Dominica was the last of the Caribbean islands to be colonized by Europeans, due chiefly to the fierce resistance of the native Caribs. France ceded possession to Great Britain in 1763, which made the island a colony in 1805. In 1980, two years after independence, Dominica's fortunes improved when a corrupt and tyrannical administration was replaced by that of Mary Eugenia CHARLES, the first female prime minister in the Caribbean, who remained in office for 15 years. Some 3,000 Carib Indians still living on Dominica are the only pre-Columbian population remaining in the eastern Caribbean. Known as "The Nature Island of the Caribbean" due to its spectacular, lush, and varied flora and fauna, which are protected by an extensive natural park system; the most mountainous of the Lesser Antilles, its volcanic peaks are cones of lava craters and include Boiling Lake, the second-largest, thermally active lake in the world.

My friend Derek van Bever and I visited Dominica in 1993, staying at Castle Comfort Dive Lodge and diving with their operation Dive Dominica. Castle Comfort's accomodations were pretty spartan and they were very stingy with food. The main dish served was "Mountain Chicken", which we ate all week, finding out only near the end of the trip that is was actually frog! It wasn't bad, though. Castle Comfort is quite near a major road, which was noisy enough, and the constant celebration of Dominica's independence day late into every night of our stay resulted in us not getting much sleep on this trip.

Dominica has very good diving, the best for strange critters of anywhere I've been in the Caribbean. Animals that are extremely rare eleswhere are almost common here: flying gurnards, batfish (the little moth-like ones, not the pinatus bats of the Pacific), big nudibranchs (sea hares), frogfish, soapfish, electric rays, box crabs, and much more. Dive Dominica was excellent, most of our dives were just Derek, myself, and Derek the divemaster, who I believe also owned or at least ran the operation. He was very knowleadgable about the local reefs and a laid-back divemaster. The shore diving in front of Castle Comfort was excellent.

Derek and I tried out a "DiveLink" underwater communication rig I'd just purchased. It was difficult to be understood through the thing, and generally an intrusion into the otherwise quiet and solitary world of the diver. I eventually sold it on ebay after trying it a few more times.

Here are my dive log entries for the trip: