If You Build It, Will They Hike?

You can now discover the other Caribbean on Dominica's new long trial. But should you?

- Kelly Bastone

The rumble coming from somewhere off in the rainforest should cue me to trouble. I’m hiking toward 275-foot Middleham Falls, the tallest cascade on the Caribbean island of Dominica, and I expect to see what I’d previewed in photos: A gauzy, decorative ribbon trickling into the kind of pool where tropical maidens in shampoo commercials lather their hair. I’d imagined taking a dip myself, if only to wash away the grime of my third day on the Waitukubuli National Trail (WNT), a new 115-mile path that runs the length of the island and links hot springs, rainforests, cliff-rimmed beaches, and waterfalls. But recent rains have turned the normally tame Middleham into a neck-snapping fire hose.

Bullets of mist sting my eyes when I try to lo ok into the white cloud swirling before me. My companions—two Dominicans serving as unofficial guides, plus a photographer— ham it up with a few “storm-pummeled newsman” routines, then we all start hiking back along the spur trail toward the WNT. Only now, there’s a brand-new waterfall raging across our route.

“We’re cut off!” shouts Michael Eugene, the WNT’s bespectacled guidebook author who talks like a scholar but hikes like an Ironman (he’s personally walked every mile of trail in his native land). He’s visibly rattled, and I make a conscious effort to slow my breathing as I realize our situation could turn dire: With a Niagara right behind us and its mini-me ahead, what’s to say they won’t merge into an even bigger flood pouring down where we now stand? We need to get out of here, pronto.