Our Great Adventure : Latin Beats

Bay of Eagles

From Jacmel, Haiti we headed east to the other half of Hispaniola - Dominican Republic. We spent the first night with SV Dark N Stormy in the Bay of Eagles, a beautiful serene National Park. We went swimming and for a beach walk and had a large puffer fish follow our dingy around!

Puffer

The next evening we set sail for Isla Beata a few hours away. We slept there for the night and waited out a thunderstorm the next morning before leaving for Barahona. The wind as per usual was against us and the seas were fairly large and choppy so it was around 2am when we finally arrived. At 9am sharp the next morning we had customs and immigration knocking on our boat to do an inspection and fill out the paperwork for our cruising permit. After that was taken care of we all set off in our dingy to try to find somewhere to land it so we could explore the city. As we approached the beach we were bombarded by a group of about 4-6 year old boys who were laughing and waving and all jumped onto and into our dingy! After untethering them from the dingy and explaining that they couldn't come with us, we finally found we could tie up to the beaten-up Navy dock.

We spent 2 days in Barahona as we were in dire need of fuel and food. We walked around the city and had a great lunch at a local restaurant and had our first "jumbo" sized beer!

Enjoying una jumbo!

It was definitely a city full of life - there was an upcoming election and supporters drive around hanging off vehicles waving flags and cranking music from the largest speakers I have ever seen or heard. Loud latin beats are a mainstay in every town in the country! When we had first arrived, one of the customs officers had offered to "help" us get fuel. James and I had originally planned to just walk to a gas station a couple of times to fill up our jerry cans just enough to get us to our next stop with a fuel dock. However, if we could get more fuel without having to walk we were interested in "help" from the customs officer. I wasn't part of the negotiations but apparently it was a bit of a disaster: the plan was for someone to lend Dark N Stormy some jerry cans since they didn't have any and to drive to the gas station a couple of times. For this everyone wanted to be paid - someone for being the broker, another for translating, a rental fee for the jerry cans, and the kicker was the navy wanted 10% of the price of the fuel for all the fuel being loaded off their dock!

Election Time

This was our first introduction to greasing palms in the DR. In the end Dark N Stormy left without fuel and James and I reverted to our original plan and walked the 30 minute round trip twice with 5 gallons of fuel - man I'm getting some serious biceps! The walk took us to a beautiful part of the city full of cafes, small bars and people sitting outside loudly playing dominoes and slapping the pieces on tables.

Once we had enough fuel in the tanks we left for Ocoa - a little coastal town which is where the wealthy from Santo Domingo have their weekend homes. Since it was a Sunday when we arrived it was packed with people - many of whom followed us in their boats Jetskis and waved as anchored. After a night here and a wander through the town picking up veggies and eggs it was onto Las Salinas.

Ocoa

We had originally planned to leave the next day but when we got out to sea we found ourselves beating into 30 knots of wind with very square seas and making no progress at all. We turned back after 4 hours as it would have taken us 24 hours at the rate we were going to make it to Boca Chica 65 miles away. Some strong winds had come a lot closer to shore than they had predicted and were going to be in Las Salinas for a few days so we decided to make the best of it. Since there is nothing to see or do in Las Salinas we took the local bus into the capital Santo Domingo and booked a little "boutique" hotel for the night. The local bus (which has wifi!!) is a commuter van playing loud latin music and packed to the gills with people!

In Santo Domingo we spent two days in the Zona Colonial - the old area of city settled in the late 1400s by Don Cristobal Colon (Christopher Columbus).

Cathedral of Santa María la Menor

The House of Diego, Columbus' Son

Parrots at the Monastery

It is called a "town of New World firsts" since it was the first place in the New World to have a monastery, a nunnery, a hospital, a cathedral etc. Many of these structures still exist and we were able to see them - sadly many resemble Roman ruins after being ravaged by hurricanes. Santo Domingo is a beautiful city - a wonderful mix of a cobblestoned city from Western Europe and a vibrant city from South America. We spent the first day visiting the New World's oldest monastery and cathedral and touring Christopher Columbus' son's home. The Monasterio de San Francisco are ruins from 1508, as you wander through them flocks of parrots and other wild birds fly overhead! The cathedral is the oldest in the Americas it was commissioned in 1504 and construction was ended in 1540. It is a beautiful building combining Gothic and Baroque architecture with an incredible rib vaulted ceiling. Alcázar de Colón was built in 1510 for Diego Colon - the Viceroy of La Espaniola and contains an incredible collection of Medieval and Renaissance art - not bad for a US$2 entrance fee!

We also visited several "panaderias" (bakeries) and drank plenty of local espressos and freshly squeezed juices. We even ate at a vegetarian restaurant - I haven't seen one of those since we left home!

Big Smiles for a Vegetarian Restaurant!

Hotel Breakfast

For dinner we went to the grocery store and picked up a variety of delicious foods and ate in our hotel room while watching TV!!! The only thing in English was a marathon of "Elementary" with Lucy Liu - when you haven't watched TV in 8 months you're not picky ;) We swam in the hotel pool and had multiple long hot showers and slept in air conditioning.

Luxury

We got up the next morning to an incredible breakfast of eggs, fresh bread, homemade jam, all you can drink lattes, fruit salad and fresh juices. It was a little slice of heaven! We did some shopping and toured a rum distillery and then headed back to our boat in Las Salinas.

From there we headed to Boca Chica, a touristy town full of resorts and small hotels. On our way there we sailed past a pod of about 30 Pilot whales!! They were right next to the boat and just floating around with their funny melon heads. We didn't have our camera on deck and I was afraid I would miss them if I came down to get it so unfortunately we didn't get any photos. Once we arrived in Boca Chica we walked around the shops and ate breakfast out.

Breakfast in Boca Chica

We took a mooring ball at the marina and while the marina was kind of a dump it did allow us to do laundry, shower, fill up with diesel and go grocery shopping. The marina dropped us off at the grocery store and then the grocery store drives you home so we didn't have to haul bags and bags of food back by foot! The grocery store resembled a North American superstore style grocery store with a massive produce section, lots of cheeses, a huge bakery, even a kitchen and home goods section. After months of tiny little shops with canned good and the odd questionable cauliflower we had no problem filling our shopping cart here!

The most challenging part of cruising in the DR is the need to check in an out of every single town you visit where you need to get a "despacho" from the "commandante" - many of whom expect a tip and none of whom received one. The worst one we dealt with was at Bocca Chica.

This commandante, head of the navy in the town, insisted on photocopies of our passports even though he has nothing to do with immigration. So James had to walk all the way back to the marina and find a photocopier - the marina helped us with that and were horrified that the commandante was requesting this. When James brought the paperwork back the commandante decided he wanted to inspect the boat despite us already having an inspection when we checked into the country a matter of days before. The commandante had to round up several other people (all who had already inspected the boat) including drug trafficking and customs. The marina manager was furious that he wanted to inspect our boat and apologized many times. It was a complete waste of time. Yet again this lead to us leaving many, many hours later than we wanted and meant yet again arriving somewhere in the dark - not advisable when it can be avoided since not many areas are lit. The despachos can only be obtained right when you want to leave, which is problematic when you want to leave at 4am since they only work business hours, and the commandantes can take as long as they like to do it. When we arrived in Las Salinas we spent almost 4 hours waiting for a commandante in the hotel lobby to "check-in" to town and he never showed up! It was an extreme exercise in patience and made it stressful because our boat is slow and in order to arrive in the daylight we frequently need to leave places in the very early hours of the morning, something the despacho made impossible.

We checked out of the country in La Romana.

Rio Dulce, La Romana

When we checked in to the DR in Barahona we double-checked and were told there were no fees to check-out and that it's all paid up front. Not surprising when we tried to check-out there were all sorts of made-up fees. The woman at the commendencia office even tried to charge us the local marina fees despite us being anchored in the river! James flat out refused to pay anything and just said we don't have any money left and they begrudgingly stamped our passports for free. We then motored to the Island of Saona and waited for a weather window to cross the Puerto Rico.

One of our favourite things about the DR was the fruit stands. In each town there is at least one "fruiteria" - a little stand selling fresh local tropical fruit that you can either buy whole or have cut up and made into a fruit salad drizzled with local honey - seriously addictive! They're so popular that when we took the bus home from Santo Domingo the driver stopped and took orders from passengers!

Driver Ordering at the Fruiteria for his Passengers

The DR is really not set up for cruisers, especially not the south coast. I'm sure it's better if you plan on spending extended periods in a couple of towns but when you're trying to make progress each day and need to obtain a despacho every day it's a real headache. But seeing Haiti was worth putting up with it! That being said the DR is not on our list to cruise in again.