Happily going off to land for a few nights

Elvis was spot on time to pick us up, we’re hoping a huge tip is incentive to guard the boat. The boat men have all formed an organisation for joint security and care of the mooring balls, called Pays. We hope it is all legitimate, fingers crossed! We locked up as well as we could with JeldiJeldi securely padlocked onto PolePole. All went like clockwork and the Jungle Bay (our hotel) mini bus was waiting for us at 11am at the Pays office as planned. Very punctual, no island time here!

Lots of all relics of mills along the route.

Looking back to the quarantine area and the British fort up the hill.

Surprised to see an old black cab in town.

It was just over an hours drive to Jungle Bay, traveling through the capital of the country, Roseau. From there it was a 20 minute extremely narrow winding road to the hotel which was high up in the jungle overlooking a big bay that is an ancient volcanic crater. The little village beneath us is also called Soufriere (means sulphur – from the smell of the volcanoes nearby). The country has 9 live volcanoes, slightly alarming with the current eruption on St Vincent. Our room was in a lovely cottage with oodles of space and looking straight out to sea.

The resort seems to only have a handful of guests. There definitely appear to be a lot more staff than guests. In the afternoon Keith, who picked us up, took us on a tour around the estate. Incredibly it was a citrus lime estate in the past, in fact it is the home of Rose’s lime cordial. We always had a bottle of it in the booze cupboard growing up in South Africa, having no idea its origins were from Dominica. Rose’s lime marmalade was always a favourite of mine too. The limes were picked into crates, which were hooked onto a huge pulley system (like a zip line) carrying the crates down into Soufriere. Lots of the old metal pulleys and cables are still here. In Soufriere the limes were squeezed, the juice boiled, and poured into barrels, which were then loaded onto boats and sent back to the UK. In 1867 Scottish Lauchlin Rose took out a British patent on his method of preserving lime juice with sugar rather than alcohol, this may have made him unpopular with sailors! The alcohol free juices quickly became the choice of responsible fleet owners. Ships in both the Royal and British Merchant Navies were required to provide lime juice daily to sailors, to prevent scurvy, which is where the nickname ‘Limeys’ came from. The lime industry accounted for 80 percent of all Dominican export value from 1902 to 1922. A devastating fungus hit the lime trees in Dominica in 1922, causing the entire Lime business to collapse in 1928. Amazingly Rose’s only completely pulled out of Dominica in 1978.

The ground is so fertile from the volcanoes and with lots of rain, everything grows so fast. Keith’s other job is planting, besides being a driver and a tour guide! The hotel grows a lot of their own produce and supports all the local small farmers, it really is a community project. The original Jungle Bay was built on the eastern windward side of the island and got demolished and cut off during hurricane Maria (Sept 2017), they rebuilt here in Soufriere in 2018, it is amazing how the plants look like they have been here for ages. Half of the resort is still under construction.

They have used all local stone, training new stone cutters in the local villages.

The infinity pool overlooking the crater bay.

Ylang Ylang flowers with the most incredible heady scent in the evening.

A banana flower, I had no idea there were tiny yellow flowers.

Huge Paw paws with a lovely little flower I have not noticed before.

The new pool and rooms still being finished off.

The Rose’s pulley system taking the limes down to the sea below

A good view of how the bay is an old volcanic crater

Sunset from our room

As we are on an all inclusive package, it means we get a lovely massage every evening in the spa run by some lovely local girls. Supper was out at the infinity pool, the food is most probably the weakest bit of the resort, very basic and not hugely inspiring, but wonderful to have a break from cooking. Lovely to go to sleep in such an enormous luxurious bed .