Dominica Travel Tips

This post contains some observations, lessons learned, and tips regarding travel to Dominica. Some of these have been covered in other posts on Dominica and some are covered only here.

Money and Expenses

• Dominica's currency is Eastern Caribbean Dollars, but U.S. dollars are widely accepted.
• Credit cards are widely accepted, but there are also several places that do not accept credit card.
• The Dominica week park pass is an exceptional deal for many Dominica travelers who spend a couple days or more on the island. We purchased our pass at the Trafalgar Falls Reception Center, but it can be picked up at select other locations as well. For $12 US, it allows entry into these attractions:
  • Morne Trois Pitons National Park World Heritage Sites
    • Morne Trois Pitons
    • Emerald Pool
    • Boiling Lake
    • Freshwater Lake
    • Boeri Lake
    • Middleham Falls
  • Cabrits National Park (Cabrits National Park and Fort Shirley)
  • Morne Diablotin National Park
    • Morne Diablotin
    • Syndicate Nature Trail
  • Other Sites
    • Indian River
    • Trafalgar Falls
    • Soufriere Sulphur Springs

Vehicle Rental and Driving

The post "Driving in Dominica" has detailed information about driving in Dominica and includes links to numerous other resources on driving in Dominica.

Here are summarized tips related to renting a vehicle and driving in Dominica:

• Rent all-wheel drive or 4-wheel drive vehicle.
• Rent smallest possible vehicle that suits needs to deal with narrow lanes and difficulty parking.
• Have car insurance either through credit card used to rent vehicle or purchased as part of rental.
• Concentrate fully on driving and what's happenung around you at all times!
• Expect people, chickens, dogs, cats, iguanas, and other animals and items to be in the road at any time.
• Expect vehicles in front of you, especially taxis (which are often white sports utility vehicles and vans), to stop at any moment to pick up passengers.
• Expect vehicles to be stopped in the lane even where there is only one lane each way and busy traffic in both directions.
• Expect oncoming drivers to be in middle of road, especially coming around turns. Use horn (and lights at night) to warn oncoming drivers when you're approaching a turn.
• Be aware of no or few street lights in areas away from the cities and towns.
• Beware deep drainage ditchs alongside the road.
• Beware pot holes.
• Beware large speed bumps in cities and towns.
• Beware of wet roads with frequent rain in Dominica.
• Be aware that there are relatively few street signs (speed limit signs, names of streets, etc.) in Dominica.
• When parking alongside road, pull in mirrors.
• Distances on maps of Dominica will probably take longer to traverse than you'd think due to the curving, narrow roads, especially when going through towns and cities. Roseau's downtown is particuarly chaotic.

Cruise or Not?

The majority of tourists to Dominica visit via cruise. We enjoyed flying into Dominica and spending five nights there because it allowed us more time to see the island and to experience it with only a very small number of fellow tourists (we saw one couple on the Trafalgar Falls trail, one couple on the Syndicate Nature Trail, and shared a boat with one other couple on the whale watching tour, but had the rest of the sites we saw essentially to ourselves (along with a few local residents in some cases).

The waterfront area of Roseau is far less hectic when no cruise ship is in port and, in fact, the market stalls are all closed up and the photographs above and below this sentence show.

When we visited Trafalgar Falls on a day with no cruise ship, we had it to ourselves, but the information area was not open. When we returned on a day a cruise ship was in town, the information area was open.

The Bush Bar on the Indian River was also not open when we enjoyed having the ride and area to ourselves.

People who prefer the markets being open, prefer information centers being open, and prefer other amentities such as the Bush Bar being open area likely to want to visit Dominica on a cruise ship or while cruise ships are in port. Our preference was to give up those things in favor the what mattered more to us: almost no other tourists and the beautiful "Nature Island" seemingly all to ourselves at times.

The following sites were highly useful in determining when cruise ships would be in the Roseau and Portsmouth ports and what the capacity of those ships is. We used this information to decide when to go to Roseau area and when to stay near our lodging in the Portsmouth area.

