#153 - Kayaking Dominica's Waitukubuli Sea Trail with Wes Moses

0:01 Welcome to Paddling the Blue. With each episode, we talk with guests from the Great Lakes and around the globe who are doing cool things related to sea kayaking. I'm your host, my name is John Chase, and let's get started paddling the blue. Welcome to today's episode of the Paddling the Blue podcast. Wes Moses operates the Soufrère Outdoor Center in Dominica. Wes joins the show today to talk about the Waitukabule Sea Trail and the island of Dominica. And if you're interested in paddling a Caribbean blue sea with warm water, rugged mountains spilling to the coast, sea arches, and unique foods, this might be the place for you. Before we get to today's conversation with Wes, James Stevenson and Simon Osborne at OnlineSeaKhiking.com continue to produce great content to help you evolve as a paddler and as a coach.

0:47 You'll find everything from basic strokes and safety to paddling in tides, surfing, coaching, documentaries, expedition skills and incident management, and more. And if you're not already a subscriber to OnlineSeaKyaking.com, here is your opportunity to get started. Visit OnlineSeaKyaking.com, use the coupon code PTBPODCAST to check out, and you'll get 10% off just for being a member of the Paddling the Blue community. And for those of us who also enjoy paddling whitewater boats, their newest offering is OnlineWhitewater.com, and they're offering the same discount to listeners. So check out OnlineWhitewater.com, use the coupon code PTBPODCAST to check out and explore. And in previous episodes, I've shared a trip that I'm leading to Alaska's Prince William Sound in July of 2026.

1:30 Well, I wanted to let you know that that trip is full. So thank you for the interest and congratulations to those of you who will be enjoying this fantastic small group experience in Alaska. Enjoy today's interview with Wes Moses. Hi, Wes. Welcome to Peddling the Blue. Thanks, John. It's great to be here with you. Yeah, I appreciate the opportunity. We were introduced by a friend in the industry, Caleb and Nolan from Track Kayaks. That's right. They're good partners of mine over there in Vancouver. I was out, I saw them last year. That's cool. Their owner's gathering. Yeah, so Vancouver's a long way from Dominica, where you're located. So tell us a little bit about, well, Dominica first. Sure. Dominica is the hidden gem of the Caribbean, by all means.

2:13 Most people, when I tell them I'm in Dominica, they're like, oh, the Dominican Republic. No, the Commonwealth of Dominica. It's in the Eastern Caribbean, and it lives up to its nickname of Nature Island. It only has 60,000 people, no stoplights, and it's a rugged mountain, mountainous country with, believe it or not, 10 active volcanoes. Really? What's the size of the island? Size of the island, well, I know it from kayaking, is probably about 60 kilometers long. And width is, I think, around the widest part is maybe around 20 kilometers.

2:58 So it's an oblong shape running north to south. The east coast has the Atlantic, and then the west coast has the Caribbean Sea. Okay. So that's a fairly small space for 60,000 people and 10 active volcanoes with a lot of nature in between. It is. It's a rugged country, though. The one thing my friend here said, he doesn't worry about man taking over this island because it's far too rugged for man to take over completely. Yeah. That's very cool. Now, what brought you to Dominica? Dominica. Well, I've been living in the Caribbean 27 years now. I started off in Jamaica. I was volunteering there, and that grew into contract work doing international development.

3:42 I was an outdoor enthusiast in the States before I came to the Caribbean. A lot of winter sports, river rafting in the summer, mountain biking, and I was looking for something to do in the Caribbean, so I picked up sea kayaking. And eventually I got transferred to St. Lucia but was covering Dominica and I was actually vacationing here after Hurricane Maria and decided to retire early and invest here and move here. That's very cool. So now you're operating the Soufrère Outdoor Center. That's correct. I have the Soufrère Outdoor Center and the Soufrère Guest House. So it's always been a dream of mine to retire early and start a a kayaking business of my own and i combined it with a guest house as well which probably was a good idea for sure.

4:35 So now tell us about about kayaking on dominica is it relatively new there i guess well kayaking has actually been around for a long time one of the most interesting things about dominica beyond its you know beauty natural beauty and the volcanoes and the coastlines is that it's home to the kalanago people the indigenous people of the region it's the only island in the caribbean that has an indigenous population while you may have descendants on the other islands it's the only Island. So the Kalanago have been canoeing for thousands of years.

5:15 I've met with them and they've told me how their ancestors used to battle north to Guadalupe at night. 20 strong men in a big long canoe. Paddling north. But in modern day terms, sea touring kayaking is pretty new here. There have been a lot of sit-on-top kayak races and traditional canoe races and those types of things, but we're bringing in the super outdoor centers, definitely bringing in the sea touring boats to the island. So what is it that took so long for sea paddling to come to Dominica? I'm not quite sure. Maybe it's the remoteness of the island. This doesn't have the white sand beaches so there's it's not the honeymoon destination like saint lucia is that has lots of water sports antiga is the home of sailing grenada as well so i think i think the the hidden gem of the caribbean maybe it's taken longer to these types of water sports to reach here than the rest of the caribbean it's not an easy place to get to but it's it's worthwhile once you get here yeah so tell us a little bit more about the island.

