted.

So the Sisserou/Jako expedition was successful, and I managed to be the only one to get a good look at a Sisserou through binoculars–too far for a picture, though I have three specs that were probably Sisserous. I have a bit of a picture of a Jako, but that’s it. I did much better the next day at the botanical gardens, where they have two in cages.

Later in the day, we went to Cabrits national park and, after poking around the ruins where some of Pirates of the Caribbean was filmed, a few of us snorkeled off the point. We saw an incredible variety of stuff within a few feet of shore, including trumpetfish, juvenile parrotfish, bluehead and yellow wrasse, all kinds of urchins, eel, and the yellow-tailed (?) damselfish–just to name less than a tenth.

Today we went to the sulfur springs, which were actually kind of boring unless you’re into acid-loving plants. Then we went to Scott’s Head, where the Atlantic and Caribbean are just a few feet apart, and dove the bay to a similar range of fish–including a sole changing color, giant boxfish, cowfish, and much, much more.

So, it turns out that driving on the left is not that hard, at least on an island without a ton of traffic (the narrow roads are a challenge).

Hiking up and down ravines for several hours to get to a waterfall–then hiking back trying to beat sunset in order not to kill oneself (on a trip the guide let slip that he’s never come back from without an injury–nice of you to tell us halfway through, guy)–is hard. It left me dead and a little cranky that the guide hadn’t let on how strenuous this was before (he had my parents, one of whom is in his eventies, trying it).

I made it, though, and took a bracing swim in the pool beneath the falls. I heard and saw shapes fluttering of what were later identified as Jako parrots, which are rare–maybe 2000 left on the island, and that’s the only place they exist in the world.

I swore that tomorrow I was going to let the guy show off his plant knowledge without my driving help tomorrow, but dammit if the guy didn’t find the magic words to get me out of bed at 4:30 AM. Sisserou. The other, even rarer parrot and national bird of Dominica.

Curse you, nature guy!

Interesting note–the most complicated driving I’d done was through a crime scene in the otherwise bucolic town of Canefield. There were police with cameras recording the scene and a funeral home pickup truck. No idea what the problem was, but it’s tarnished my image of Dominica as a peacable kingdom.