It was hard not to worry about the future as I paddled my loaded kayak west of the anchorage, and out of sight of the town of Samana. It was now April, and I knew that after I got to Puerto Rico, I would barely have enough money left to even start paddling, let alone replace damaged gear and travel another thousand miles over a period of several months. I had less than $300.00 left, and I could use it to keep moving until I ran out completely, or I could try to find work somewhere in Puerto Rico. The other option was to fly back to Mississippi where I could work and save enough money to return.
As I left the Samana area and fell into the rhythm of paddling again, I slowly began to leave my worries behind as well. The north shore of the bay was so fascinating that it required my undivided attention. Just a short distance from the anchorage I was passing the thatched huts of fishermen who mended their nets on the brown sand beaches and carved dugout canoes in the shade of palms. I stopped to admire a clear running stream that spilled off a steep jungle slope into the murky waters of the bay. As I sat near this cascade having a simple lunch, frigate birds with long, forked tails wheeled overhead along the edge of the steep cliffs that overlooked the bay.
A barren peninsula jutted south into the bay at a point east of the waterfall, forcing me to make a wide detour where I encountered breaking surf and had to brace with the paddle to keep from capsizing. The heat had been so intense during my first hour of paddling that I had removed my PFD and put it across the stern deck of the kayak, where I quickly forgot about it. Now, as I emerged drenched from the surf zone, I discovered that it had been swept away unnoticed. I was angry at myself for being so negligent of such an important piece of equipment, but though I spent an hour paddling back and forth through the waves where I’d lost it, I never saw the life jacket again. It might have been prudent to abort the tour of the bay because of it, but I decided I could go on since I planned to hug the shore during most of the 80-mile loop anyway.
I found a passable excuse for a campsite in an area of dense mangrove swamp near the mouth of a small stream the first night, and with difficulty, pitched my tent as the mosquitoes descended. The nylon of the tent had begun to rot, and in addition to the pole that had been twice broken in the Bahamas by wind, the shock cords holding the other poles together had parted, leaving me with a jigsaw puzzle of aluminum and fiberglass pieces that would only fit together in one order.
There were fresh footprints of barefoot adults and children in the mud where I had landed, so before turning in for the night I pulled the kayak up close beside my tent and tied it to one of the poles with a string, so I would at least have a chance of hearing a nocturnal thief. No unwelcome visitors came, but before daylight, a heavy rain did, drenching me through the sagging roof of the worn-out tent. It didn’t stop until well after sunrise, when I finally crawled out to greet a damp, soggy morning. It was easy to see why this eastern end of Hispaniola is so much lusher than the regions of the island west of Puerto Plata. It had rained every day since we’d arrived in Samana, and I had read that it’s because the trade winds bring clouds from the sea that are stopped by these first mountains they encounter on this loftiest of Caribbean islands.
When I left my camp, the bay was dead calm, as the trade winds were completely slack after the nighttime downdrafts. The heat was suffocating due to the lack of a breeze. I passed more thatched huts on the beach and several fishermen in the bay throwing cast nets from their narrow dugouts. Naked children of all ages ran up and down the shore and splashed in the shallows, stopping to stare and wave when they saw my strange version of a canoe. On one otherwise deserted beach, I saw a man building a sizable wooden sailing vessel that was slowly taking shape around its frames in a grove of palms that nearly hid it from the bay. I pulled in to take a look and to talk to him as best I could in my limited Spanish. I gathered that he had been working on the boat for a year and a half, and that he was building it with dreams of sailing to a better life in Puerto Rico. The fellow expressed concern that my kayak was much too small for el mar – the sea – and warned me about the dangerous winds in Samana Bay. I tried to explain that my boat, though tiny compared to his, was made for el mar and impressed him with its seaworthiness by demonstrating an Eskimo roll.
Campsite overlooking Samana Bay
The campsite I found on my second night out on the bay was a vast improvement over the swampy place I had spent the first night. Palms 60 to 80 feet tall overhung the water from the narrow strip of beach where I landed, and behind this beach a freshwater spring filled a rock basin at the foot of the bluffs above before spilling into the bay. I climbed the 30 feet to the top of the bluffs and found a flat mesa, lush with palms, ferns, banana plants, and wildflowers that formed a tropical garden. A massive tree with weird aerial roots hanging from its branches to the ground shaded an idyllic tent site, so I hauled all my gear up there where I could have a view of the bay. When my camp was set up, I spent the rest of the afternoon gathering coconuts and sampling the breadfruit and soursops I found in the trees nearby.