6:22 La dominica is it's a beautiful place a lot of the culture here outside of the talanago culture is called creole culture so it went between the french and the english for many years back in the day and a french creole developed here so there's a strong french french influence here and they have their own music bouillon music and they play a lot of zouk and complete music as well so there's a big carnival every year. That's really a homegrown, nice, organic carnival as it may come to commercialize like the carnivals you see in Trinidad and Brazil. There's the World Creole Festival, which brings in Creole music from around the world, three days festival here.

7:09 So along with the natural beauty and everything, Dominique is a fun place to party as well. Now tell us a little bit about the Kalanago. The Kalanago have a territory, as it's called, on the Atlantic coast. They still maintain their religion, their traditional practices. They have a chief, an elected chief, and they haven't retained all of their language, but a lot of the language used in the modern Creole, some of the words and definitely some of the places link back to the Kalanago there. And what's the size of the Kalanago community?

7:50 Oh, the Kalanago community, population-wise, to tell you the truth, I'm not exactly sure. Geographically, I would say maybe it represents one-eighth, one-tenth of the country. It's hard for me to judge. They have a beautiful coastline. I've had their coastline. It's absolutely gorgeous. Oh, yeah? They still have a pretty solid impact, a pretty strong impact on the island? Yes, they do. Their presence is really felt everywhere with the culture. They have a distinct look. They're in all aspects of society. Many people commute quite far to the capitals and work in the capital every day.

8:34 And then back to the island itself. So what's the outdoor culture like there? Yeah. Well, there's a lot of hiking on the island. Hiking is probably the most popular of all the outdoor activities. And Dominica is home to the Waitukabule National Trail, which is the only through hiking trail in the Caribbean. It runs from the south of Dominica in Scottsdale all the way to the most northern coast. It's broken into 14 segments and takes 14 days. Because most people can only do one segment per day. We have a lot of tour hikers who show up here, and they think they're going to crank it out in 7, 10 days.

9:18 But due to the ruggedness of this country, the heat, the rain, because we're lush in tropicals, so there's lots of rain that gets mud, and the majority of them are in for a bit of a shock when they get here. So how long is a section? Any section, I think a bit more in hours in length. Okay. Some of the sections can take you three, four hours to hike. Other you're looking at all day. And the reason why I don't look at like too much is because of the ruggedness of it. You can have a short, 8-kilometer section to hike here, and it could take you a really long time because you're going up, down, up, down, up, down, up, down.

10:00 What kind of tourist population do you have? How large is the tourist population? The tourist population is pretty big. The cruise ships bring in a lot of people. They get out into the nature. They have a certain stereotype around cruise ship passengers, but we get quite a few sea kayaking with us. They get out hiking, they get out to the waterfalls, and they do some of the shorter hikes, but they're definitely out there in nature. Our stayovers, our numbers are a bit smaller than our cruise ship numbers primarily because of access. We do have a couple of ferries that run from St. Lucia to Martinique to Dominique to Guadeloupe.

10:42 So we have quite an international crowd from that because what you find is a lot of people from Europe, they fly into the French territories. They catch the ferry to Dominica, and then they catch the ferry to the next French territory, and they fly out. But we also do get a lot of people from North America, the States, and Canada. So you mentioned earlier the hiking trail. What is the Waitukabule Paddling Trail? Okay, the Waitukabule Sea Trail, that started with me and my business partner, Carrie. We did circumnavigation about five years ago of Dominica. We took three attempts. We finally made it on our third attempt. And it was just spectacular. We took five and a half days.

11:27 It was just an incredible experience. And when we were done, we realized not everybody could just come down here and just navigate the island. But could we create something that would not only share the natural beauty, but give that sense of accomplishment that we also experienced with the circle navigation. So we came up with the Wide Scrooge Sea Trail because it's quite an accomplishment to paddle the length of the island. We have it clocked at about 66 kilometers, a little bit longer than the technical length of the island because we hug the coastline. And you get to experience all of the colorful fishing villages, the rivers, the cliffs. This is a beautiful arch that you can paddle under.

12:17 And so we thought that this would be a good way for the average kayaker to come experience Dominica, but leave with a great sense of accomplishment. And when we battled with people, we bought them the touristic towel of Dominica that has the map on there. And they're all quite proud that they can point where they started and where they ended on that towel. That's cool. So you said 66 kilometers long, so it's not a full circumnavigation, it's just a point-to-point trail? That's correct. We start in the south and we head north. There's a predominant current that runs south to north throughout the Caribbean. Okay. And we're able to catch that for most of the way. We are looking at phase two of the Waisapabule Sea Trail to develop a guidebook for those kayakers who have the skills to actually start to navigate the island.

