Atlantic Circuit,  Caribbean

Jungle sleepover in Dominica

March 5-8, 2021

When we were in quarantine and talked about what we wanted to do in Dominica we started talking about doing a jungle sleepover. We pitched the idea to Emma and Roger on Sanuti and Bram on Calypso and they were up for it as well. So every hike we went on we kept an eye open for a good potential camp spot. 

One day we walked another path of the Waitikubuli trail (think it was segment 10 or 11) to look for a good camping spot. That part of the trail hadn’t been cleared since the damaging hurricane Maria in 2017. We brought machete and tried to cut our way through masses of razor grass. Razor grass is a kind of grass that sticks onto your skin and leaves cuts. Horrible grass! After we had tried to walk through the path for a really long time we decided to head back, we were not going to find a good camping spot here anyway! But heading back was not an easy decision as we would have to walk back through the grass once more and get even more cuts!

Feeling really miserable and tired after fighting our way through the razor grass trying to find a good spot for a jungle sleepover on Dominica.
Cuts all over from the razor grass.
This is how razor grass looks!

The day after Thomas and Roger went on an excursion by themselves to give it another try to find a good camping spot. And the found a nice one, next to a river and quite close to Portsmouth so we wouldn’t have to walk so far to get to the spot.
The following day we met up to pick up some chickens we ordered and started to make our way to the camping spot we found.

Waiting for the chicken.
jungle sleepover dominica
Close to our camping spot was this worn down bridge…

But we had to walk over it anyway

jungle sleepover dominica
Once we got to our camping spot we started building our shelter, we built it only from stuff we found in the jungle; palm leafs, lianas and so on. No ropes or anything.
And prepared to start a fire.
jungle sleepover dominica
Fire almost started
We started as soon as we could with the chicken.
jungle sleepover dominica
Camp finished, we built a roof and then slept in hammocks with mosquito nets.
jungle sleepover dominica
We spent the evening around the fire, eating chicken and drinking rum! We watched the sun set and heard the jungle come to life as darkness came. Really cool to do a jungle sleepover here in Dominica, building our own shelter out of things we found in the nature (except the hammocks).

Doing a jungle sleepover on Dominica one night was a really cool experience! It was really cozy sitting by the fire during the evening and listen to all the sounds. We also saw some really cool phosphorescent lights in the ground close to the fire, quite an Avatar experience!

We woke up in the morning, made a simple breakfast and cleaned after us and headed back to our boats, just to leave them a few days later to stay in the mountains in southern Dominica for a couple of days. But more on that in next post.

 

Part 2 of our Dominica adventures can be found in the video below, where we explore different parts of Dominica, Red rocks, Trafalgar Fallas, we do a jungle sleepover, try canyoning, hike to boiling lake and visit natural spas in Wotten Waven. We speak mostly Swedish in the video, but English subtitles can be activated for all videos.

 

 

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