Dominica - Island Nature

Can ecotourism help preserve one of the world’s greenest—and most beautiful—countries? Bill Donahue reports from Dominica...

Flying down to the small Caribbean nation of Dominica, I see at once why the place markets itself as the Nature Island. Beneath me, the 4,000-foot mountains are verdant and craggy, the near-vertical slopes dotted with trees and crowned with mist. The plane circles, and I glimpse a few of the 365 rivers that flow through the rain forest that blankets two-thirds of the island. And then we start to drop, rapidly. The plane sweeps and cuts, kamikaze-style, through clouds and between looming rock faces—how else are you going to land on the Caribbean’s most mountainous island? We corkscrew madly, wings rattling, then we skid to a halt on a short runway, and I have arrived in what promises to be a natural paradise.

Courtesy of: Sun Beach Travel
Photo Courtesy of: Max Kim Bee