Roseau, Dominica

Today's port of call on our cruise was Roseau, Dominica. This is on the southwest side of the island. (See the map below)

As we got closer to Dominica, a rain storm was just passing through. The views were amazing!

As we pulled into port at Dominica, we were really impressed with all of the bright colors. There was a long pier to go from the cruise ship to the port at Roseau.

As we got off the boat and looked back, the blue skies and massive cruise ship were an awesome sight.

As we got toward the end of the pier, we took a picture in front of the “Welcome to Dominica” sign. I didn’t realize I was blocking the sign. lol

As we got to the shopping area, we saw that they had a trolly train to take you around the island.

We didn’t have an excursion planned for the day, but we had planned on visiting a beach just north of the port. It was in walking distance, so we decided to walk. The island was still trying to recover from a bad hurricane and a lot of the buildings were still damaged.

We walked across a bridge that the railing was still missing from the hurricane. We also saw a naked man bathing in the river. The poverty was really bad. As we walked through a residential area, we didn’t get a smile from anyone. We didn’t feel safe there. We didn’t get that vibe on any other island we visited on our cruise. We stuck with a group of other tourists for safety.

We got to the beach and were really disappointed. The beach was littered with garbage and broken bottles. We decided we didn’t want to hang out there so we started heading back to our cruise ship.

On our walk back, we had a really aggressive taxi driver try to sell us on an $80 trip to another beach. We told him no, but he would drive forward a block and try to sell us again. We finally got back to our cruise ship and decided to spend the rest of the day on the ship.

We talked to a lot of people who booked excursions on Dominica and loved it. This was a good lesson for us. If you’re going to Dominica, you need to book an excursion to get to the better parts of the island. Next time we go, we want to go to the black sand beach of Rosalie Beach, which is on the other side of the island. We also heard that Champagne Reef was amazing for snorkeling. Since we had booked excursions on other islands, we didn’t have the money to do another excursion and were hoping to find a nice beach by the port. 

Roseau, Dominica:

(Click on the map above to go to a Google Maps larger view.)

Our visit to Dominica was the cheapest since we didn’t book an excursion or take a taxi.

Total Cost: $0

Although we didn’t spend any money, I wish we had planned better and spent money on a taxi to go to Rosalie Beach or Champagne Reef. The taxi driver that tried to sell us quoted us $40 for two people each way. ($80 total)

These are the things that I recommend you bring:

• Plenty of cash to cover taxi’s and food.
• Extra cash for souvenirs and beach chair rentals
• Sunscreen
• Towels
• Your own mask, snorkel, and fins

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