Indian River
"No engines allowed. Just oars, water, and roots that look like they're reaching for the boat."
A slow, silent river near Portsmouth where rowboats glide beneath a tunnel of buttress-rooted swamp bloodwood trees that famously stood in for Calypso's island in Pirates of the Caribbean.
Motorboats are banned on the lower stretch of the Indian River, which is the single best decision anyone has made about tourism in Dominica, because it means the experience is entirely silent except for the dip of oars and the birds. I hired a boatman at the river mouth near Portsmouth, climbed into a wide wooden rowboat, and was rowed slowly upstream into a swamp forest so still and so green it felt genuinely theatrical — which, as it turns out, is exactly what a Hollywood location scout thought too, since this stretch of river appears in Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man’s Chest as the swamp home of the witch Tia Dalma.
The bloodwood trees along the banks have enormous buttress roots that flare out above the waterline and twist into the current, some of them tall enough to arch clear over the boat, and the light comes down filtered and dim through a near-total canopy overhead. My boatman, who had clearly done this ten thousand times, still pointed out things with what seemed like real enthusiasm — a green heron folded motionless against a branch, a land crab working its way along the muddy bank, the specific tree used in the film. We didn’t talk much. The river doesn’t really invite conversation; it invites just looking.
About forty minutes upstream, the boats stop at a small clearing with a rum bar built among the trees, unofficially known to most guides as the Bush Bar, where I had a rum punch that was considerably stronger than advertised and sat for a while listening to the forest do whatever a swamp forest does when nobody’s rowing through it. Coming back downstream is faster, with the current helping, and the light changes as you descend, opening up gradually until you’re back at the wide river mouth and the ordinary daylight of Portsmouth feels almost too bright after the green tunnel upstream.
When to go: Year-round, though water levels and clarity are best in the dry season from January to April. Go in the early morning for the best light through the canopy and the most active birdlife before the day’s tour boats build up.