For dinner that night, I cooked my last packet of Spaghetti Bolognese from Operation Raleigh, and watched as thousands of fireflies twinkled against the background of the jungle beyond my camp. The sound of crickets chirping filled the air, and the presence of both these familiar nighttime insects filled me with thoughts of Mississippi. I could not recall ever hearing crickets or seeing fireflies in the Bahamas during all the time I spent camping there.
There was another town called Sanchez on the north shore of Samana Bay, and halfway between it and my campsite on the bluff, I passed a narrow harbor I had not seen on the map and was startled to see a large warship moored there. I veered to the south to give the ship a wide berth, hoping no one on board would notice my tiny kayak from 3 miles away. I knew that it was invisible to most radar systems because I had asked the skippers of several yachts in the Bahamas if they could detect me on their radar and they said they couldn’t. This could be a decided advantage in a place like this, where I was not supposed to be at all. I stayed well offshore the rest of the morning and set a direct course for the western end of the box-shaped bay.
This end of the bay is the only shore not bounded by steep rocky bluffs and small pocket beaches. The uppermost reach of the estuary is instead low and swampy, with mangrove forests like those of the Everglades reaching far out into the water and forming a maze of channels around the mouth of the Rio Yuna, a large river that empties into the bay. This mangrove forest was even taller and more forbidding than those of the Everglades, but near the mouth of the river I found a small bayou winding beneath a tunnel of interlocking branches and decided to take a side trip to look around. Just inside the entrance, the mangroves closed overhead, completely blocking out the sun and creating a mysterious sanctuary of perpetual twilight. Though I expected at any moment to attract a vicious attack of mangrove insects, I did not get bitten by a single mosquito, deer fly, or no-see-um. I followed this enchanting waterway for more than a mile before turning back to retrace my route to the bay.
By the time I had eaten lunch while drifting in the silence of the flooded forest, the trade winds had kicked in for the day and upon returning to open water I was greeted by muddy brown breakers that pounded the sandbars at the mouth of the river. It was a dangerous place to be caught in high wind, because of the effect of the river current flowing against the wind, creating steep, unpredictable wave shapes. I ran aground on several mudflats before reaching deeper water. Once clear of the shallows, it took 3 hours of hard paddling in the wind to reach the southwest corner of the bay.
My map showed no settlements in this area, and I knew that it was, on paper at least, a Dominican version of a national park, called Los Haites. Cliffs towered above the bay here, and I followed the shoreline close in until I found a narrow fjord-like channel between a break in the limestone walls and paddled in to seek refuge from the wind and waves. It was like entering another world once I left the chaos of the open bay behind me. The channel was as smoo
th as a pond, the silence broken only by my splashing paddle. I passed a network of bamboo structures floating in the water that looked like a primitive but elaborate fish trap and indicated that someone frequented this hidden canyon. At the far end of the waterway was a tiny strip of beach piled high with discarded oyster shells. The beach was only about 50 feet wide, framed on both sides by cliffs, but the area directly behind it appeared to be a valley, overflowing with green jungle that pushed out towards the beach and climbed the steeps slopes on both sides. I landed and discovered a footpath that led into this forest. The immensity of the trees and the variety of greenery surrounding me was stunning. I lost no time digging my shoes out of the kayak, applying insect repellant, and starting off up the trail with my machete in hand.
The valley turned out to be a sort of box canyon, and at the rear the trail climbed rapidly in a series of switchbacks, winding between moss-covered boulders the size of trucks and beneath a closed canopy of greenery. From an outcrop a couple hundred feet up, I had a splendid view of the lush valley I had just walked through. Beyond that point, the trail disappeared into the forest again and followed a dry streambed farther inland.
