Mélange Travel & Lifestyle Magazine July 2017 | Page 230

www.dominica.dm
GETTING TO
DOMINICA
International flights from the
US and Europe are connected
to the island through hubs in
Antigua, Barbados, St. Maarten,
Puerto Rico, Guadeloupe and
Martinique.
Airlines servicing Dominica
from within the Caribbean
Leeward Island Air Transport
(LIAT)
Windward Islands Airways
(WINAIR)
Air Antilles
Seaborne Airlines
Click here for more
information
on getting to Dominica.
Dominica is the Caribbean’s younge st island. Roughly
26 million years ago, a series of volcanic eruptions
in the ocean floor began creating a Morne Trois
Piton cluster of small peaks which eventually rose
and merged to form a single island - Dominica. The
island has seven main volcanic centers, the highest
concentration of "live" volcanoes in the world.
In 100 BC, the first agricultural people arrived on
Dominica from the Orinoco region of South America
and settled in villages. Over the next 1,500 years, other
groups arrived, the last group was the Kalinago (Carib
Indians), who arrived around 1000 AD. Due to the
rugged nature of the island, the Kalinago named the
island “Wai'tukubuli” meaning “Tall is her body.”
On Sunday, November 3, 1493, Christopher Columbus
sighted the island and named it Dominica (because
it was a Sunday) and claimed the island in the name
of Spain. Over the next three centuries, Dominica was
claimed at various times by the British and French,
neither of which took physical occupation. In the
1690s, the French brought the first West African slaves
to Dominica. For almost 100 years, starting in 1720,
Dominica changed hands several times between the
British and the French until it was finally ceded to the
British in 1805.
The island gained its independence from Britain on
November 3, 1978.