We found out that the following day was the beginning of Carnival, and Puerto Plata would be transformed into one giant party like New Orleans during Mardi Gras. I decided to see what it was all about and made my way to the park again the next day to a massive parade of lavishly decorated floats portraying island themes. Presidente beer trucks were part of the procession, and cold beer was handed out through the open rear doors to anyone who was thirsty. I caught a ride on a flatbed truck with a crowd of Dominicanos and Canadian tourists, and did my best to help them finish the Presidentes they carried in a fifty-five gallon drum of ice. We went around in circles for what seemed like hours, finally ending up on the malécon, the waterfront drive, where we passed a podium of government officials in military uniforms who watched the parade under guard by a contingent of soldiers. One of them was probably the president of the Dominican Republic, for all I knew. My new Canadian friends and I saluted these officials with upraised beer bottles. We agreed that it was a wonderful country. Was it always like this here?
When the Carnival was over, I was ready to get away from the city. I bought a map of the island in a gift shop near the park, and began studying it to plan my explorations. I had been cooped up on the sailboat for 3 weeks now, and I was anxious to feel open spaces and to get some privacy and maybe even a bit of solitude.
The map of the huge island baffled me, however. I didn’t know where to begin. Hispaniola is the second largest island in the West Indies after Cuba, with a total land area of 29,500 square miles. The Dominican Republic occupies the two thirds of the island, with the western third belonging to Haiti. The map showed hundreds of miles of winding roads connecting scattered cities and towns along the coasts and bisecting the island to connect the north with the Caribbean side. The Cordillera Central, the central range of highest mountains, appeared to the most sparsely populated area, so that’s where I intended to go. I didn’t have a backpack or any way to carry all my camping gear on an overland trip, so I left with only a daypack containing clothes, raingear, and other bare essentials, planning to figure out where I would stay when I got there.
On my preliminary excursions into Puerto Plata, I learned that getting around on the island was not difficult, since there were a variety of public transportation options. At the gate outside the harbor, I climbed onto the back of a moto – one of the 50cc motorcycles whose drivers would carry tourists anywhere in town for 2 or 3 pesos – and asked to be taken to the terminal de gua-guas. The gua-guas are a way of life in the Dominican Republic. Mini-buses that go all over the island, they provide the locals with cheap transportation and conveniently stop to pick up and drop off passengers anywhere along the road. At the terminal in Puerto Plata, there were dozens of gua-guas lined up, some already packed to full capacity and pulling out. The drivers zeroed in on me – the gringo tourist with the backpack – and swarmed over me instantly, each offering his services to any place my pocketbook would carry me. I struggled with a word or two of Spanish and pointed to the rugged mountain range in the middle of my map.
“Si! No problema,” one driver said as he took my bag and whisked me to the door of his little bus, which was already crammed with at least 20 passengers. I had no choice but to squeeze onto the edge of a seat already occupied by a couple with a small boy, and to my amazement, the driver continued to load more passengers. When he was finished, I had a smiling young woman sitting in my lap, and we tore off down the road on our merry way, the passengers singing along with the deafening merengue music that blasted from several overhead box speakers.
Some of the people pressed in around me tried to ask me questions, wondering where I was going, and amused at my wild beard and long hair, which by this time gave me the appearance of a castaway. They told me I looked like Jesu Cristo – Jesus Christ, because of the hair and beard. That much I understood, but with my limited vocabulary it was difficult to explain that I had arrived by sailboat, that I was on a kayak trip, and that I was now hoping to see some of the wilder regions of their country by traveling to the mountains. It was hard enough to breath, much less talk in the stifling heat of the crowded bus. Using his horn more frequently than his brakes, the driver sped like a maniac, passing cars on which ever side seemed most convenient and dodging the chickens, dogs, cows, and children that we encountered in every mile of the roadway.