The exotic vegetation surrounding this pathway included tree ferns 20 feet tall, lianas as thick as my legs, and countless varieties of flowers, growing both from the ground and from epiphytic plants that clung in clusters to the sides of the trees. I hiked until I reached a level plateau at the top of the valley, soaked with sweat from the difficult climb in the greenhouse-like humidity of the forest. I wanted to go on, but decided it might not be wise to leave my boat and gear unattended any longer. This trail was obviously well used, and had to connect the bay with a village or small community somewhere beyond this forest. It would only be a matter of time before someone would come along and discover my strange vessel on the little beach.
Coconut harvesters, Samana Bay
Back at my boat, I set up the tent near the water’s edge and slung my hammock just inside the forest. This was the sort of tropical paradise I had dreamed about all those months I spent planning my trip, and I was not about to get in a hurry to leave it. I spent the rest of the afternoon exploring the immediate area near my camp, looking for water and food. Two tall coconut palms stood nearby, loaded with drinking nuts that were nearly impossible to reach, hanging as they were at least 50 feet above the ground and accessible only by a difficult climb up near-vertical trunks. Wild banana plants were everywhere, but they yielded no fruit that I could find. I knew I could get water from the stems if I needed it badly enough, but I could find no surface water anywhere in the valley. I would have been content to stay in this tropical garden indefinitely if I had been able to locate a reliable water supply.
I spent the second day in a more diligent search for wild fruits, and turned up bananas, oranges, breadfruit, and soursops. In my hammock I spent hours lying on my back looking up at the strange birds that flitted about in the foliage, and listening to the raucous calls of others hidden in the deeper recesses of the forest. Like most of my gear, the net hammock was rotten from constant exposure to moisture in the past months, and by late afternoon it finally parted and dumped me heavily on the ground, ending my perfect idle.
My solitude also ended the following morning, when just after breakfast I heard voices and then footsteps coming along the trail from the jungle. A moment later, three young black men walked into view. They were much more surprised to see a long-haired gringo sitting there beside a nylon tent and a weird-looking turquoise canoe than I was at their sudden appearance out of the bush. All three were barefoot and dressed in dirty trousers and shirts that were near rags. Each man carried a string bag bulging with fruit and vegetables, and like all the rural Dominicanos I had seen, they each carried a machete – the tropical tool of a thousand uses.
They didn’t speak a word of English, but with my improving Spanish I was able to learn that they lived a few kilometers inland, along the trail I had followed out of the valley. They had walked here on this Saturday morning to meet a boat that would take them across the bay to Sanchez, where they would find a gua-gua to take them to the mercado in Samana. They were going there to sell the produce they carried in the bags. They could scarcely believe that I had paddled all the way from Samana in my kayak, so with my totally inadequate Spanish, I didn’t bother trying to explain the larger scope of my trip.
They had a long wait for their boat, so one of them took some large roots out of his bag, and borrowing my largest cooking pot, soaked them in water while he prepared to fire for boiling them. Most experienced outdoorsmen have seen a variety of ways to support a pot over a cooking fire, including propping the edges of the pot up on rocks and the classic cowboy method depicted in old Westerns of suspending the pot from its bail on a stick set up to hang low over the coals. But if I learned nothing else of value on my entire trip, the ingenious method this backwoods Dominican showed me for boiling water on an open fire has since proven useful in so many camps and in so many different places that I don’t know how I ever got along without it. He had water boiling in as little time as it would take most modern campers to unpack and set up a high-tech stove. All that is required is three green sticks, each about an inch and a half in diameter and cut from a nearby sapling in about half a minute with a razor sharp machete. The sticks are then pounded into the ground with a handy rock, each set at an inward-leaning angle and driven until the tops are level and just the right distance apart to support the bottom of the pot. Beneath this sturdy tripod of flame-resistant green wood, dry twigs the diameter of a pencil are stacked until they reach just to the bottom of the pot. When set afire, these twigs burn rapidly with a hot flame, even though the size of the fire is ridiculously small by most standards. By keeping this twig fire fed with fresh fuel, it is possible to boil water in as little time as practically any stove and to keep it boiling as long as needed. Even though these root vegetables required almost an hour of cooking, the green support sticks of the tripod held, though they were dried out and almost to the point of combustion by the time the cooking was complete.
