“You’re walking the Boiling Lake trail? Oh dear, oh my…” said our taxi driver, Margel Durand. It was becoming a familiar reaction among those told of my impending hike: the surprise, followed by a concerned shake of the head and then a faint, wry smile.
I thought about these telltale traits next day as I sat, catching my breath on an outcrop overlooking the world’s second largest boiling lake, in the Morne Trois Pitons National Park on the island of Dominica.
The sight of a vast cauldron of bubbling, grey-blue water, 200ft across and partly obscured by vapour, was my reward after a four-hour trek. (Things haven’t got any better: since I visited, the Dominican government has urged visitors to avoid the Boiling Lake due to a change in water level.)
Dominica is a beautiful island if you want the adventure rugged eco tourism type of holiday. I wnet to Dominica for the Creole Music Festival some years ago and on leaving was driven by a taxi driver back to Melville hall airport. He was a middle aged guy wearing a felt hat. He was the rudest, most insulting taxi driver and as a result I never and will never return to Dominica. Sorry but that taxi driver turned me off.
To qualify as an International Airport it only needs to be equipped with customs and immigration facilities to handle international flights to and from other nations. So the Douglas-Charles Airport IS an international airport.
To build what you think an International Airport should be, it would be easier to convert all the beaches in Dominica to white sand.
Nice one
It takes outsiders to expose the beauty of our nature island but not even then we will fully appreciate that the Good Lord meant it to be that way for a reason .
I have been to Grand Turk, and you an literally use a shovel and pick axe to build a runway. If Dominica had the same topography as Grand Turk, we would have had an international airport a long time ago.
This is a lovely article on Dominica and really made me proud to read. The author states though that “It (Dominica) has often been overlooked by tourists heading to the region, for two reasons: it has few white-sand beaches, and there is no international airport.”
I hope that sometime in the near future our government will finally see how imperative an international airport is and how much of an impact it can have on creating more industry for jobs for our people, and the fostering of economic development.
I’ve traveled all over the Caribbean and it really infuriates me when I see countries with much smaller populations & land mass, like Bonaire & Grand Turk, have an international airport, while we do not. I just don’t understand why we are not as deserving and really hope that its not a deliberate attempt by our government to keep us in the stone age and deter long term development that would actually allow our people more access to jobs and economic independence.
Dominica nice boy
All that glitters is not gold.