I made my way into the central mountains after a series of bus and motorcycle rides, and staying in an assortment of cheap hotels in small towns for a week. The interior of the island was much cooler and more temperate than the coast. Pine forests grew on the high slopes of mountains that looked more like they belonged in New Mexico or Arizona than on a tropical island. I spent one whole day horseback riding on a rocky trail into the backcountry, led by a small boy of about 10 who took me to the base of an impressive waterfall. There was a lot to explore in the interior of this island, but not being equipped for serious backpacking and not wanting to spend too much of my limited cash on hotels and public transportation, I headed back to the coast where I hoped I could talk Josephine and Frank into moving on.
When I got there, though, I found that they had instead bought tickets to fly back to the States, and they wanted me to guard the boat in their absence. That was fine with me. I would enjoy the privacy. George and I hung out on Celebration, taking advantage of the well-equipped galley to cook some impressive feasts. George had finally gotten his money wired to the bank and paid me back, despite the doubts that Josephine and Frank had about his good intentions. In the meantime, while I was away in the mountains, he had asked them to loan him some more money so he could eat.
“Five dollar! Zey wouldn’t even loan me ze five dollar!” he laughed as we sat in the lavish cabin of Celebration, which to George represented untold wealth.
We joked about untying the dock lines and sailing away on the fine yacht to Fiji or somewhere no one would ever find it.
“We could be past ze canal en Panama before zey are back from New York…” George laughed.
While Josephine and Frank were away, I also had other unexpected visitors on Celebration. Lawrence and Laura Pitcairn, of Heron I showed up on foot at the harbor one day, and told me they had decided to sail to the Dominican Republic after all. Their boat was anchored in Manzanillo Bay, near the Haitian border. When Josephine and Frank returned, I took a bus over there and visited with them a few more days, patiently biding my time until the day we would set sail again and I could get on with my kayak trip.
The rugged north coast of the Dominican Republic
Seven: A Jungle Coast
And at night there’s fire-flies and the yellow moon,
And in the ghostly palm-trees the sleepy tune
Of the quiet voice calling me, the long low croon
Of the stead Trade Winds blowing.
—John Masefield, “Trade Winds”
Once we were in deep water beyond the entrance to Puerto Plata harbor, Frank set Celebration on an easterly course, paralleling the north coast of the island. Our plan was to motor-sail all night and reach Escondido sometime the following day to break up the long trip to Samana. This leg of the trip has the reputation of being one of the most difficult parts of the Thorny Path route down island, because of the strong trade winds that sweep the coast directly from the east in the direction cruisers have to go to follow the island chain. The accepted method for dealing with this problem is to travel the coast at night, staying close inshore near the mountains, where a nighttime cooling effect counteracts the trade winds from about midnight until 10:00 a.m. Cruising this coast under sail in an easterly direction is almost always out of the question, so only those with strong auxiliary engines attempt this route.
We encountered rough seas as soon as we entered the open water, our progress impeded by each breaking wave that crashed into our bow. But nightfall was coming soon, and we could hope for some relief if the wind died down as it was supposed to. Frank set the autopilot so we could sit back and relax, but when he let go of the helm the b
oat only stayed on course for a few seconds before veering off towards the south, in the direction of the rocky coast. He reset it and the same thing happened again and again, until I suddenly recalled what I had done to cause the problem.
The auto-pilot is controlled by its own below-decks compass. I went down the companionway and opened the storage locker nearest the compass. I had stored two cases of grapefruit juice, packaged in steel cans, just beneath the compass, and this was causing the autopilot to go haywire. I moved the cans and the pilot began functioning correctly.
The trip below, on my hands and knees with my head in the locker, did not do my stomach any good in these rough conditions, and I returned to the deck nauseous and on the verge of seasickness. This feeling did not go away as we pounded on against the wind and sea. Well past midnight, the wind had scarcely abated, but with Celebration’s strong diesel, we were able to made steady progress despite this. The island coastline we passed was sparsely populated, and flickers of man-made light we saw on the black silhouettes of the looming mountains were few and far between. More numerous were the lights of passing freighters and cruise ships farther out to sea on our port side, requiring us to keep a diligent watch to avoid being run down.
