But the fact remained that I was sitting there in the lair of some long-forgotten people with barely $300 to my name. I could almost feel the presence of the naked savages that had once inhabited this rock shelter, and it was easy to envision them squatting around smoky campfires, grilling fish from the bay, a fleet of long dugouts beached on the sand below next to my kayak. They had lived here for centuries without the need for gold or anything that it could buy, and like them, I would have to learn to be even more resourceful if I were to continue traveling the islands on my limited budget.
I camped on the beach below the cave that night, and when daybreak came, I was once again visited by my old friends from hell – swarms of no-see-ums. Black clouds of the tiny insects descended upon me and attacked so viciously that I ran cursing into the bay as fast as I could, holding my breath and staying submerged until my lungs ached. I had to endure their attack long enough to break down my camp and cram my stuff in the kayak, then I pushed off paddled far out into the bay to escape them. I then paddled on to the east until I was at a point on the south coast of the bay that was adjacent to the anchorage in Samana.
Though I had lost my life jacket, the thought of the 10-mile crossing of the bay didn’t bother me, since my destination was in sight on the other side due to the mountains that rise inland from Samana. In the Bahamas or the Florida Keys, a crossing of that distance would have taken me out of sight of land. But despite the benign appearance of the bay, halfway across I was caught in a blinding squall with rain so heavy I couldn’t see a hundred yards in any direction. It beat down on me with a fury, driven by wind that caused it to sting my face and threatened to tear the paddle out of my hand. The storm was intense but short-lived, and a half hour later I was once again paddling under sunny skies. I reached the north shore a few miles east of the anchorage, stopping to check out an uninhabited island called Cayo Levantado that we had passed when entering the bay on Celebration. Between this island and the town of Samana, I paddled through an anchorage called Bahia de las Flechas (The Bay of Arrows). This bay was named by Christopher Columbus, who had anchored there during his second voyage of discovery and was greeted by a rain of Arawak arrows that flew from the shore in such numbers that they darkened the sky.
Back at the Samana anchorage, Frank and Josephine were passing their days on Celebration doing little or nothing – Frank going through a thick novel every day. They talked of leaving for Puerto Rico, but made no commitment to a departure date. I was frustrated with waiting, especially after having just experienced a week of freedom in my kayak, camping and traveling at my own pace. But I knew I could not buck the head-on trade winds for 100-mile Mona Passage to Puerto Rico. I would have to wait for this one last passage on Celebration before I could once again travel independently. I spent the next few days paddling around the local area, visiting Cayo Levantado several more times and generally hanging out in Samana.
One hot afternoon I was sitting in the ice cream shop when three German tourists, a man and two women, all in their early 20’s, came in and began asking me questions about the attractions of the area. The young man introduced himself as Stephan. One of the women was his girlfriend, and the other woman, Viola, was single. I was instantly charmed by this beautiful blonde and wanted to do everything I could to spend more time in her company. Josephine and Frank had told me about a nearby waterfall they had visited while I was away kayaking, so this offered a perfect opportunity to invite my new friends along as I was anxious to see it for myself anyway.
We hired one of the motos with the carts attached and rode this conveyance several miles west of town to a place where a small stream called the Rio de los Cocos crosses the road. The waterfall was a few hundred yards upstream, the driver said, so we arranged to have him pick us up a couple of hours later and set off up the dirt path he pointed to. Along the way we passed a couple of primitive huts with thatch roofs, similar to those I had seen on the south shore of the bay. The forest here was equally jungle-like as well, if less remote. We emerged at the edge of a deep pool of clear water, and on the opposite side of the pool was a smooth rock face where the water cascaded 20 feet in a thin sheet from the stream above. It was a magical setting – completely deserted and apparently pristine – a tropical garden of lush ferns and myriad broadleaf herbs. But when I lined up my new friends along the edge of the pool to snap a photo, my waterproof Minolta camera chose that moment to cease functioning, leaving me with no means to record the scenery here or anywhere else for the rest of the trip. I was outraged at the malfunctioning camera, but the others were ready for a swim, so I put it away and tried to forget it.
My German friends traveled much lighter than I did, carrying only small daypacks as their entire complement of luggage for a 6-week vacation. This of course left no room for such trivialities as swimsuits, so in typical uninhibited European fashion, they thought nothing of removing all their clothing and diving in. Not wanting to be different just because I was an unsophisticated American not conversant in 3 or 4 languages like them, I stripped and followed them in. Swimming in cold, fresh water was a welcome change after months of swimming in the sea, and the cliff at the top of the waterfall made a perfect diving platform. We stayed there a good hour until the chill of the water became too much, then dressed and headed back to Samana.
That evening we ate at a cheap Chinese restaurant on the hill overlooking the anchorage, and Viola told me they were going back to Boca Chica, a little resort town on the south coast of the island, in the morning. She said they would be staying there 3 more weeks, and that there was room for me if I wanted to come visit.
