#25 - Bienvenido a la Republica Dominicana, Habla Espanol?
09 April 2014 | