Dominica Highlights
Diving
Dominica has been described as "the undisputed diving capital of the Eastern Caribbean". Features include steep 300-metre drop-offs, hot springs, pinnacles, walls, caves and wrecks, along with abundant marine life.
Whale-watching
Dominica is one of the best whale-watching sites in the world. Mainly resident sperm whales but also humpback, pilot, false killer, pygmy sperm, dwarf sperm, orca, melon-headed, and rare beaked whales are to be found in these waters, along with many varieties of dolphin. Observation trips are organised by dive shops and the best time to see whales is January to June, peaking in March.
Morne Trois Pitons National Park
This magnificent park - a UNESCO World Heritage Site - covers 6,800 hectares of the southern central part of the island. The track plunges and rises, crosses streams and climbs up to narrow ridges opening up into a lunar landscape of steaming vents and geysers, hot pools of boiling mud and mineral streams streaked with blue, orange, black and yellow.
Boiling Lake
Boiling Lake, the world's second-largest cauldron of bubbling hot water (66 metres wide), lies in the heart of the Morne Trois Pitons National Park. This geological phenomenon is, in fact, a flooded fumarole, from where hot gases escape through vents in the earth's molten crust.
Emerald Pool
On the northeastern edge of Morne Trois Pitons National Park, in the heart of lush rainforest, this pool at the foot of a 15-metre waterfall is a lovely site for picnicking and swimming, although it can become very crowded.
Trafalgar Falls
There are many spectacular waterfalls around the island but the twin Trafalgar Falls on the southeastern edge of Morne Trois Pitons National Park are some of the most easily accessed and one of Dominica's favourite spots.
Cabrits National Park
A dry tropical forest of the Caribbean coast, the spectacular headland of the Cabrits National Park, 40 km north of Roseau and close to the second town of Portsmouth, is covered with bay, mahogany, sandbox, white cedar and logwood.
Carib settlement
Today, the surviving Caribs live along the northeastern seaboard (take the road east from Portsmouth to Pagua Bay) in coconut and banana country edging the wild Atlantic. The area is not in itself distinctive but you will see houses built on stilts, and stalls on the roadside display the unique basketwork of the Caribs (finely woven in three colours from forest reed), the lingering legacy of an ancient culture.
Roseau
Dominica's capital is a bustling little town with a small, 18th-century French quarter, surrounded by 19th-century streets. There are splendid Botanical Gardens that make the perfect setting for a cricket ground and there is an aviary for Dominica's endangered Sisserou and Jaco parrots.
Every Saturday - from before first light until mid-morning - Roseau hosts market day. Beside the mouth of the Roseau River with its backdrop of mountain and forest, the bounty of the land is laid out.
L'Escalier Tête-Chien
"The snake's staircase" in the Carib territory on the east coast is a rock formation that looks like a stone serpent slithering up out of the ocean. It features extensively in Carib folklore.
Indian River
Close to the Cabrits National Park headland are the wetlands around the Indian River, just south of Prince Rupert Bay. It was into this bay in the northwest of the island that Columbus sailed on 3 November 1493, the day he first sighted Dominica. Boat trips take visitors up the haunting grey-green waterway, along the same route taken by the European explorers to greet Carib chiefs