Two more boring days on Celebration with no decision about leaving from Frank and Josephine, as well as visions of Viola that I could not erase from my mind, convinced me to make the overland trip to Boca Chica. To get there I had to take a bus first to Santo Domingo, the capital of the Dominican Republic and a city I had wanted to see anyway. The city is the oldest European settlement in the Americas, founded by Columbus in 1496. Reaching it from Samana took most of the day, the bus making innumerable stops along the way across the island to let off and pick up passengers along the road. There was another long delay to change a flat tire. When I reached Santo Domingo, I took another bus to Boca Chica, 30 miles to the east, anxious to see Viola. I could explore Santo Domingo on the way back.
I found her on the beach outside the bungalow where she was staying, and here I set foot in the actual Caribbean Sea for the first time, if it is defined as the basin bounded to the north by Cuba, Hispaniola, Puerto Rico and the Virgin Islands. I was anxious to paddle it in my kayak, but I knew that would have to wait until I reached Puerto Rico, which I intended to round by paddling the south coast of that island.
The beach at Boca Chica was crowded with tourists, mostly European. Viola had staked out a claim under a beach umbrella, and I spent the rest of the day enjoying the view with her from the comfort of beach chairs. We ate out at a new restaurant that first night, paying too much money for what turned out to be bad food. I could not afford to do much more of that, as this trip across the island had the potential to quickly wipe out the remainder of my travel funds. But at least I had a place to stay, and I enjoyed my brief interlude in Viola’s company. It seemed unlikely that I would ever see her again, as she was quite settled in Germany and happily employed at the Mercedes Benz plant in Stuttgart.
When I left Boca Chica, I arrived back in Santo Domingo on a Saturday night and rented a cheap room for just a few dollars near the historic square in the center of downtown. At dawn on Sunday morning, I walked the quiet streets past a statue of Christopher Columbus and peered into the fortress-like windows of a 15th-century cathedral where he is reputedly buried. In the dim light I could see hooded monks lighting candles in preparation for morning mass. I would have liked to spend more time in the old city if I had more money to spend, but I really needed to get to Puerto Rico at this point. I left for Samana, determined to nag Josephine and Frank about leaving until I c
ould get them to overcome their inertia.
I was pleasantly surprised to find that they were ready too, and were waiting on me to return and help with the preparations for the crossing. I spent an entire day making trips back and forth across the choppy harbor in the dinghy, ferrying jerry cans to replace Celebration’s 150-gallon water supply and then diesel to top off the fuel we had burned motoring all the way from Puerto Plata. I spent another day snorkeling under the hull with a brush to scrub off the marine growth that was starting to accumulate on the bottom from a month of being anchored in one place. It would only get worse if we stayed longer… Nearby, a dilapidated sailboat had so much growth on the hull it looked like a natural reef. The 50-something year-old fellow that owned it said he had sailed into Samana 17 years ago and just couldn’t bring himself to leave. He seemed content, sharing his floating home with a beautiful local girl he had married that couldn’t have been more than 18.
When our preparations were completed and we were ready, the weather wasn’t, so we had a few more days to kill before we could leave. We spent much of this time on board English Jack, the 54-foot motor yacht owned by Jack and Veronica, who Frank and Josephine had befriended in the Bahamas. English Jack was a million-dollar vessel, equipped with a luxurious air-conditioned main salon for entertaining, so we watched movies with them on the VCR while waiting for favorable weather. Such luxury was not necessarily an advantage, however, and Jack told us of his difficulties, from the prodigious quantities of fuel he had burned to bring the yacht so far from Florida, to the theft such apparent wealth had invited from the locals wherever they went. Here in the Samana anchorage, thieves had swam out to the yacht one night and stolen the 25-horsepower Yamaha engine off their dinghy, then slashed the $3,000 inflatable with their knives. It was inevitable that flaunting such wealth in front of such impoverished people would lead to such incidents.
Jack had recently been back to Puerto Plata by car, and said that George Bouillon was still there, making arrangements for his wedding and wading through the red tape required to get permission for Millie to leave with him on Winning Edge.
On April 19th, we got a needed break in the trade winds and decided to leave for a night passage to Puerto Rico late that afternoon. The comandante of the harbor, still wearing his Rambo survival knife, came out in a borrowed dinghy to clear us out and return our firearms, which were in a much rustier condition than when we’d surrendered them a month before. As soon as he was gone, I pulled up the two anchors and we motored out of the harbor.