• CruiseMapper: Roseau, Dominica (click on "Schedule" tab)
• CruiseDig: Roseau, Dominica
• CrewCenter: Roseau, Dominica
• CruiseMapper: Portsmouth, Dominica (click on "Schedule" tab)
• CruiseDig: Portsmouth, Dominica
• CrewCenter: Portsmouth, Dominica

Morne Bruce Viewpoint

We like to find elevated viewpoints in new cities that we visit and so were interested in seeing Roseau from the Morne Bruce Viewpoint during our trip to Dominica.

Jack’s Walk trail connects to Dominica Botanical Gardens to Morne Bruce Viewpoint, but we drove to it instead.

Unfortunately for photographs, we went up to Morne Bruce Viewpoint in the late afternoon (after Champagne Reef, Bubble Beach Spa, and Scott's Head) when the sun made it difficult to get better photographs (though it was still a great view for humans).

There is a small park-like area at Morne Bruce Viewpoint and there is no cost to look at the view from here.

Whale Watching and Dominica Watching

We had two tours scheduled with PH Whale Watch Dominica on our first two full consecutive days in Dominica. Our first day's tour was the "Champagne Reef, Bubble Beach and Scotts Head Snorkeling tour by boat in Dominica" tour in which we snorkeled at Champagne Reef, relaxed at Bubble Beach Spa, and snorkeled at Scott's Head. We returned to the Roseau Ferry Terminal the next day for the "PH Whale Watch & Dolphin Cruise in Dominica" tour.

There was a lot of intermittent raining on that morning, but this rainbow we saw as we drove in our rented Honda Crossroad from Portsmouth to Roseau was one of the benefits of this.

We met the PH Whale Watch folks at the Ferry Terminal again so that they could let us in through the locked gate.

For a while, it looked like we were going to have a really wet boat ride as we watched another storm rolling in (we never did see the peaks in Roseau area without clouds around them at the top).

While waiting for the other couple who was scheduled to join us on the tour, we got to take some photographs of Roseau's waterfront.

While much of Roseau is chaotic, this part is quieter (when no cruise ship is in port) and is gorgeous with the clouded mountains in the background.

The Sanne can be seen in the lower right corner of this photograph.

The Sanne is in the center right of this photograph.

When the other couple (who was from Switzerland) arrived, we only needed to wait another couple of minutes for the storm to pass and then enjoyed a beautiful morning on the water.

One of the most pleasing aspects of this tour was the opportunity to see Dominica from the water and to go up and down its coast a bit.

Most of the boat ride was slow and peaceful, but there were some times where we moved quickly to try to find the whales. We got wet during some of these runs, but it was a nice warm day by then and we dried quickly.

It took a while and we had to move around quite a bit on the water, but the search paid off as we saw a mother whale and her calf swimming together near the end of the tour.

We really enjoyed the ride back to Roseau and watching Dominica and Roseau grow larger as we approached them from the water.

Although we only were able to see the mother and calf at the end of the tour, we were happy to have witnessed them for several minutes before they went under the surface again. We also enjoyed cruising around the water outside of Dominica and gazing at the beautiful shades of green and blue on the island partially covered by clouds.

Snorkeling at Champagne Reef

We knew we wanted to go to Dominica some day after seeing the island featured in the "Nature Island" episode of Ocean Treks with Jeff Corwin. Because Champagne Reef was featured in that episode, it's not surprising that it topped our list of places we wanted to see during our five nights in Dominica.

We arranged for the PH Whale Watch Dominica's "Champagne Reef, Bubble Beach and Scotts Head Snorkeling tour by boat in Dominica" tour because it included snorkeling at Champagne Reef along with a visit to Bubble Beach Spa and snorkeling at Scott's Head.

We drove to Roseau and met the crew from PH Whale Watch Dominica at the Ferry Terminal.

I had expected a busy ferry terminal, but it was quiet and the gate was locked until we arrived and the gate was only unlocked again when we left.

We were the only two passengers on the Senna (capacity of ten) with three crew members.

At first we saw a few streams of bubbles rising from the ocean floor and it was interesting to see.

But then our guide led us to where there were lots of streams and where some of the streams had really large bubbles and it was an amazing experience to swim among those rising bubbles.

It was difficult to leave the bubbling "champagne," but fortunately there were still some beautiful things to see during this snorkeling stop.

Snorkeling among the "champagne bubbles" in Dominica's Champagne Reef was as special as we'd thought it would be. The fact that we had this experience to ourselves made it even more incredible.