What a fantastic itinerary! If you lose track of where we are as you go through these extensive trek pages, come back to this page for orientation. (I'll provide a link at the bottom of each page or you can click Part 2.)

Our first stop was Dominica, a poor, but beautiful island in the southern Carribbean. We docked at a commercial warf about a mile from town, took a bus to town, and walked up to the botanical garden. 

The botanical garden...

It was several degrees cooler in the giant bamboo shelter. >>

The native parrots were in cages, unfortunately.

Just past the parrots we saw the sign to Jack's walk--just 35 steps we thought.

 Below is a panorama from left to right from the top of the ridge...

 
The Amsterdam is the ship to the far right. Instead of backtracking down the trail, we continued along the ridge and headed down a narrow roadway.

 
Some of the buildings were well-cared for like the free library (above right)...

 
but some those that were not in good shape were cleverly used like this Ruins Rock Cafe. 

Fort Young has been refurbished and repurposed and is now an elegant hotel.

We walked along the waterfront back to the ship, joined the sail away party, and watched the sunset.

The next day was Barbados.

<<  Dominca has only a few sand beaches--most are covered with beautifully rounded rocks.

We'd heard that there was an informal groups of divers on board, but none of the people at any of the desks would tell us how to contact them. Fortunately, while we were waiting for the gangplank to open, someone spotted us with our fins and stuff and we were able to hook up with the group--10 divers and one snorkler on this day. 

The second dive was along a low coral ridge, which was about a five minute boat ride away. Not the best diving scenery we've seen, but still it was nice to be out on the water.

Our first dive was not far from the shore, but surprisingly there were 3 wrecks all located in a group where soft corals, sponges and fish congregated.

We did not take many island photos, but it was much like Antigua or the islands we visted last January.

When we returned to the Amsterdam, there was a small steel drum band to greet us and free, but slow, wi-fi in the terminal, so I checked my millions of emails and Facebook messages and called it a day.

Both of us felt our activities for these two days in our calf muscles.  Time to stretch our legs at the sail away party.

Two days at sea until we reach Belem (Portuguese for Bethlehem), Brazil.

Dean's Ship Log Days 1-5