This is my first TR on DD, hope you enjoy!
(I like to visit places that are off the beaten path and require lots of hiking to reach the good views. This vacation was a little different from my usual itinerary as we really wanted to chill on the resort and enjoy the quiet as much as possible)
Dominica is one of those Caribbean islands that doesn't have so much information online. I'll start with some key info for our trip such as flights, hotel, and food.
It is a 3rd world country and has multiple
active volcanos on the island, this volcanic activity can be seen at the valley of desolation, the boiling lake, the Sulphur hot springs and champagne reef.
Food:Dominica customs and immigration were very chilled. We brought all of our food precooked and frozen (bread, sour dough, chicken, grape juice, kugel, milk, yogurts etc...) in a cooler. You can probably bring in raw meat and chicken if you want and not declare it. We declared our food and they didn't open our bags. You will not find kosher food on the island and there's no Chabad house.
Flights:We booked flights through united miles, 20k + $45 each way. The flight was EWR - SJU - DOM. The last leg was with silver airways and wasn't a great experience.
Hotels:We booked our stay with 298k IHG points for 5 nights at the Intercontinental Hotel Resort and Spa with a ocean view premium room. 175k pts were earned from the IHG Chase card signup bonus.
Taxis:Our taxis were booked through the Intercontinental to the hotel and on the way out we used a local taxi driver.
Phone service:We used Verizon travel pass while we were traveling on the island
Guides:DG Tours = Whatsapp +1 (767) 317-7238 [Cash or PayPal
only]
Extreme Dominica = Whatsapp +1 (767) 285-9136 [Cash or CC]
Local Taxi Driver:Whatsapp +1 (767) 315-5848 [Cash only]
Trip Details:ThursdayWe took this trip with our 1 1/2 yr old baby who is a handful at times. Luckily we had the foresight to book him a seat on all flights so we can sit him in his car seat. Our first flight was from EWR to SJU on Thursday, Jan 30th at 8am. Our flight took off on time and managed to land 40 minutes early. As we got off the jet bridge, Silver Airways emailed informing us that due to a mechanical issue our flight was rescheduled to take off Friday morning at 6am instead 3pm on Thursday. This was problematic since all of our food for the trip was frozen in a tightly packed cooler and we had no idea how long it would stay frozen for. Another issue was the fact that we would have to wake our baby up at 3:30am for the second day in a row. We exited the airport with our checked bags and scrambled to find a reasonable hotel for the night is San Juan that was also near the airport. We ended up at a newly renovated Hilton 20 min away from the airport. The rest of the day was spent on a beach near the hotel and we got an early night.
FridayWe woke up Friday morning at 3:30 am to get to SJU with enough time to check our bags. We were told that the security lines can get crazy early in the morning. We arrived at SJU around 4am and no one was available to recheck our bags for 45 minutes. At 4:45 an agent arrived and checked our bags in and we made it to the gate with a few min to spare until boarding. This leg of the trip was on a small plane that required us to board by walking on the tarmac. Our flight took off on time and we were finally on our way to Dominica.
The approach to Dominica is beautiful. Your plane approaches the island and weaves through a valley until you reach the runway. The airport is tiny with only 1 runway that acts as the runway, gate, and taxiway. Customs was a breeze since we filed our immigration form the previous night online.
Dominica is a 3rd world country with most of its citizens living below the poverty level. So as you can imagine, the roads aren't really roads. They are potholes with some smooth stretches of road with lots of tight corners and they drive on the left side of the road. There are also no stop signs or traffic lights and possibly no speed limits. Due to that we decided not to rent a car and take taxis and tour guides the whole trip.
Our driver picked us up and took us on an hour drive to the west coast where our Resort was located.
The resort is incredible. First the place is deserted of guests. I could only count a handful of other guests that were staying while we were there. The pool and outdoor areas are empty. The cabanas are also empty, and so were the beach front chairs. Hotel grounds were stunning and staff was very helpful. If you look around the property you will find multiple starfruit trees that lucky for us happened to have a bunch of ripe starfruit so we picked a few and snacked on them. Since it was erev Shabbos we spent the day chilling on the resort, enjoying the views and preparing the room. Our food was kept in a cooler for Shabbos since the fridge had a light that would only turn off if the door came in contact with a strong magnet which I failed to bring. We kept our food hot over Shabbos not by using a hot logic (sorry dan
), we opted to use a foldable hotplate from amazon with a timer and child lock feature. It was able to run on the 240w electric and kept our food nice and hot. I thought we would be the only Jewish family on the resort but that wasn't the case. We met another family that was staying with there kids for Shabbos so we ended up eating together Shabbos night. As far as an eruv, the hotel is fully connected by stairways and walkways that allow you to move around most of the property without having to worry about eruv.
Shabbos was very nice, weather was sunny with some rain showers here and there. The island is a rainforest so thats to be expected.
Sunday Sunday morning we took a private tour with Extreme Dominica to Trafalgar Falls, a beautiful twin waterfall that is accessible by a short walk. We then drove to Freshwater lake with hopes of getting amazing views and hiking a bit but the lake was in the clouds so we skipped and drove to Emerald pool and Jacko falls. The drives are very scenic and will show you most of the island. We would have liked to hike to boiling lake, the second largest boiling lake in the world and the valley of desolation but the Carbon Dioxide levels were unsafe for the baby. We ended off the day back at our resort with time to sit and enjoy sunset.
MondayMonday morning started out with a bunch of rain showers so we rescheduled our private boat tour for the afternoon hoping it would clear up. This part was booked with DG Tours. They picked us up on the boat from the dock located on the resort and gave us a tour of the whole west coast with stops and champagne reef, another snorkel spot, scotts head and secret bay. This took about 5hrs and offered incredible views of the island from the water.
TuesdayTuesday morning we woke up at 6am to catch our 8am silver airways flight to EWR with a stopover in SJU. The airport is TINY and a bit backwards. You enter one building to check in and they hand you a handwritten boarding pass. Then you exit and go through a closet which has a luggage scanner and metal detector. Immediately after that are chairs and you are at your gate. Our flight left on time annd landed a little early. Unfortunately for us, our connecting united plane was experiencing issues in EWR and delayed our flight from SJU to EWR by 2 hrs.
Final thoughtsThe island is incredibly beautiful. It definitely is underdeveloped and they aren't taking full advantage of what they have. There are no official views points, they forget how beautiful the coastline is and focus entirely on the waterfalls which are nice but can get a little repetitive. I also assume since the snorkel guides touch everything they prob have slowly killed off most of the coral reefs. The reefs were nice but we have better reefs in the US since they are protected. If we were to do this again, we would try to do some of the rappelling, boiling lake (they are in middle of building a gondola to it which will be completed at the end of 2025) Red Rocks, and the east coast on the Atlantic side. I would also want to see the sperm whales which live off the coast of the island year round.
If you have any questions, feel free to ask me.
If you liked this TR, lmk and I'll work on posting 2 more, Banff and Oahu/Maui which both have some crazy hikes such as the big bee hive and 3 peaks.