13:10 So we'll be putting together a team, and we're just in the beginning process now looking at different guidebooks, what information is out there. But it will be a very community-based model on the Atlantic side because a lot of those communities, or they call villages here, are quite remote. So we'll have to get information for where can they camp, where can they camp safely, who can they network to get water, get food, things like that. So that's the plan is for phase one to be the Caribbean side and phase two to be the circumnavigation. Okay. So when somebody decides they want to do the Waitukabule Trail, what can someone expect?

13:53 So kind of walk us through the experience that someone would have on the trail. Yeah. We like to call it just that, an experience, because you experience the kayaking, but you get a lot of the culture. Especially through the food and the people that you meet. So we start in the South. We involve a little hiking in it. So we start in the South. The first day is really, we recommend people just to do segment one. The way you can expect are changing conditions. You know, one day may be calm. We've got the trade winds coming off the Atlantic. Someone is going to experience a nice, strong crosswind with gusts in some of these bays.

14:34 You've got these beautiful mountains that rise over 4,000 feet in the center of the island. Some massive valleys, and the wind just gets funneled down those valleys. So there's a few bays that we've passed where people can experience a lot of gusts. We don't have the white sand beaches, so we have a lot of brown and black sand beaches, and we have quite a few pebbly and rocky beaches as well. More than likely, there's going to be a few small surf landings and surf launches. You can expect to battle some really calm days, get tucked away under some really nice cliffs. You can expect some brilliantly clear waters to take a look at the reefs below you.

15:18 There's two sections where we even have sulfuric bubbles that rise from the seafloor anybody who goes we tell them to bring their stalking gear because we can point out all the great stalking sites along the way, you said sulfuric bubbles? You can either expect to be tucked away against a lovely coast or crossing a bay and just looking at some grandiose mountains you said sulfuric bubbles? Yes so in the area of Soufraire where I'm located, the Souffre Outdoor Center. Souffre, I've been told, means sulfur in the air in French. So we have a few areas that are called sulfur deposits, and if you go up there, the smell of sulfur is very strong.

16:04 And we have two streams. One is a hot water sulfur stream, so it looks a bit silty, but you can take a nice hot warm bath from some of the pools there, and we have a cool sulfur stream, which the water is clear, but if you put water to your mouth, you can taste the sulfur. But now what happens is at the beach, that volcanic activity is still persistent underneath the seafloor, and the volcano is venting, and there's just all these bubbles around. So one beach is appropriately called a bubble beach and the other one is called Champagne Beach because the bubbles will remind you of Champagne when you're swimming.

16:46 And that's volcanic activity? That's all volcanic activity. Oh, wow. So we'll talk about the volcanoes later. I'm really interested in that with 10 active volcanoes as well. You mentioned that you were talking a little bit about the trail And you mentioned food. So tell us a little bit about the food. Yeah, the food. So bakes are a mainstay for breakfast. Imagine a nice fried dough that rises quickly and is quite light. It's a bit round and puffy looking. You cut it in half and then you can stuff it with seasoned codfish, what they call saltfish, cheese, tuna, mackerel.

17:29 I'm sure there's been a few other creative bakes as well. Again, bakes, they have Creole chicken and Creole fish. So that's cooked down in like a tomato sauce as well. It's quite a few other good local dishes. The stewed goat is absolutely phenomenal. It's one of my favorites. There's another one. I'm trying to remember the name. It's a traditional dish. It's a cook down of salt fish and vegetables and coconut milk, but... I can't remember the name. My friend who prepares it for me, she's going to kill me when she hears this podcast. When we pull up to these little fishing villages, we know all the good little places to get bakes and snacks and good local food.

18:09 They have something called okra, which is a fried dough. And that usually has codfish in it, but sometimes they put titiwi in it. Now, titiwi is a small little river fish, the length of your pinky fingernail. And it's just a sliver of a fish but they taste quite good when they're stuffed in some fried dough and acra is made. How do you debone that? You just crunch them up when you eat. So that's pretty small. Yes, very small. So tell us about some of those villages and some of your favorite experiences.

18:49 Well, there's one that we particularly love and And we call it the halfway mark of the Wai Tungbuli Sea Trail. And it's called Layu. So Layu is well known for boat building. But the Layu River is one of the largest rivers that empties out into the sea. So we know that we're in for a nice cool river bath, as they call it. And we can relax. And it's also the home of Boyd's Bakes. And Boyd has some of the best bakes on the island. I've been told that even the Prime Minister will make sure to stop by Boyd Bates when he's on the road. So it's an absolutely beautiful valley. When you look up the valley, it looks like it's been carved out by a glacier, but we know it was just a river over thousands and thousands of years that carved this valley.

