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Nature Island

June 3, 2013June 3, 2013by SymoneF1 Comment

The last time you heard me I was trying to get to Dominica. We arrived Saturday morning after missing our other two flights and having to purchase another ticket on Liat as we had a special fare and they couldn’t change it. We arrived at our hotel – Portsmouth Beach Hotel around 9.30am and had breakfast while we waited for ur rooms to be finished. We then took a nap and got ready for the wedding.

In short, the wedding was lovely! The ceremony was held in the town of Colihaut and the reception was held at Fort Shirley in Cabrits National Park. It really was a beautiful location, especially seeing it lit up at night as we drove towards it.

Sunday

Spent recovering from a massive hangover as I mixed wine and champagne and hardly ate during the day as I had a terrible upset stomach. There was a lot of rain, and it was a chill day as many were preparing to leave after being there for the whole week. That night, we headed to Massacre, very close to the capital Roseau. We stayed at a house with some friends and canceled our reservation at Fort Young Hotel.

Cabrits as viewed from Portsmouth Beach Hotel on a rainy day

Monday

I was woken up and told a taxi is picking us up and we’re going to the river. OK. We spent the afternoon at a river in Rosalie (I don’t know the name of the river) and I have to say, it was the best day of the trip. I overcame my fear of deep water to be baptized in this portion of a river. We were given a shot of rum then we had to hold on to a rope and pull ourselves across the river that had a strong current from the rains the night before. So much FUN!! Food was cooked there and there was a bar set up. Everything was a ready for a day at the river.

Used this rope to pull myself across to the other side :) — Used the rope to pull myself across to the other side 🙂 It’s very deep in the middle and the current was strong.

Tuesday

Was another chill day. We woke up late, and then headed down the hill to the shop to see what we could get for breakfast. I knew it was a bad idea to walk (there was a vehicle sitting in the garage that we could use) when after I lost the ability to control my speed going downhill 10 seconds out of the gate. It was a very steep hill. Coming back up was worse! It was like putting the treadmill on incline 15! I should say that Dominica is very mountainous. After that walk that left us panting and drenched in sweat, we decided to go downtown to put money on our phones and look for lunch. We had no maps, no GPS and no clue of where to go or how to get back home. Luckily we’d been to town once or twice with the groom so we had an idea but nothing significant to go by. While in town, we also grabbed a few souvenirs – mine was a shot glass as these are much easier to collect than mugs, as my cupboard has informed me.

Dominica shot glass

They don’t call Dominica the Nature Island for fun. They have 365 rivers – one for every day of the year. There is a reserved area for the Kalinago — or as most people know them to be, the Caribs. Whale watching can be done here, we didn’t go because we did that on our honeymoon in Maui. With the sulphur springs, many rivers and hiking trails, mountains and lush green lands, they’ve created a niche market in eco and nature tourism.

I will warn you of the potential of motion sickness while traveling around the country. The roads are built along the edges of the mountains, therefore there are a lot of sharp twists an turns and steep edges off of the roads. I couldn’t handle the sharp drops sometimes and I had to keep my eyes away from the window sometimes.

All in all it was a good trip.

Left: An iguana that greeted us on our first day at Breakfast.
Right top: view of Cabrits from the restaurant on the first day
Right bottom: Roseau on our last day.

I’m currently in Barbados enjoying family time until the festivities for the next wedding begin. I have so many pictures that I’m leaving it for another post. Hope you enjoyed this one.

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#2weddingsandaconference #travelchronicles

May 24, 2013May 24, 2013by SymoneF2 Comments

I was hoping to be sharing the first post of my vacation from Dominica. Instead I’m currently stuck in Miami after my flight from Seattle left at 2.50am when it was to leave at 9.50pm originally. What a ripple effect it’s caused! Therefore, I missed my connecting flight to Barbados and now have to overnight at home and book a new one way ticket to Dominica in the morning. Hopefully I won’t be rushing to the wedding that is to start at 3pm.