When dawn broke we sailed closer inshore within a mile of the cliffs. I could see no beaches where a kayaker seeking refuge from wind and sea could land. The coastline looked like an impregnable fortress, with rows of folded mountains fading away in paler shades of greens and blues to the hazy purple of even higher ranges farther inland. We couldn’t see the entrance to Escondido Bay until we were adjacent to it, as it was concealed from all other angles by the mountains. Josephine said that’s why it’s called escondido – the Spanish word for “hidden.”
The entrance was a narrow channel of deep indigo blue water extending right up to the edge of the mountains. We passed close beneath jungle-covered hills and sheer cliffs draped with cascades of green vines. I could see wisps of smoke rising from the tops of the surrounding ridges, indicating scattered dwellings, and on the more gentle slopes, people had planted hundreds of coconut palms that lifted their feathery crowns above the surrounding mat of green undergrowth. At the back of the small, horseshoe-shaped bay was a crescent beach of dark brown sand, backed by a thick grove of more coconut palms. Smoke rose from the grove, and I could make out small thatched huts nestled in among the shadows of the palm trunks. It was a South Seas scene that I would have expected in Tahiti or Bora Bora, but not less than a thousand miles away from the mainland coast of Florida.
There were no other cruising boats in the bay, so following the advice in Josephine’s guidebook, we dropped anchor far from the beach. Foreign yachts are allowed to anchor here, but since it is not an official port of entry, shore visits are not allowed. The guidebook said that locals have been known to swim out during the night to steal what they could off of yachts, hence the warning about anchoring well out. We had not been settled in long before we saw a dugout canoe put in from the beach and head straight for us. In it were three men, two paddling and the other, who wore a tattered olive-drab military uniform, sitting in the middle with an ancient-looking rifle cradled in his arm. When they pulled alongside, the uniformed man informed Josephine that he was the comandante for the Port of Escondido, and requested permission to come aboard. In the cabin, he looked over Celebration’s documentation, which he obviously couldn’t read, and after asking a few questions and demanding a bottle of rum, gave us permission to stay.
We had no other visitors from the village and slept through the day as best we could in the rolling surge of the poorly protected anchorage. We woke well after dark and Josephine cooked a hearty meal of her schooner stew to give us energy for another night of sailing. The sky was clear, and the stars seemed much closer than they had from the harbor at Puerto Plata, with its surrounding city lights. Only flickering firelight came from the dwellings on the beach here, and the silence was wonderful after a month of nerve-wracking noise in Puerto Plata harbor.
Escondido Harbor, Dominican Republic
We waited until 3:00 a.m. to leave Escondido, and this time the downdraft effect from the mountains did seem to make a difference in the winds. The charts indicated several hundred fathoms of water right up close to shore in this area, so we stayed in close and had a spectacular view of the mountains when dawn broke. The coastline here was still fortress-like, with towering cliffs spilling into the sea. At one point we passed the gaping entrance to a sea cave, its roof at least 50 feet above the breakers.
To reach Samana Bay, we had to round a rugged cape known as Cabo Cabron. Off this point, we were overtaken by a small but fierce squall, with gusts strong enough to knock Celebration flat on her starboard beam before Frank and I could ease the mainsheet and spill the wind from the sail. Drenching rain fell from one small cloud in an otherwise sunny blue sky for about 15 minutes, and then it was gone, leaving us with smooth sailing as we cleared the cape and entered Samana Bay.
Samana Bay is unusually symmetrical in shape, a nearly perfect rectangle, 10 miles wide and 30 miles long, with its mouth facing directly to the east and exposed to the full force of the trade winds coming across the Mona Passage. We sailed downwind into the wide bay, passing close to a small whale that surfaced off our port bow. The town of Samana was another 7 or 8 miles ahead, on the north side of the bay, where a narrow peninsula divides the bay from the Atlantic coast we had just sailed past before rounding the cape. Along this north shore of the bay, we passed gorgeous beaches set at the foot of steep hills covered in thousands of coconut palms. I longed to be in my kayak in such a place, and couldn’t wait until we were cleared and settled in so I could off-load it for some exploring.