19:42 This valley out as the valley was rising. And it's a nice celebratory stop too because we've reached the halfway of the White Coopolis Sea Trail. So that's one of our favorites. Of course, living in Sioux Frere, I have to give a shout out to the village of Sioux Frere that I live in. It's just a picturesque bay. It's probably, I would say, about a third of all the photos that are used to promote Dominica are taken in Sufrere Bay. We have a unique peninsula called Scotch Head. We have the Witch's Point, or La Soissier, as it's called.

20:24 We have a cliff that goes straight down into the sea, about over 1,000 feet. It's called La Bim, which is Creole for the abyss, because the entire bay itself is an old volcano crater. So it's probably just 50, 60 meters offshore. It just drops. And the depth of the bay, the deepest point, is over 200 meters deep. So it gives you an incredibly rich blue look to it. And then the interesting thing about the peninsula of Scottsdale on the most southern end is that on one side of that peninsula you have the Atlantic pouring into the Caribbean Sea through the Martinique Channel.

21:07 So you just have this current and these waves flowing down. And then on the other side of the peninsula, you have the calm blue Caribbean Sea. So it's a fascinating place. That sounds it. It certainly does. Now, what kind of water features might you experience along the way? Along the way, we... They're not too deep of a cave, but there's a few caves that you can poke your kayak in and take a look around. There's a beautiful arch by a beach called Secret Bay. That's absolutely lovely. There's quite a few snorkeling sites all along the way. The snorkeling at Scotts Head is very good. Further north, where there's a set of cliffs, there is an area where there's just not a lot of rivers.

21:56 So the visibility is always crystal clear there. Now, there is one rock feature that is only accessible by boat, and that one is called Elephant's Rear End, and I said that for the show. No, there's something else locally, but once you see that one, you absolutely know what it is. All right. We keep it G-rated. There's quite a few secluded beaches that you can only get to by boat along the way. And they're just absolutely gorgeous to stop at, take a sea bath, put your mask and snow on, explore a little bit, and then keep going.

22:38 Now, what kind of tides do you have? The tidal difference isn't that great here. So we're only looking at maybe 18 inches max. Oh, okay. You know, we're pretty close to the equator. Even being, you know, the Atlantic on one side and the Caribbean on the other. We just don't have a lot of tidal differences. And we think that this is, among a few other reasons, is why we think the circumnavigation will really catch on for the right level sea kayaker. There's not a lot of tidal planning that needs to be done. It's warm water, so you're not worried about cold water exposure if you have a cap size or something like that.

23:18 And it can be done relatively fast. The main catch is that on the Atlantic side, there's just not a lot of safe harbors to land your kayak in. So it does require quite a bit of stamina going up the Atlantic coast. You're pretty committed when you go some areas, and then you would have to have knowledge of surf landings on some of the beaches if you did have to pull out before your next stop, or some small cliff landings as well. So that's the technicality of the Atlantic coast. Otherwise, it's just beautiful. You really get a sense of the name Waitakabuli, which is tall as her body.

23:59 That is the indigenous name for Dominica. And being seafaring people, the Kalanago, I just wonder if it wasn't in a small vessel that they looked up at these beautiful mountains that came up with that name. The two sides, the Caribbean side and the Atlantic side. So it sounds like the Atlantic is more advanced or more technical. Is that right? Definitely. The Atlantic is more advanced and more technical. The nice things that we don't have to worry about are cold water exposure. We took a group of three Canadians on the Atlantic one time. And there is a particular spot called Mournde Fou, which is a cliff that juts out in many directions and stirs up the sea quite a bit in front of it.

24:50 And the seas were pretty big. And in discussion with them afterwards, we realized how blessed we are to be able to play in seas like that and not have to worry about cold water exposure like they have to and can't. Yeah. Now, what kind of sea conditions might you normally expect? The sea conditions are normally, on the Caribbean side, they're pretty calm. And then we do get, you know, those trade winds off the Atlantic, they do get kind of strong and warm. Battling from south to north, we're always contending with a crosswind and a little bit of a headwind as well, because when you go through these bays, the wind sort of wraps around.

25:33 So you're usually looking at, you know, anywhere from a 10 to 15 knot crosswind. Some days are incredibly calm, no wind, and then other days have quite a bit of wind with gusts. The sea state itself, because it's on the Caribbean side, it doesn't have a lot of swell. We do get the chop from the wind. Depending on what's happening north or south of us, there's a big system to the south of us. We don't get as much surf on the shores, but if there's something to the north of us, we definitely do. So we kind of know what to look for and what to expect, depending on what's happening in the region. Okay.

