Dominica discovery guide

Dominica is the Caribbean without the beach. It is a volcanic island 47 kilometres long whose coastal plain is never wider than two kilometres, and whose interior is mountain rainforest cut by 365 rivers. Its tourism, in its own encyclopaedia's words, consists mostly of hiking in the rain forest and visiting cruise ships. The Boiling Lake is the world's second-largest hot lake and six hours' walk from the nearest road, and the Waitukubuli Trail runs 184 kilometres from the southern tip to the northern fort. Sperm whales live off the west coast all year, and the Kalinago, gone from every other island, keep eight villages on the Atlantic side.

The main travel issue

Hurricane Maria flattened the island in 2017, roads are narrow, steep and unlit outside Roseau, power cuts are routine, the airport is an hour from the capital, and the trails need a guide and a pass.

The solution

Come to walk, not to lie down, and give it a week rather than a cruise afternoon.

January–February -- the driest and coolest weeks, averaging 26 degrees by day, and the trail season; Carnival falls in the three days before Ash Wednesday, in February or March, when the Canadian advisory notes crime rises.

March–April -- still dry on the coast, the rivers lower and the Boiling Lake trail at its most walkable.

May–June -- warming toward the 32-degree June average; the hurricane season opens on 1 June; quieter and cheaper.

July–August -- hot, wet inland, and the height of the season in which the trade winds can build into hurricanes; David struck in August 1979, Erika in August 2015.

September–October -- the peak of the hurricane risk, Maria's month; the World Creole Music Festival in October.

November–December -- independence on 3 November after weeks of Creole celebration, the season closing at the end of November, and the trails drying out again.

If you travel slowly

Base in Roseau or the Roseau valley and walk the Morne Trois Pitons National Park a site at a time on a US$50 week pass: Trafalgar Falls, the Emerald Pool, the Freshwater and Boeri lakes, Middleham Falls, and the Boiling Lake with a guide from Laudat by way of Titou Gorge and the Valley of Desolation. Then move north to Portsmouth Ferry Dock for the Indian River, the Cabrits and the Syndicate parrot trail.

If you want to see the essentials

The Boiling Lake, the island's World Heritage park since 1997, the twin Trafalgar Falls, the Emerald Pool, the Indian River by rowing boat, Fort Shirley on the Cabrits, and the Kalinago Territory's Barana Auté village at Crayfish River.

If you seek local character

Kwéyòl at the market, Mas Dominik in the three days before Ash Wednesday, the World Creole Music Festival and the independence celebrations of late October and early November, cadence-lypso and bouyon on the radio, and the larouma baskets the Kalinago still weave.

If you want to go beyond the obvious

A segment of the Waitukubuli National Trail: segment 1 from Scotts Head, 6.6 kilometres and four hours through the sulphur crater to the Soufrière estate; the Soufrière Scotts Head Marine Reserve, where the Caribbean meets the Atlantic, for snorkelling; the Morne Diablotin National Park's Syndicate trail for the Sisserou and Jaco parrots; and the whales, resident year-round off the leeward coast.

Dominica is the Creole island that stayed one: English in law and school since Britain took it in 1763, French in its place-names, its saints and the Kwéyòl that most people speak, African in food, custom and the chanté mas of Carnival, and Kalinago in the one Territory in the eastern Caribbean where the first people still live on their own land. The encyclopaedia calls Mas Dominik the most original and least commercialised Carnival in the region; cadence-lypso, coined by Gordon Henderson's Exile One in 1973, and bouyon after it are the island's own music; and since 1997 the World Creole Music Festival has opened weeks of Creole expression before the independence celebrations of 3 November.

The history explains the temper. The French and English agreed in 1660 to leave the island to the Kalinago as neutral ground, then fought over it for a century; the slaves the French brought for coffee were freed in 1834, and by 1838 Dominica was the only British West Indian colony with a Black-controlled legislature; Eugenia Charles, elected in 1980, was the Caribbean's first female prime minister. The island has been knocked flat twice in living memory, by David in 1979 and Maria in 2017, and rebuilt.

Catholic by 61 per cent, literate in Jean Rhys and Phyllis Shand Allfrey, banana-growing by a third of its workforce, and proud of the name Nature Island, it is the least resort-like country in the region.

Dominica's protected areas are the point of the visit and they are paid for at the gate: since 1997 the Forestry, Wildlife and Parks Division has charged non-residents a site fee, now US$8 for one site, US$20 for a day pass to every site except the trail, and US$50 for a week, covering Morne Trois Pitons National Park's sites, the Cabrits, Morne Diablotin National Park and the Syndicate trail, the Indian River, Trafalgar Falls and the Soufrière sulphur springs. The Waitukubuli National Trail has its own pass, US$12 a day or US$40 for fifteen days, and asks hikers to register, to start by 9.30 in the morning, and to carry litter out where there are no bins.

The wildlife is fragile: perhaps 50 mature Sisserou parrots remain, the Lesser Antillean iguana's last major stronghold is here, and the Boiling Lake is a place where swimming is prohibited and steam explosions occur. Stay on marked trails, take a guide where the advisories say to, and do not touch the reef in the marine reserve.

Spend where the money stays: local guides, guesthouses in the villages, Kalinago crafts bought in the Territory, and the ferry rather than the cruise ship if the choice is yours.

What a day costs, by how you travel

Year-round relative cost index vs country average

Higher — Roseau and the Roseau valley from December to April, and cruise-ship days at the port

Average — the west coast villages, Portsmouth Ferry Dock and Prince Rupert Bay

Lower — the Atlantic coast and the Kalinago Territory, and anywhere from June to November

Park, trail and departure fees are the authorities' own; hotel, taxi, guide and boat prices are not stated because no readable authority page prints them, and the relative bands are editorial judgment.