Dominica: Possibly the best avocado daiquiri on the planet!
There are at least two problems with Armchair Travelling to Dominica. The first is that Google finds it really hard to distinguish it from the Dominican Republic and the second is its tiny size. To give you some sense of what I mean, 18.5% of the world lives in China — 0.00092% lives in Dominica — 72,000 people — making it a sixteenth of the size of Birmingham! It is so small that when they filmed Pirates of the Caribbean there, the crew took up 90 per cent of the roads. Still, this link to the Pirates franchise is one of their biggest claims to fame! Despite this, I did not dip my toe in that particular cinematic treat, preferring instead to watch the supremely low budget travels with Linda! I am not quite sure how Linda got the job of travelling the world trying cocktails, but I’d sure love to have that on my CV.
Talking of cocktails, I am sad to say that for the first time, I was unable to find a new rum to accompany my travels and so had to revert to finishing an old bottle to make this incredible national drink… the Avocado Daiquiri. I recommend without hesitation, I mean if you take out the sugar and the rum it’s pretty much a health drink!
Food was also fun as it gave me the opportunity to eat a tin of jackfruit I have had in the cupboard for years… I know the recipe is for Breadfruit salad, but I’m not sure I could tell the difference! it took about five minutes to make and was a welcome change from spending hours of my weekend stood at the stove!
There is one area though where Dominica is world-beating. Jean Rhys is a Dominican, and set her masterpiece Wide Sargasso Sea partly in Jamaica and partly in Dominica. It is known as a “postcolonial, feminist version of Jane Eyre” which is surely a description designed to excite any reader! It is the kind of book you read at university and end up comparing the collapse of Thornfield Hall to the Marxist ideas of the collapse of capitalism. Hmmm, perhaps that’s just me, I guess for most it is just a page-turning tale of the hell that is unleashed when power is so imbalanced. Capitalism and the patriarchy are such a bad idea that no-one benefits and joy remains constantly out of reach for the rich, for the poor, for the men, for the women, for the wildlife, for the planet. The undercurrent of disaster is so strong that trust dies, the reader can’t even put their faith in the narrators as they are as self-delusional as the present British government. Sorry, I seem to be getting distracted, so will just finish by saying that this is a stone-cold classic you should probably read.
And you should also listen to Jing Ping, an accordion heavy folk music that originated on the slave plantations. Wikipedia tells me that Jing Ping bands accompany a circle dance called The Flirtation which is the best name for a dance I have ever heard.
And that is it! Where to go next? Dominican Republic of course.