26:16 And do you get a fair amount of surf there? Definitely a beginner and an intermediate battle on the Caribbean side. All right. And do you get a fair amount of surf there that people can play with? We do. There's a few spots. You know, surf is always hit and missed. And they know what Mother Nature is dishing out at that time. But Nairu River, I mentioned, was one of my favorite villages to stop at. But I forgot to mention that it usually has some pretty decent waves for kayak surfing and nothing too rowdy. You know, some things you can catch a little ride on and then peel out and try again. It's right at the mouth of the river, so it's a typical river mouth break, so to speak.

26:56 Very cool. And you said nice warm water, so you don't have to deal with dry suits and all that. No dry suits. You're really just protecting yourself against the sun. You know, long sleeves, the neck gaiters, the hats, the electrolytes every day, the sunscreen. That's really your biggest concern is not getting sunburned and staying hydrated. All right. That sounds like a good place to be. I think so. So what would you say the best time of year is to come down to Dominica for paddling? Oh, the best time of year is November through the end of May. That's outside of hurricane season, number one, but it's also the cooler months as well. People always ask me.

27:38 What's the temperature down there? We don't really pay attention to temperature. We don't drive down the road and have some bank with the temperature up there for us. We're not getting the temperature on the readout on the radios all the time. It's not like that with my North American clients. It's either hot, comfortable, hot, too hot, or really hot. Summer can get really hot here. having said that we do like to plan our circle navigations in august september october because we get the homeless seas during that time and so what we do is we just leave super early in the morning we get up in the dark eat breakfast and we're on the sea right right as the sun is rising or a little bit earlier than that but during november december january february march april we don't have that type of heat to combat.

28:37 So we can easily have a normal rising breakfast and then hit the sea by nine, sometimes as late as 10 o'clock and keep going. So the trail itself is 66 kilometers. So how long does it take someone to normally do the trip? We've seen everything. Myself, I've done it in two days. I don't recommend that. But normally we do it as six days, But we've had a few people see if they can do it shorter. So we had a group from St. Martin, the St. Martin Kayaking Club, and they wanted to do it in five days. It sounds like there's an awful lot to see and a beautiful trail and why you'd want to power through it with such speed, I'm not sure. But I suppose everybody's different, right?

29:22 Yeah, I think some of it had to do with time constraints. And then the St. Martin paddlers, they paddle those surf ski style kayaks. So they were fast paddlers. I had trouble keeping up with them the whole time. I kept on happy to remind them, hey, slow down, take it easy. But a six-stage, I think, is the perfect amount of time. And it allows you to really slow down, make several stops, fit in a few hikes, a trip to a sulfur spring, get the good snorkeling spots, and really take in the coastline.

30:02 Really, I hope your coastline, you don't necessarily have to just do a straight shot across a bay. You can go in, experience the coastline, look at the wildlife, the birds on the coastline, and check out all the reef and everything in the shallow waters. So six days, six to seven days is the recommended. I remember hearing a story about a prize for the slowest circumnavigation of Vancouver. Yeah. And I kind of like that idea. I would like to give someone a prize for the slowest circumnavigation of Dominica. All right. The one who soaked in the most of the experience, I guess. That's right. As opposed to this concept of who's going to do it the fastest. Yeah.

30:44 So at six days to do your 66K, so your 10K a day, you really have a lot of opportunity to then to truly soak in the culture and really experience the place. Yeah. You do. You meet, eat at different restaurants, explore different villages. We also encourage people to go up the Indian River, which is a historic river that is kind of brackish. So for a while, it's at sea level and the sea goes in there. You've got fascinating wildlife. We almost always see iguanas when we're up there in the trees. We see the fish that only exist in the river. And if your pirates are the caribbean fan that's where calypso's hut is still still there you can see it oh that's cool that's part of the part of the trail that is and at the very end there's a rum bushfire dominica is well known for bush rums and you probably wonder what are bush rums i am Bush rums are like a white rum that is infused with local medicinal bushes.

31:53 So some of the ones you might be more familiar with, they have a ginger rum. Actually, I have a garlic rum. I've had a coffee rum. Then there's quite a few in Creole that I'm sure I would mispronounce, but local herbs that they infuse the rums with, and they're all good for one thing or another. Very interesting. Wildlife. You talked a little bit about wildlife. Tell us about some of the wildlife people could expect to see on the trail. Right. There's lots of birds along the coast. We occasionally see dolphins. We see hawksbill turtles as well. And then we don't go far enough out to see the whales. I've only seen a whale twice in all of my eight years of paddling here.