The anchorage at Samana is in a wide harbor separated from the vast open bay by a tiny cay that’s connected to the mainland by a footbridge. This cay is the quintessential South Seas deserted island. A rounded green hump rising 50 feet or so above sea level, it is ringed with sandy beaches and bristling with coconut palms that hang out over the water in places. Most of the sailboats present were concentrated in the lee of this cay, and we found an empty space with enough room to anchor and joined them. Frank and I then offloaded the dinghy and mounted the outboard, so we could make the 1-mile run across the harbor to report to customs and immigration at the concrete dock in front of the town, where a small Dominican Navy vessel was moored.
The comandante, a man of about 40, dressed in green jungle fatigues and polished black boots, had no launch to get out to our boat for the inspection, so we carried him in our dinghy. By this time the trade winds had resumed full force and the harbor was choppy. The officer’s displeasure was evident as the inflatable boat smashed through the chop and quickly soaked us all from the waist down. I hated riding in the dinghy anytime there were even the smallest waves, because its blunt bow just buried itself in them, shipping buckets of water into the boat and throwing spray everywhere.
Despite the soaking, the comandante was pleasant enough when he came aboard Celebration to take a quick look around. Once again, we were required to surrender our firearms for the duration of our stay in the harbor. The comandante took a keen interest in my take-apart AR-7 rifle, and asked me to assemble it for him. It was obvious that he greatly coveted this unique little weapon as he pulled back the slide and looked at the mechanism. Totally out of place on his professional military uniform was the large sheath knife that hung at his side. It was one of those cheap survival knives that with the hollow handle and huge, saw-toothed blade that enjoyed such popularity after the release of the Rambo movies. There was a compass in a glass bubble at the end of the hollow hilt, which undoubtedly contained fishhooks, matches, and other survival gear. The blade was housed in a camouflaged plastic sheath. My folding survival rifle would have nicely complemented his armament, preparing him for adventures in the wildest jungles of Hispaniola.
Frank took him back to town with our guns, and later, after catching up on lost sleep, we went ashore to check out our new s
urroundings. The small town of Samana was mostly concentrated along the malécon, (the waterfront drive) and was a lot cleaner and more modern than most of Puerto Plata. It was obviously a tourist spot, and we saw plenty of German and French vacationers in the boutiques and restaurants. The only other Americans were yachties like us. The taxis were motos – the same tiny motorcycles used in Puerto Plata – but here they had covered carts attached, so they could carry as many as four tourists at a time. There were street vendors pushing handcarts of cold sodas and fresh fruit, and popular among the yachters was an ice cream shop where we treated ourselves to papaya milkshakes.
Boatbuilder near Samana, Dominican Republic
It quickly became obvious that Jo and Frank were infatuated with Samana and would be in no hurry to leave. The presence of some old friends of theirs from Georgetown – Jack and Veronica – on the motor yacht English Jack, made it even more likely that we would be in Samana for quite awhile. I was determined not to spend another month cooped up on Celebration, and with beckoning beaches and the vast bay around us begging to be explored; I offloaded and prepared my kayak. There was no oil spill here, and though the water was certainly not Bahamas clear, it was clean.
At first I limited my paddling to the big harbor, using my kayak as a dinghy to go into town and checking out the nearby beaches on the little cay with the footbridge leading to it. Then I studied the charts and began making plans for a tour of the entire bay. I knew that it was restricted and that foreign boats were not supposed to be anywhere but in designated ports of entry, but after seeing the comandante and the one navy patrol boat at the dock that never went on patrol, I figured no one would ever know.
The selection of canned goods and other supplies was quite limited in the little grocery stores of Samana, but I bought enough rice, vegetables, and fruit for a week and packed only my most essential camping gear into the kayak, leaving the rest of my belongings on Celebration. It was disheartening to see how much corrosion and rust had set in during the long weeks my expensive equipment had been stored on the yacht. I could clearly see that much of my gear was not going to last the duration of my planned trip.
On Island Time: Kayaking the Caribbean Page 17