I was driving to pick up my husband from work yesterday when I received a call from American Airlines saying my flight was now departing at 10.30pm. I moved our pickup time down to 8 pm. At the gate, we learned that it’ll now be leaving at 11.15pm. Ok, no panic necessary, our connecting flight leaving Miami was to leave at 10.15am so we still had time.

No. We don’t have time. Nervous stomach sets in but is cut short by the sleep I’m fighting. The plane that we were to board for 11.15 has an engine problem and they’ll use the plane arriving at 12.15am. BUT we can put that thought to rest because this plane has a mechanical error and the agents are only rebooking people who have a connecting fight before 9.30am, and then they disappeared. But we were only given the announcement after 1am about the issues and now I know we’re not making it to Dominica tonight.

Considering all that went down at Christmas (we were stuck in Miami for a day and a half and left on Christmas Day because they gave up our seats even though they knew our flight was delayed) I just wanted a stress-free trip.

#2weddingsandaconference and #travelchronicles are two hash tags I’ll be using this trip on Instagram and Twitter. As you can tell, this trip is for two weddings that we have to attend and a conference, the location will be told closer to when I leave but I can tell you it’s not very close to the Caribbean or Seattle. There’s a lot more traveling to come so we’ll see of this is setting the tone or just one fuckup at the beginning.

Time will tell.

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I’m aging…

May 9, 2013by SymoneF4 Comments

If someone told you 5 years ago this is how your life is going to be, then asked you how are you going to handle it? Would your response be the same after those 5 years have passed? I’m happy to know and learn and grow and say I have more balls than I ever thought I would.

Maturity, when you look at it, is really about changing your response/reaction to situations as they happen the older you get. If you still act the same then obviously you have more growing to do. Bing has the following definitions if you don’t like mine:

Mature:

acting or seeming like adult: showing the mental, emotional, or physical characteristics associated with a fully developed adult person

experienced: showing qualities gained by development and experience

I’m in awe at my behaviour sometimes. Internally I’m a volcano but people don’t always see it because my head takes over my heart and what comes out surprises even me sometimes. Being able to be at peace and handle situations as they come is something I’ve grown to love about myself. If necessary I will still be a hot head but I am not rude. In my head I am! But it doesn’t come out.

Getting older, life gives you situations like this:

“Everyone is getting their Xbox, but your parent was late and you have to wait for the next shipment in a couple of months… you just sit and watch everyone get excited about theirs and play with it but and you can’t and won’t join them until you get yours.”

You’re 10 year old self will obviously throw a tantrum and sulk until the Xbox comes, but what would your 20 year old self do? If you’d still sulk, you’re an idiot. You should be out there finding ways to get one or hone your skills on a friends until you get yours. If you linger on it, my friend… you are a bitter person and you need to stop that now.

Life will always throw pissed filled snowballs at you. Get over it. Someone is always going through something worse. Count your blessings and work towards getting what you want ~~(legally)~~ with positive energy. The fact that you’re reading this says a lot. Someone would love a computer/phone/tablet/some electronic thing to be more “connected”.

There is nothing worse than looking back on a situation and saying you could’ve handled it differently and even worse is someone being stuck with the image of how poorly you responded to something. No Sir! We don’t want that! We want people to say that is a person who has their head on and is moving in the right direction and they want to be on your train to wherever you are going in life.

Wondering where I get these things from? LIFE! Ohhhh I could write a book… I like to think I’m an open book because I’ve realised how much I’ve grown even though I can’t share every single detail, I can, however, share how I’ve felt after the situation has passed and what I’ve learnt from it. I gave that analogy above to my husband today and he totally got it so I decided to write a post and share it. Everyone can relate to be a kid. If you can’t relate to having to wait for things, try doing it sometime and see what almost everyone goes through. And don’t take what you have for granted. Whether it’s a house, a partner, kids, a stove, shoes… someone out there would love to have it and not feel the stress of not having it.

Be thankful.