Dominica (14th February - 24 th February 2009) by Ella

We sailed to Dominica, a very poor island. We stayed here for two weeks because we loved it so much. We would row to the beach every day in the morning for a little swim, the water was hot. It was great there too as there was a rope swing on the coconut tree and we could swim over the water, Jack fell in once!

In the afternoons we would normally have school , but sometimes we would take a tour like the Indian river. The Indian river water was murky because it had been raining so much, in Dominica they call the rain, sunshine liquid, the mud from the bottom of the river came to the top and made it murky. Sometimes the barracuda came and swam into the river from the sea to eat the baby fish. Occasionally we saw a splash or heard a bang because the baby fish were jumping to get away from the barracuda's sharp teeth. We saw many birds, two types of egret, snowy egrets and cattle egrets, they are called cattle egrets because they eat the cow's flies and they are not as white as the snowy ones. We also saw green herons, hummingbirds and parrots flying in the tree tops. I loved seeing the iguanas in the trees but they were very difficult to spot, they looked old and dinosaur like. The trees in the Indian river were old and twisted and on each side they nearly touched each other over the river making it look spooky in some places. The roots on these trees were special they were called buttress roots reaching out into the water and lots of crabs lived there.

In the evenings in Dominica we had lots of BBQ's, I loved eating the sausages, chicken and burgers. We would row back to Brimble in the dark, making sure we had a torch so we could see where we were going. If it was not too late we would play cards, we play a game called Rummy that Big Jack taught us in Spain, or if it was very late we would go straight to bed...

We were all sad to leave Dominica, but we did manage to stay for the first day of the Carnival and were happy about that too.