Toucarie Bay

Toucarie is a really small village, more or less one road along the beautiful Toucarie Bay, about fifteen minutes north of Portsmouth and Cabrits. If it wasn’t because we have friends living in the village, I am not sure we would have discovered it. That would would definitely have been a pity.

The small bay is normally really calm, calmer than most other beaches on the island. It is excellent for swimming, the water some of the warmest I have experienced on the island, and a lot of fun for both adults and children. Once our one and a half year old has got his arm floaters on and he is in, it is hardly impossible to get him out of the water. So we take turns. One of us keeps an eye of the little one, while the goes off with the snorkel. Because snorkeling and diving, is even better. All along the left side there is plenty of fish and coral, as well as straight out, although that might be harder to find on one’s own. But, any of the locals hanging out on or around the beach, most probably in any of the little snackettes, will be able to help pointing out the best places. However, don’t ever try to put your foot down while snorkeling, as there are plenty of beautiful but ay so stingy sea urchins, with ten to twenty centimeter long and extremely sharp black spines. If you accidentally touch them, once they are in they are hardly impossible to take out. You will just have to stand the pain for some time. A local advice given to us was to put the foot over a candle, the heat will melt the spines, we were explained. We never understood what would happen to the flesh around the wound, maybe to the entire foot, though, and never tried. Needles and tweezers wont do it either, though, so, just keep swimming.

For some great underwater photos and videos from Toucarie Bay, and other dive sites around Dominica, take some time to look at LiquidGuru’s really nice pictures.

Toucarie is a great place for an afternoon of hanging out in a small village, and the beach is definitely still worth a visit. But, as so often, everything is not perfect. Beach erosion is a serious problem, and the habit of taking sand from the island’s few beaches for construction and other work does not make it better. There is rarely a day we visit when we don’t see people coming down to the beach with shovels and empty sandbags, filling up as many as possible. Hurricanes and tropical storms are other factors that continuously threatens Dominica’s beaches. From 1990 to 1999 the number of hurricane days and the number of category 3, 4 and 5 hurricanes quadrupled. Little can be done, at least locally, to prevent the rising number of hurricanes. But this, in combination with local practices, have resulted in the Toucarie Bay beach loosing 30% of its extension during the last twenty years. Unesco has more information on beach erosion.

How to dive there: The Cabrits diveshop in Portsmouth, located just after the huge Ross University building, can arrange dive tours to Toucarie, as probably most other dive shops in the area or around the island. See http://www.cabritsdive.com/

How to get there: From Portsmouth it is not more than ten or fifteen minutes. You pass the town, the Prince Ruperts Bay and head towards Cabrits. In the first real junction you make a right and continue on that road until you reach the forest and another junction. Turning right will take you to the small village of Guillet, turning right will take you to the Toucarie Bay. First you have to go up and then down again, passing through some beautiful but sharp curves on the way down. But as it is completely impossible to go anything other than very slow, and the habit of beeping loudly when approaching a curve is almost obligatory, there is really no danger.