What is one of the most beautiful and picturesque places in the Caribbean Sea? What is a perfect place to enjoy beauty of nature and to get wonderful emotions? What is a good place to make a marriage proposal and not to be turned down?
And, at last but not the least, what is an appropriate place to choose for making the movie “Pirates of the Caribbean: The Dead Man’s Chest� No two minds think alike.
No matter how many people answer these questions, they give different answers. But think about all those “whats†at once – there is only one place that totally corresponds all of those features.
This is the Indian River, which along with Glanvillia Swamp borders the southern edge of Portsmouth.
Gore Verbinski, who created “The Dead Man’s Chestâ€, made a perfect choice while thinking about the place which would be appropriate scenery for an episode of the movie. Remember mysterious and sacred river, which led to the hut of Tia Dalma? Captain Jack Sparrow floated down this river with his friends in a small boat. They passed huge trees with massive trunks and roots which went down into the waters of the Indian River. The waters of the river looked dark and full of unknown dangers, trees and bushes seemed to be a hide-out of mysterious beasts or local tribes.
In real life, the Indian River is a very popular tourist attraction. The Indian River National Park occupies 58 acre (23 hectares). This wetland is a perfect area for rich flora and fauna (such as herons and egrets, ducks, and waders). Such trees as bwa mang (Pterocarpus officinalis) and yellow-flowered maho dou (Hibiscus pernambucensis) grow along both banks of the Indian River. Such fauna representatives as small spotted black crabs with red legs and whitish pincers – “red legs” or “zagaya swamp” (Goniopsis cruentata) and large white crabs or kobo (Cardisoma guanhumi) are common inhabitants of the Indian River National park.
The required site price for a trip along the Indian River is rather low – $17. However, the impression will be worthy much more. The boat tour along the Indian River usually begins near the Indian River Bridge and goes down the south of Portsmouth on Michael Douglas Boulevard. Tourists usually travel one mile along the river in small boats that belong to the local people, who also work as their guides. A boat can carry no more than eight people. The Indian River is rather deep (from 4.5 inches to ten feet); it lies below the sea level, so this is the only river on Dominica Island that is accessible by boat. Large buttress roots feed everyone’s imaginations. They are enormous, and fanciful matting of roots makes people believe and imagine themselves to be in wild jungles where the foot of man has never stepped. These roots belong to the blood-wood trees (mangrove). The Indian River is also a breeding area for such birds as the green heron, the mangrove cuckoo, the kingfisher, the common moorhen and the Caribbean coot.
The Indian River is very beautiful, unique and green nook of nature on Dominica and in the whole Caribbean region. There are not many places on Earth that are full of wild life and are not spoiled by people. The Indian River National Park is also a very romantic place. Anyone who makes a marriage proposal here, in a small cozy boat, in the atmosphere of rich greenery and almost silent splashes of water, will be never turned down, because there is no woman in the world who is able to resist such beauty and romance.
Photos by 
