Island Tour.

Would you rather get stung by a hundreds of baby jelly fish or have an allergic reaction to see weed?  Haha, one of the two of those options happened to me on Saturday. No big deal, it was somewhere between a tingle and a pin prick - so it wasn't that bad. Just felt really strange! At least it happened at the end of the day :-)
But the begining of the day was AWESOME! Some branch members and I + one really cool 7th Day Adventist who I met in Puerto Rico hired a van and driver to take us to some of the sights on the island. There are lots of little villages up and down the coast.  This is looking south:

This a different town but looking north.

A few years ago they had a HUGE landslide that plugged up AND changed the course of this river. Couldn't get a good picture of it but there's a completely dry riverbed about 50 yards north of where this is now running. Dominica now exports tons of rocks of various shapes and sizes as well as sand to other islands.  All of it comes from the debris from this one landslide.

The next stop was Emerald Pool. It is WAY up in the mountains. Along the way we passed lots of houses and farms - I thought people lived only on the coast but there were houses up there so I guess they live up there too. Anyway, Emerald Pool is located within a rain forest area so it's SUPER green and all the tree trunks look like this:

There's a 15 minute trail that leads from the road to the pool. It goes over a few bridges as it crosses the stream. Part of it is a segment of a hiking trail that stretches from the East to the West Coast. Apparently you can backpack the whole thing in about a week. Maybe during one of my breaks between semesters?? Anybody want to join me?

Then the stream drops of into this bowl

You can jumps off the rocks between the tree trunk and the waterfall into the pool. The water was nice and cool.

Lori and her cute kids. They were such troopers! It was a long day for these little guys.

After emerald pool it was back down to the coast on an EXTREMELY windy road. Luckily they had just repaved it so we didn't have to worry about potholes. I don't get carsick, but this road got to me a little bit. Haha! It brought us right down to Roseau - pronounced Rose-oh - which is the capital of the island. Just passed the city we stopped at Champagne Beach - which is where I had my jellyfish/seeweed encounter. The beach wasn't much to look at, not even sandy! It was all just rocks, but in the water it was pretty cool.  Lots of little fish and see urchins hiding in the rocks. The Noorlanders brought along some snorkeling gear so we all had a go at it.

One last shot at Champagne Beach then we headed home.

And this was the sunset waiting on my front porch when we got there. 

Incredible!