Mennear Madness Meets Dominica: Day 3

Day 3 on Dominica was awesome. An experience as always, but we had a lot of fun.

FRIDAY, MAY 9, 2008
Friday morning we packed a lunch and headed up to Cabrits National Park where Fort Shirley is. Fort Shirley has a lot of history behind it involving both the British and the French (along with the obvious, Dominica). It was really interesting to learn more about it and at the end of the week, I think it was still one of my Dad's favorite places. There are Fort Ruins as well as a Replica and it was fun to go and explore. We hiked to one of the peaks where we found an original canon facing towards Douglas Bay still. It was fun to hike up a mountain with (part of) my family again, it reminded me of when we were little and we'd hike up the mountain behind our house. We had a picnic in the park and then met up with Keith (who had registration that morning) to go up Indian River. We had a boat guide all lined up, but we had no idea what we were getting ourselves into by hiring him! The river was really cool though and part of Pirates Of the Caribbean was filmed both on the river and the banks of it. Since outboards are not allowed on the river, our guide rowed the whole way! Actually, scratch that. My Dad wanted to give it a try, of course! He wanted Keith to row one ore while he did the other, but Keith was on the opposite end of the boat, so he did it by himself (with help from Randolph, our guide). Constant "Chuck Moments" kept us laughing. It was a great day and we ended it with dinner at a restaurant on the beach. It's one of Keith and I's favorite places to eat here, but not just because of the view.
Here's my Mom and Dad, learning more about Fort Shirley and Dominica.

This is the canon at the top of the hill we hiked up. It was so cool to see that some things were still in place. History is amazing!

Mom, Whitty, and Dad. This picture was at the lower battery on the Prince Rupert Bay side. This is one of my favorite views. 17 of the original 35 canons are still sitting on the grounds of Cabrits.Here's my Mom and Dad at some of the Fort Shirley Ruins. The trees were overtaking the buildings, it was amazing.
This was as we were about to leave. Looking through the arch way you could see some of the dock, the water, and a couple of palms. It was beautiful! I stuck these two beaut's in the picture to make it even better! :)

From Cabrits, it was on to Indian River!
Keith, my blue-eyed babe, turning around for a picture
These are Mangrove Trees. They are "narley" as my Dad would say. They line Indian River and their roots grow everywhere! It was pretty wild.

This is one of the signs from Pirates of the Caribbean 2. We also saw the spot where Calypso's house sat. (when Jack and the group are rowing up a river to visit Calypso, it's the Indian River! *watch for the mangrove tree's in the movie)

Now, here we have a real Gem. This was our tour guide Randolph. He was about as crazy as ever and told quite the number of "hard-to-believe" stories. He started almost every sentence with "I will tell ya somethin' mon...." By the end of the tour, I will tell ya somethin' mon, we were ready to be done hearing that phrase! (get a load---he only comes up to my shoulder!) He reminded everyone of a pirate.

We enjoyed the boat ride though, and I had never done anything like that in Dominica, so it was a great thing to experience new with my Fam!