Snorkeling + Hiking = Sniking

Sunday was our day off this week, so a few of us enjoyed the day by going to Scott's Head. It is a pretty cool place because it is the southern most tip of the island and there is a spit that you can walk out on where the Atlantic Ocean is on one side and the Caribbean Sea is on the other. It is amazing how different the two bodies of water are. On my left there were huge waves crashing in the dark waters of the Atlantic and on my right the Caribbean Sea was calm with turquoise water and beautiful coral reefs. We started our adventure by hiking to the top of the point at Scott's Head and the view was beautiful as we looked down and back at Dominica and the coral reefs below. Then we hiked back down, put on our gear, and snorkeled around the reefs below. The reefs we incredible and there were so many new fish to learn just a couple of feet from the shoreline. We also swam out to where the depth drops down dramatically and all you can see is deep cobalt blue all around you. You can just sit there and watch the bigger fish swim past the drop off looking for their lunch. In just the short time I sat there, I saw a big barracuda, spotted eagle ray, and a sea turtle. It was pretty amazing to be swimming with these animals instead of viewing them in an aquarium.

After our snorkel we had lunch at a small restaurant/stand where the man who ran the place swam out and speared the fish, cut it up into big chunks, cooked it, and that was lunch. The fresh fish was amazing, but I had to share it with the tiny kitten that was stationed underneath my chair begging for food. After lunch we ventured further inland to Trafalgar Falls. Trafalgar Falls are actually two falls the "mother" and the "father" and they both are around 200ft tall. One of my favorite parts about visiting the falls was that you could climb on the boulders at the base of the falls and there were several pools of water to soak in. The cool part about it is that some of the pools had cool water from the precipitation fed falls, but there were also warm pools fed with geothermally heated ground water.

As if our day could get any better, that evening we visited the hot springs and soaked in the warm waters, while listening to the nearby waterfalls, and sipping my new favorite - peanut rum punch.