Caribbean Adventures Aboard Kalalau: Tour of Dominica & Sari Sari Waterfall Hike

Tour of the East Coast & Sari Sari Waterfall

Wednesday, February 6

We woke up early and met up with our guide, Ken, for a tour of the east coast of the island. He drove us around in his tour van, stopping at various view points and providing details on each of the towns we passed. The east coast of Dominica has some great reefs, and interesting rocky cliffs and rock formations, but there aren't any bays suitable for anchoring.

Northeast Coast of Dominica

Hell's Gate (Rock Formation) and Calibishe

Pit stop for some coconut water and fruit

A large section of the east coat is part of the Carib Indian territory. The Caribs that live on the reservation today are farmers and craftsmen. They have roadside craft markets where you can buy handmade baskets, jewelry masks, carvings, and other souvenirs that they've made out of palms, coconuts, bamboo, and other local plants. The Caribs harvest a crop called Cassava which is a root that they grind into flour and use to make bread. We stopped at one of the bakeries in the territory and bought some of the cassava bread.

Cassava Bakery

This is where the Carib Indians grind the root into flour

Bagged flour ready to be sold at the open market

As we continued our tour, we stopped at various spots along the road where Ken pointed out coffee and cocoa trees, guava, bread fruit, cinnamon trees, bay trees, pineapple farms, and other local crops. Banana trees are the most prevalent – after tourism, export of bananas is the second largest industry in Dominica. There are 7 different types of bananas that grow in Dominica, two of which are vegetables.

Coffee bean tree

Coca tree (Ken's climbing up the branches to get us a pod)

Commercial banana trees

(Bananas are wrapped in blue plastic to protect from insects)

Poinsettia tree

Guava tree (Ken's climbing again to get the fruit)

Pineapple farm

We stopped for lunch at a beautiful restaurant that overlooked the coast. While we were there, we met another couple that was traveling in Dominica, specifically there to do some bird watching. It turns out that they were from Atlanta, and their children are around the same age as us - their son also graduated from Georgia Tech, a few years before us. We enjoyed swapping stories with them about our travels.

View from our table looking out over the east coast

One of the many rivers on Dominica (365 total rivers)

After lunch, we continued the tour to the start of a hiking trail that leads to the Sari Sari waterfall. We were ready to get out of the van and do some hiking. The hike along the 2-mile trail was a beautiful hike through the lush rainforest. There were a couple of river crossings and many passages along mountain sides, with thin parts of trail cut into the sides of a mountain that dropped straight down. We finally arrived at a sign pointing towards the waterfall. When we turned the corner, the sight was spectacular! We were surrounded by the mist from the falls even a couple hundred yards away from the base pool. Sari Sari is the second tallest waterfall in Dominica after Trafalgar Falls, and it really is breath-taking. We climbed our way over the boulders and through some treacherous mini-falls passages, and we arrived at the base pool of the waterfall where we were able to swim around the pool and under the falls. After a while we headed back to the trail, hiked back to the van, and enjoyed the ride through the rainforest roads back to the dock.

Start of the trail