32:36 But we are home to the only sperm whale reserve in the world. So we have resident sperm whales. And taking the time to go on a tour is well worth it in Dominica. Your guides will tell you a lot of fascinating stories about some of the research being done. So there's actually a group here that, for several years, has been researching the language of whales. They've been able to identify different dialects, and they've actually identified vowels now. They have a multidisciplinary team from around the world. Some of the top professors, academics and researchers on this team and now they're incorporating AI into it so the future is very interesting if they will be able to communicate with whales and these sperm whales live in pods, and the guides who have been doing this for years know them they can tell by their tail the different marks and that type of thing they'll recognize the whales and there's a whole booklet you can see who is who of the whales in Dominica, one of the most popular ones.

33:50 I think his name is a can opener, or her name maybe. But you've only seen them, what did you say, once or twice? I've only seen them twice while sea kayaking. Okay. I was on the Atlantic side doing a solo paddle around the southern end of the island, and I think it was the same whale twice. It was going one direction, scared me, and then coming back the other way scared me. But it was a beautiful sight. It was absolutely spectacular. Interesting for a for a place that has that much whale research that you just don't see them very often yeah the thing is they're quite uh far offshore okay they they're the world's best free divers they they dive extremely deep for a large split is what they feed on and probably again going back to that nickname of the hidden gem of the caribbean not a lot of boat traffic not a lot of yachts.

34:40 And then the extreme depth right off the coast is, probably all contributing factors to why we have residents from Wales here. So when was the Waitukabule Sea Paddling Trail? When was it kind of formed? It was started in about, I believe, 2021. So Kerry and I would have done the circumnavigation and then come up with the idea. And I kept pitching it to the Ministry of Tourism and their marketing arm, which is called the Discover Dominica Authority. They all thought it was a great idea, but then I found it wasn't really going past being a great idea.

35:21 So I told them I was starting the inaugural trip. I had a woman, a Bayesian woman by the name of Melanie Grant. She was visiting when I say Bayesian from Barbados and she was training with me, sea kayaking. It's always been a dream of hers to paddle between two islands. And so I was teaching her that, from the start as a beginner, kayaking, to hopefully push her in that direction. And she happened to be a young filmmaker also. So we just did a trade. I said, I'll take you on the sea trail, take care of everything, and you come up with some promotional material for me.

36:03 And so said, so done. We notified the Ministry of Tourism that the inaugural trip was happening in a few weeks. They jumped on board. a few of the hotels they were pretty excited about the something new reaching the island they jumped on board and we did it over six days and just had a fabulous time due to the availability of room so we did it from the north to the south now traditionally we go south to north because of that predominant current but it was it was absolutely spectacular it's a really fun trip especially to see it through her eyes having been the first time i had done many parts of the coast before i've done it before with carrie so to see the the awe in her eyes every day told me that this was going to be something good how has word of the trail spread and what kind of traffic are you seeing from the world because of it, Well, initially, word spread. It was quite interesting to see it go from an idea and a letter to the Ministry of Tourism to being featured in Time magazine in the number one slot for something like Greatest Places in the World one year, with my name being mentioned.

37:20 So that was a big surprise and quite an honor to be recognized in a publication like that. But it's also gone on to Condé Nast, Travel and Leisure, a VP, came out for several days on a trip with me. Time Magazine, of course, I took the journalist out for a few days on the sea trail. And it has just grown, you know, Nat Geo, Cool List, I believe BBC, one of their media houses covered it. And then if you're familiar with Ken Whitting and Paddle TV, he and his team came down and did four episodes, which won some Teletube Awards.

38:01 They do a fantastic job of storytelling and really told the story of the White's Completely Sea Trail, its origins and our visions quite well. I will say all of that was nerve wracking because we had not sold one tour yet. So to have all this international media about a sea trail and tours being offered and not selling a tour as a young kayak outfitter, it was nerve wracking. But I partnered with Track Kayaks and then started direct marketing my own. And we are seeing anywhere from three, four to five groups per year doing a sea trail. And we've seen some people paddle it on their own as well.

38:49 Intermediate paddlers who have the right credentials. We're getting a lot of interest from them. A few Canadians have done it. A Canadian student, she did it at Sono. Laura, that was fantastic. We're getting more interest for many sea trail tours, so people who can't do the whole thing or don't want to do the whole thing. We've done several three- and four-day trips for people as well. We hope to get more locals out. We ran summer camps this summer. And we got three groups of teenagers doing the southern sections and the northern sections, and we would love to see more dominicans getting out we would love to see over the course of next summer we're doing a few segments every weekend so that over the course of the summer somebody could say they'd battle the sea trail sounds good now getting gear so you mentioned you got other you got groups private groups that are coming out and doing it on their own but gear is kind of hard to come by it sounds like so how do people get gear it is real hard to come by and i know that the hard way i've shipped down all of my kayaks so i have a small fleet of track kayaks affordable kayaks really nice performance kayaks and then i have a larger fleet of nigel dennis design kayaks with sea kayaking uk kayaks i also have a few kayaks with rudders because i know that's a preference among some paddlers and a few tandems as well.

