“Can you use a chainsaw?” Annette Peyer Loerner asks as seven of us pile into two pick-up trucks in Salisbury, a small community on Dominica’s undulating west coast. Sadly, I can’t, but that’s no problem as in the back I spy a formidable arsenal of tools ready to be employed in what seems a Herculean task — restoring the overgrown, tree-blocked forest trails that were devastated when Hurricane Maria blasted this mountainous Caribbean island on 18 September 2017.
Cutlasses, saws, log picks, bush-cutters — I feel like a gladiator deciding what weapon to choose before entering the arena, only in this case our audience is thousands of trees stripped bare as toothpicks by 160mph winds. “Maria was a hard lash,” taxi-driver Irvin Tavernier had explained as he drove me from the airport to the clifftop Tamarind Tree Hotel where my voluntourism project is based. The 90-minute journey gave me ample time to contemplate the wild interior of this mighty volcanic island, which has peaks soaring to 4,747ft and an eerie Boiling Lake set inside the World Heritage-listed Morne Trois Pitons National Park. While other parts of the Caribbean go in for golden beaches, all-inclusive resorts and mega-cruise ships, Dominica — which lies between Guadeloupe and Martinique, just a half-hour flight south of Antigua — offers an invitingly different experience with its black sands, creole sounds, potent bush rums and 365 rivers.
Until Maria stormed in, this towering isle of just 73,000 citizens was steadily building its reputation as ‘The Nature Island’, firmly committed to ecotourism with excellent hiking, diving and whale watching. Now I’m shocked to find leafless forests, bridges snapped in half like broken biscuits and valleys scarred forever by terrifying landslides. On the coast, Maria chucked 40ft containers around like toys, boats flew into the hills and cars crumpled up into balls of metal.