Dominica

Dominica rises so steeply from the Caribbean that its coast road clings to cliffs and most of the interior is rainforest. Rain wrung from the trade winds pours off its volcanic peaks in rivers and waterfalls such as Trafalgar Falls. In Morne Trois Pitons National Park a trail crosses the scorched Valley of Desolation to the Boiling Lake, a flooded fumarole seething under steam. Sperm whales feed off the west coast, and the Sisserou parrot, found here alone, is on the flag.

The Kalinago called the island Waitukubuli, ‘tall is her body’, and held it against settlers longer than almost anyone in the Caribbean. Columbus passed on a Sunday in November 1493, hence the name. French planters left names such as Soufrière, but Britain took the island in 1763, and maroons who had escaped slavery held out in the interior into the nineteenth century. A Kalinago reserve was set aside on the east coast in 1903. Independence came in November 1978, as a republic.

Dominicans speak a French-based Kwéyòl among themselves, and Creole Day each October brings out madras and the wob dwiyet, the national dress. Cadence-lypso and bouyon were born here. Jean Rhys, author of Wide Sargasso Sea, grew up in Roseau. Bananas shipped to Britain carried the economy for decades until trade preferences fell away; farmers also raise citrus and dasheen, distilleries extract oil from bay leaves, and hikers walk the Waitukubuli National Trail.