When the taro-like vegetables were done, a banana leaf was spread on the ground to serve as a platter, and we squatted around this in a semi-circle. I had a trick of my own that got their attention as surely as their fire-building method riveted mine. I broke out my can of Tony Chacere’s Creole Seasoning, sprinkled some on my portion of the vegetables, and invited them to do the same. They sampled the red powdery condiment gingerly at first, by sprinkling a bit on their fingers and licking it off. This resulted in wide grins all around, and then the can was passed around and liberal doses of the spicy Cajun concoction applied to everyone’s food. They were so excited about it that I decided to present them the remainder of the can as a gift. I had another half-full can still tucked away in the kayak that would see me through for at least several more weeks until I could get Ernest or someone to mail me some more.
As we ate, I answered their questions about the U.S. to the best of my ability with my limited command of the language. After our simple jungle meal was finished, I took out the few photos from home that I carried and passed them around. The picture that intrigued them the most was one of me standing beside my car on a busy Manhattan street, and this led to many more questions about New York, a city I scarcely knew and had only visited once. I then asked them to pose for new photos as I got out my camera – a request which they were happy to oblige as they clowned around and pretended to be true savages, taking off their shirts and brandishing their machetes in an attempt to look like bushmen. But when their boat arrived, it was obvious they were excited about going to town.
The next morning I decided that it was time to leave this tranquil campsite and push on in my exploration of the bay. It was a hard place to leave, but I reasoned that there might be more such valleys, equally beautiful and waiting to be discovered. Just as I broke camp, heavy rain squalls began to sweep across the bay, but I was not going to let that keep me from traveling. Not far fr
om my campsite, I met local fishermen working from dugouts, and soon passed a small settlement of thatched huts on the shore.
Beyond this community, there was more wild coastline, bordered by rocky bluffs, pocket beaches, and jungle. I reached a small indentation that was sort of a cove and landed on a strip of crescent beach overhung by giant trees. I didn’t intend to camp there, but after landing for a brief rest and a look around, I noticed something strange about the limestone cliff a couple hundred feet up a steep hill to my right. Most of the cliff was covered in vines that obscured its face like an overgrown beard, but there was a strange darkness behind one part of the vine cloak. I grabbed my machete and worked my way up the hill. Just as I had suspected, the vines concealed the entrance to a yawning cave, its roof suspended at least 50 feet over a flat rock shelf. Except for the tropical vegetation, the cave was almost identical to one I had found while hiking in the Ozark Mountains of Arkansas. Remembering the many arrowheads I’d found in that other cave, and knowing Hispaniola had once been home to Taino, Arawak, and Caribe Indians, I searched the leaf-littered floor for artifacts. I found no stone implements, but old middens of shells were a sure sign that ancient peoples had used the place. It would have been a perfect place to live, with excellent shelter from the frequent rains that swept the bay, and a good observation point from which to watch for any enemies that might approach by canoe.
Near the back of the rock shelf that formed the floor of the shelter, there was a deep crevice with a sandy floor, and I could see a black passageway leading off under the mountain. With visions of piles of undiscovered artifacts or even pirate’s treasure, (after all, this area was long a center of Caribbean pirate activity) I scrambled back to my kayak to get my large diving light. When I returned, I climbed down to the bottom of the crevice and cautiously walked into the dark chamber a few yards, finding no artifacts or Spanish gold, only piles of bones from some type of small animal. The cave was obviously part of a vast underground network, with tunnels leading to who knows where, but I didn’t relish the idea of getting lost in there and disappearing without a trace on this lonely south shore of Samana Bay. If there were treasures hidden in those deep tunnels beneath the mountain, they would have to wait until I could return someday with someone to help me find them. Still, fantasizing about it gave me something to do that afternoon as I returned to the open rock shelf and sat overlooking the bay. I imagined myself paddling back across the bay to the anchorage, the kayak so heavy laden with gold that I would have to leave all my gear behind. In my mind I worked out the complex problems of smuggling the gold out of the country, and the difficult decisions that would have to be made about how to spend all that money. Perhaps I would buy a sailing yacht of my own that would be big enough to carry my kayak on the deck and whisk me off to South Pacific islands.
On Island Time: Kayaking the Caribbean Page 18
