Dominica: The Nature Isle That Chose the Forest Over the Beach
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Dominica is the only Caribbean island without a white sand beach and the only one that made that absence into a marketing proposition. The Nature Isle of the Caribbean has instead the most intact tropical rainforest in the Eastern Caribbean, the world's second largest boiling lake, approximately 365 rivers, nine active volcanoes, and the Kalinago Territory — the last remaining indigenous Caribbean community, the Kalinago people whose ancestors inhabited the islands before European contact.
The Boiling Lake is a flooded fumarole in the Morne Trois Pitons National Park — a UNESCO World Heritage site — where water heated by volcanic activity reaches near-boiling temperatures and perpetually bubbles and steams. Reaching it requires a strenuous six-hour round-trip hike through rainforest. The trail passes the Valley of Desolation — a landscape of sulphur vents, coloured hot springs, and fumaroles that looks like a terrestrial version of something from the deep sea. The hike is serious. The destination is unlike anything else in the Caribbean.
The Kalinago people maintained their communities in Dominica because the island's mountainous interior made European agricultural colonisation more difficult than on flatter islands. Today approximately 3,000 Kalinago live in the Territory on the island's northeast coast, maintaining traditions of canoe building, basket weaving, and plant medicine that connect them to the pre-Columbian Caribbean. The territory is self-governing within Dominica's national framework.
