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Getting There - Aneel's Travelogue

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Last Day Toucari, Dominica, Saturday, 09 January 2016 1:31pm

For our last day, we decided to explore the top end of the island. We drove from our hotel along the northern coast, but when we would usually cut across the island to go to Portsmouth, we stuck to the coast. It was a nice drive, over some suspiciously well-maintained roads (the Prime Minister represents Vieille Case). From the top of the hills we could see the islands of Guadeloupe (France) in the distance.

After lunch, we hiked around the Cabrits National Park a bit and managed to see all of the common animals: tree and ground lizards, hermit and black crabs (though the latter only as corpses scattered across the trail by some ferocious crab predator), the red-necked pigeon, and the grove snake ("Elegant and harmless"). We also found a tree near Fort Shirley that was apparently irresistible to both the Bananaquit and Antillean Crested Hummingbird.

Then we headed up to the northernmost village in this part of the island and reached the end of the road. Finally, we stopped in Toucari Bay to do one last bit of snorkeling. It was pretty murky because of the recent weather, but we did get to see some nice schools of fish and some decent corals and sponges. We also saw the largest Bearded Fire Worm I've ever seen. Usually they're a few inches long, but this one was as long as my forearm. There was also a starfish, which is the first one I've noticed this trip.

On our way back, we got stuck in a traffic jam. People tend to park wherever they feel like, and the town of Wesley was apparently very popular on this Saturday night. The parking in one area blocked enough traffic that there was no way for cars to make progress in either direction. Eventually some traffic wranglers got enough cars to move to loosen the jam.