40:13 We like to think of ourselves as the biggest kayak outfitter in the Eastern Caribbean. I've got a large selection of boats and we're ready to outfit anybody who comes down here, whether independently or independently. All right. So we've had a chance to talk to Nigel Dennis before. And like I mentioned, I had an introduction to you from the folks at TRAC. But why TRAC kayaks? Truck kayaks caught my interest without even having paddled one. People would reach out to me for a long time on my Instagram, even before I opened a kayak outfitter, which is, I give a shout out to my Instagram, Mr. West Kayak.

40:53 And they saw me as one of the main paddlers in the Caribbean, and they would ask for advice. So having owned a feather craft in the past, I bought a feather craft with the hopes of. Traveling the Caribbean islands with that unfortunately at the time my project management job got in the way of that and then for fun I had an Orhu kayak as well which actually took to Grenada once and paddled around and was at a splendid time with that so I always get asked you know I want to get into kayaking what type of kayak should I buy when I've seen the track kayaks and i could just tell that they're performance kayakers from the people paddling them and how they handled in the videos i saw and then when i saw how quickly they were assembled and put apart in comparison to the feather craft i had i knew that track was on to something and i contact them right away about being a rep and told them that i had been recommending their, kayaks already if they wanted to partner officially and then it just grew into getting six of their kayaks and being a track outfitter and leading track trips for them.

42:07 It's really been a beautiful organic partnership between us. Cool. So it really sounds like it's growing well for you. So congratulations on that. Thank you. Yeah. I want to just ask one other question. I'm going to go back to the landscape. And I'd mentioned this earlier that we would come back to this. Volcanoes, 10 active volcanoes. How active are we talking here? Okay, 10 active volcanoes. It sounds like a lot, right? It sounds like something out of an adventure movie. Yeah. I'm just picturing a smoldering mess. We don't have lava spewing out, anything like that. These are actives, but we don't have any volcanic, big volcanic peaks where you can look in and actively see lava.

42:53 What we have is we have the world's second largest boiling lake. It's in one area. So we have a lot of volcanic activity that may not be that traditional Hollywood erupting volcano. We have sulfur deposits where when you hike up there, it smells a lot like sulfur, which some people say smells like rotten eggs. I don't mind it personally. But I have a lot of sulfur deposits. You have a lot of sulfuric hot springs around the island that you can absolutely enjoy. I highly recommend anybody who's visiting to go to Trafalgar Falls and scramble to the base of those falls because you'll think you're in Jurassic Park and you'll be soaking in a hot bath at the base of about a 100-foot waterfall.

43:41 It's absolutely incredible. There's another village called Watt and Waven that has probably about 10 different commercial hot baths that you can go soak in. Just where they've diverted the water into some pools that you can just take a nice natural sulfur bath in. And I do want to add that sulfur is very good for the skin. And if you give yourself a little sulfur rub, exfoliate the skin, you'll wake up feeling like you have baby skin in the morning. And are many of those attractions or locations accessible to the trail? Yes. Down in Soufrière, we stay at the Soufrière guest house and we have some directly behind the guest house.

44:27 We make a point of visiting some others along the way And we definitely stop at most of the places where we can see bubbles rising from the seabed. So tell us about the Soufair Outdoor Center and the Guest House. Okay. The Soufair Guest House, we started that, opened that in 2018. The idea was to really promote community tourism. So to that end, we took a big piece of flyboard, we put it in our living room. We projected Google Maps on it, and we traced out the map of the village, and we put where everybody can get food, go to bars, this, that, and the other. When people arrive, we encourage them to go into the village.

45:08 We have to do a little cross-cultural training sometimes because when you walk into a shop here, you need to say good morning. When you walk past people on the road, you tell them good morning, good afternoon. And at nighttime, you greet them by saying good night. While that's usually a farewell in the States, it's actually a greeting here in the Caribbean. So we really have encouraged our guests to spend time in the community, go into the bars. You're welcome there. Don't be intimidated. You know, go in, meet the locals. And the community has been very receptive. It's been a big hit. People appreciate people coming in, spending their money, supporting them, getting to know them. Quite a few friendships have developed over the years.

45:50 So that's the guest house. So we took a very similar approach with the outdoor center. The outdoor center is located right on the beach in Soufraire, on Soufraire Bay. We have a small property that we make the best of it. A few of our fishermen, sorry, a few of our guides grew up as fishermen. So they know all of the fish by names when you go surfing with them, their Creole name and their English name. And we try and do a lot of outreach in the community. and with a local population. We have special local rates that we give them. We've done kayak races. We've had fun days. We've provided free kayaking to both the teenage girls and the teenage boys in the summertime.

