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Capital: Roseau
Population: 67,000+
Language: English/French Creole
1 – Soufrière (also above)
A fishing village in the south-west, Soufrière sits inside a drowned volcanic crater: the bay in front of it is the flooded caldera itself, deeper in the middle than at its edges.
The village church looks straight out over the water, and the whole bay from here down to the Scotts Head peninsula has been a protected marine reserve since the late 1990s.
Swim out at Champagne Reef and you float through streams of warm bubbles rising from volcanic vents in the seabed — the same underground system that feeds the Boiling Lake up in the mountains, venting under the sea instead.
2 – Roseau
Dominica’s capital sits on the sheltered west coast where the Roseau River meets the sea, and takes its name from the French word for the reeds that grew along the banks.
It’s a small grid of French-era streets and tin-roofed wooden houses between the mountains and the water, with the museum in the old post office of 1810, the Old Market square behind it, and the Botanic Gardens under Morne Bruce.
That market square was where enslaved people were sold and where public executions were held — and in the Gardens, a giant African baobab brought down by Hurricane David in 1979 still lies across the school bus it crushed, left exactly where it fell.
3 – Hampstead Beach
On the wild, little-visited north-east coast, Hampstead is a curve of gold-flecked sand backed by coconut palms, reached down a rough track through old plantation land.
There’s nothing here but the beach, the river mouth behind it and the surf — no bars, no loungers, no one selling you anything.
This is where the crew filmed the scenes of Johnny Depp being chased through the trees in Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man’s Chest — much of that film was shot on Dominica, precisely because it looks so thoroughly unmodernised.
4 – Batalie Bay
Batalie is a black-sand bay on the leeward west coast, north of Roseau — the sand is dark because Dominica is young volcanic rock and the rivers carry it straight down to the sea.
It’s a calm, shallow bay, good for a swim and a drink at the beach bar, and a favourite stop for locals on a Sunday.
Dominica has very few white-sand beaches and has never really tried to build a resort industry — which is exactly why it’s the one Caribbean island Columbus would still recognise.