Ann's Blog
Laudat, Dominica:
March 25, 2010
The Boiling Lake – and a case of the midnight munchies
One of our guidebooks tells us that Roxy’s Mountain Lodge needs some serious TLC, but a little thing like that doesn’t dissuade us from making reservations. As the real estate agents say, what counts is location, location, location, and Roxy’s is at the gateway to Morne Trois Pitons National Park, a UNESCO World Heritage Site; the start of the trail to the Boiling Lake is a 10-minute walk from Roxy’s front door. Besides, the price is right.
The setting is glorious, we discover when we arrive just before dusk although, granted, the hotel itself is a work in progress. The rooms are simple, the carpentry is rough, the swimming pool is being re-excavated, and we drink the bar out of red wine at dinner. (It’s not that Pam and Ron and Steve and I are particularly heavy drinkers; the lodge only had one bottle in stock.)
But the charming manager has fixed us up with a well-regarded guide, Aaron, for our big hike the next day, and promises to give us leg massages when we return. And the stewed goat, prepared by the sister of our guide-to-be, is a big hit at dinner. (Choosing the right wine to accompany it is a no-brainer.) We order bag lunches, get our backpacks ready – stuffing in the Advil, just in case – and fall into bed early.
You’ve got to love an island where the big attractions carry names like “Valley of Desolation” and “Boiling Lake.” (There’s also nearby “Wotten Waven,” home to gurgling, sulfurous hot springs, which sounds like a place only Elmer Fudd could love.) Believe me, they live up to their names – and seeing them is well worth the six to eight hours of hiking required. In the Valley of Desolation, the earth steams and spits, and the streams run hot. (We meet another hiker on the trail, who tells us it took him a mere 5-minutes to hard-cook an egg that he placed over a hole where boiling water bubbles to the surface.) The stark landscape is raw and smoking, the earth showing its innards; the air is steamy, hot, and sulfurous; the rocks are shaded orange, copper, yellow, blue, gray, and green from the minerals in the water that passes over them. (Scant vegetation grows in the valley because of the harsh conditions.) Aaron warns us not to stray too far from his footsteps as he picks his way across the desolate, primeval valley: The earth’s crust is thin here, and scalding water burbles through, with the location of the “hot spots” changing from season to season.
Another 40 minutes of mostly uphill hiking brings us to the lip of the basin that holds the Boiling Lake. It’s not a volcanic crater, but a flooded fumarole, a volcanic vent through which gases escape. Heated by molten rock beneath the surface, the gases rise through a crack at the bottom and heat the water in the basin, which is fed by two streams. When the wind blows the clouds of steam away, we can see that it is indeed at a full rolling, roiling boil, like soup in a gigantic cauldron. (It’s about 200 feet wide and at least 195 feet deep, the second largest boiling lake in the world. The largest is near Rotorua, New Zealand.) We break for lunch – leaping up for a look every time the clouds of steam part – before reversing our steps homeward (with a particularly lovely rest stop before we re-cross the Valley of Desolation; see my April 10th post, “A Trip to the Spa”).
At the end of the trail is Titou Gorge, which is apparently swarmed by cruise-shippers during the day. But when we arrive at 4:30, it’s deserted. You enter the gorge from an ordinary-looking concrete pool that completely disguises the magic of the cave-like gorge itself. In the late afternoon, it’s pierced by shafts of sunlight, which illuminate sculptural rock walls as we swim up to the waterfall at its end. (Timid swimmers need not apply). Then we channel our inner pirates (a scene from Pirates of the Caribbean 2 was shot in Titou Gorge) and let the current flush us back out again. Whoop-out-loud fun.
Back at Roxy’s, we collapse on the terrace and immediately order the ice-cold beers we so richly deserve. They don’t arrive. It seems that the previous evening, the owner had put the last four beers in the freezer…and forgot to take them out. Beersicles. Ruined. He goes off in his pickup in search of more, and eventually returns – with warm beer. We settle for water and wine. White, of course.
The next morning, as we’re packing to leave the lodge, I go to Pam and Ron’s room to retrieve my insulated cooler bag (brought to carry cold drinks and snacks for car and trail. It has a hole chewed through at one end. The fruit cookies inside are nibbled. The wrapper on the chocolate bar has tooth marks. Ron confesses that he had seen a furry, long-tailed, ratlike critter skulking the perimeter of the room after lights-out the previous night – but decided to keep the sighting to himself. Sure, it could have been a rat; it’s much more likely, however, that it was a manicou –opossum – which thrive in the island’s mountains (and are hunted for their meat in season).
“This is one of the things of being in the rain forest,” the manager emails me afterwards, apologizing for the “incident with the wildlife.” No problem. We understand the midnight munchies. And the cooler bag is good as new. The miracle of duct tape.
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