Dominica and the Indian River

I believe the Isle of Dominica will go down as one of my all time favorite islands. I may find prettier islands someday but it will be the standard I hold the rest to. We pulled into Portsmouth and were immediately welcomed by the locals. They have been called everything from boat boys to the Banana Mafia, but our experience was very positive. Alexis was there to meet us and he made his pitch to take us on tours, buy our groceries, clean our boat etc. He never bugged us after that except to come by once a day and see if all was well.

We started off by taking a hike and the book told us to go to the gas station. Sunny and I argued about which gas station we should go to and in the end we went with her choice as mine appeared to be out of business. We promptly got lost and we met a man named Pedro from Montserrat who told us we were indeed on the right path. He volunteered to show us the way and so he did. Originally we were looking for the spring which is the head of the Indian River but apparently he did not get that part. So we hiked through the jungle for some time and through many groves of fruit which according to Pedro were unowned and remnants of the old plantation. We finally came to the river and Pedro bid us a farewell. We were not at the spring just the river but obviously you can't get lost if you hike on a river right? Unsure if we could find our way back the way we had come through the network of trails we decided to push up the river to find a spring. Once we were all alone I figured Sunny would go a bit crazy about being lost but she was a real trooper and kept it together nicely. We crossed the river twice and found a road which led up in the hills through more fruit orchards. Finally never finding the spring we turned and followed the road back. We then discovered that the road was our intended trail all along. Sometimes it's good to get lost.