46:35 And most recently, we've been partnering with the Dominica Olympic Committee on some grants for water safety and sea kayaking. So we really try and give back as much as possible and integrate into the communities as much as possible. That's great. Thank you for the work that you're doing to connect the community and to connect the community to water. Thank you. I think that's one of my favorite things of this super outdoor center. I thought it would be building a cohort of hardcore paddlers locally and going out into the channel, going out to the Atlantic, which has been fun to do. So my favorite thing is getting somebody who hasn't had access to swim lessons like in North America or the States or elsewhere, who grew up on an island, who may not be connected to the sea or connected to the water and may be actually afraid of it a bit.

47:31 And their swimming abilities may not be the best. And I take them out on a kayak. I feel like the kayak is the perfect thing. Medium to get them out on the sea and connected with the sea you know you don't have to worry about drowning you have your life jacket on you're in there you know you know you're not worried about what's going to nibble on your feet not that we have those problems but you can really get out there it's non-motorized you're in control you can you know you can feel the motion of the ocean so to speak the undulations of the sea and experience the beauty in a safe way and connect with it. And that's the favorite part of my job. Sounds like a good time.

48:12 Definitely. Excellent. So how can listeners connect with you, Wes? The best way to connect with me is through my website and I try to make it as easy to remember as possible. So of course, it's www.soc-dom.com. So that's soc-dom.com. you can find all of our contact information but if you message us through the website we get it right away as well, I would give you the Instagram handle but it's a mouthful it's Soufriere Outdoor Center, Instagram at Soufriere Outdoor Center but what's probably easier is at Mr.

48:53 Wes Kayak that's me as well we'll make sure we put links to, all those socials out on our website in the show notes for this episode And I'd also love to see if we can get a copy or get a link to the video that you'd mentioned that kind of kicked the whole process off and really get an opportunity for folks to be able to see it in action. And then we've also had Ken Whiting as a guest on the show, and he made a mention of the trail as well. So I know he's done some videos about the beauty of the trail, so we can include those as well. And I get people familiar with not only the Super Air Outdoor Center, but the Waitukubule Sea Paddling Trail, and I get people out there. Great. We'd love that. The more people out on the sea, the better.

49:36 One final question for you, Wes. I'd like to know who else would you like to hear as a future guest on Paddling the Blue? Well, somebody I would like to hear from is somebody I've actually never met, but we've been following each other on social media for years now. Wolf Albury of Wolf Kayaking Club has got a great setup in the Bahamas. We've been messaging for years, following each other. The Caribbean words, we've been bigging up each other, supporting each other's social media and had a few exchanges. We exchange good Caribbean jokes through Messenger. So I would love to hear more about him and his operations on here. I'll definitely tune in for that one.

50:16 Well, super. Well, we'll work on connecting with Wolf here. And again, it's been great to have an opportunity to talk to you and to learn about Dominica and the beauty of the area. And we'll get some folks down there and check out the trail. Wonderful. Thanks, John. It's been a pleasure meeting you, and I really look forward to following your podcast in the future. Thanks. It's been a pleasure, Wes. If you want to be a stronger and more efficient paddler, Power to the Paddle is packed with fitness guidance and complete descriptions, along with photos of more than 50 exercises to improve your abilities and enjoy your time on the water. The concept and exercises in this book have helped me become a better paddler, and they can make a difference for you, too.

50:57 The exercises in the book can help you reduce tension in your shoulders and low back Use the power of your torso to create leverage and use less energy with each stroke Use force generated from your lower body to make your paddling strokes more efficient Have the endurance to handle long days in the boat Drive through the toughest waves or white water Protect your body against common paddling injuries And while you're at it, you might even lose a few pounds And who wouldn't mind that? So visit paddlingexercises.com to get the book and companion DVD. Thanks to Wes for sharing Dominica with us. The Waitukabule Sea Trail sounds fantastic, and it certainly doesn't sound like a place you want to race around. I love his idea of a prize for the slowest paddle. If you want to learn more about Dominica, the Waitukabule Sea Trail, and the Soufrere Outdoor Center, visit the show notes for this episode at pedalingtheblue.com slash 153.

51:47 If you're not already a subscriber to onlineseacayaking.com or onlinewhitewater.com, remember that you can visit either of those two sites, Use the coupon code PTB podcast to check out and you'll get 10% off just for being a member of the Paddling the Blue community. Thanks again for listening and I look forward to bringing you the next episode of Paddling the Blue. Thank you for listening to Paddling the Blue. You can subscribe to Paddling the Blue on Apple Music, Google Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you find your favorite podcasts. Please take the time to leave us a five-star review on Apple Music. We truly appreciate the support. and you can find the show notes for this episode and other episodes along with replays of past episodes, contact information, and more at paddlingtheblue.com.

52:29 Until next time, I hope you get out and paddle the blue.