The Mona Passage, like the Gulf Stream, has a reputation for being a particularly dangerous body of water to cross. Currents converging from the Atlantic and the Caribbean between Hispaniola and Puerto Rico, combined with strong trade winds and frequent storms, make the passage almost always rough and unpredictable. Sailboats and other large vessels are advised to steer a course well north of Mona Island and Isla Desecheo, the only land breaking up the crossing. When I had originally planned to try and paddle across, I saw Mona Island as a convenient rest stop. From the extreme easternmost cape of the Dominican Republic, it is a mere 30 miles to Mona, a weird island riddled with caves that are supposed to be haunted and that are rumored to contain a fortune in hidden pirate’s gold. From Mona Island, it is another 39 windward miles to the western shores of Puerto Rico. Now more knowledgeable about the strength of the trade winds, I knew I could not do such a crossing under paddle power alone. The deep water passage that sailboats were advised to take from Samana to Puerto Rico was more than 100 miles, and passed far north of Mona Island and the treacherous capes on the eastern tip of Hispaniola.
The prospect of this daunting windward bash had for many of the cruisers in Samana created an apathy and unwillingness to leave similar to that of Georgetown’s “Chicken Harbor.” This reluctance had begun to work on Frank and Josephine as well, and once we left the protection of Samana Bay, motoring steadily into rough breaking seas, they began discussing the wisdom of turning back to wait for better conditions. I voted to push on, and Frank concurred, saying we would likely never get any better conditions, so the decision was made. Josephine went below and returned with Celebration’s American ensign, which Frank restored to it’s place of honor flying from the backstay after taking down the Dominican courtesy flag we had been flying for two months.
Once again we were troubled by a malfunctioning autopilot as soon as we set our course and turned it on, but this time the problem was not caused by canned goods stored too close to the compass – I had made sure of that before we left. The complex electronic mechanism had apparently died, as no amount of coaxing and fiddling with the controls could persuade it to steer a straight course. I took the helm, and continued to steer all through the night, managing to stay awake by listening to blaring music on the headphones of my Sony Walkman and drinking several cold Cokes.
We crashed into 8 to 10 foot seas for the next 30 hours, until we at last reached the lee of mountainous Puerto Rico. I succumbed to seasickness from all the rolling and pitching shortly before dawn, and felt much better after getting the puking over with. It seemed to take forever to get close to the island after we sighted it, and by the time we made our approach to Mayaguez Harbor, night had fallen and millions of man-made lights twinkled like stars on the slopes of black mountains. It was easy to see we were back in U.S. territory. No city in the Bahamas, Turks and Caicos, or the Dominican Republic had lights such as these.
The harbor at Mayaguez is only a slight indentation in the curving coastline that offers little protection in any wind other than the prevailing easterlies of the trade winds. We dropped anchor about a half mile off the beach, and fell asleep to the sounds of traffic and music drifting out from the city on a warm breeze. In the morning we took the dinghy to the dock at place called Club Pescado and walked into town to clear U.S. Customs and Immigration. To my surprise, this was no more complicated than making a quick phone call to a bored official who took down our passport numbers.
Josephine and Frank were interested in buying some hardware they needed for the boat, so we set off walking through the business district, checking each ferreteria until they found what they needed. Street corner stands sold American beer, so out of patriotic duty, Frank and I bought a couple of ice-cold Bud Lights and enjoyed a change from the Heineken, Becks, and Presidente we had been drinking for months.
That afternoon we found our way to the Mayaguez shopping mall, and walking through the spacious, air-conditioned corridors between ultra-modern chain stores that were identical to those back home, I knew for sure that I was back in the U.S.A., even if I was still on a Caribbean island. When I passed the door to a travel agent’s office in the mall, I decided at the spur of the moment to step inside and inquire about a flight to the mainland. Given my financial situation, it seemed to make sense to go back to Mississippi, where I had family, friends, and connections, to earn enough money to return in a few weeks and resume my trip from Mayaguez. After talking to the travel agent, I was disappointed to learn that a one-way flight to New Orleans would cost more than all the money I had. I would have to think of an alternative, or else try to find work in the Mayaguez area.
Before I made that decision, however, I wanted to go to San Juan, the capital city, where I expected to pick up mail for the first time since Georgetown. I had an acquaintance in that city, a young woman named Elaine Solis, whom I’d met in a botany class at the University of Southern Mississippi during my final semester there when I was planning my trip. I had told her of my intentions of visiting her native island along my intended route, and she had given me her address, saying that she would be there when I arrived and that I could have mail forwarded to her at her mother’s house. She was incredulous that I had actually arrived in Puerto Rico when I called her that day from the Mayaguez Mall, and told me that I had lots of mail waiting for me at her house.
Leaving my kayak on Celebration, I took a small bus the following day from Mayaguez to San Juan. This Linea Sultana mini-bus turned o
ut to be a much more civilized way to travel than the gua-guas of the Dominican Republic. The mini-bus was air-conditioned, the driver stayed on his proper side of the road, the passengers did not bring their chickens with them, and I did not have to accommodate extra women and children on my lap. The highway twisted along the rocky cliffs north of Mayguez, providing views of the Mona Passage before turning east to follow the Atlantic coast towards San Juan. Much of the rural scenery in between was similar to that of the Dominican Republic, and surprisingly, there were areas where some people lived almost as primitively.
On Island Time: Kayaking the Caribbean Page 19
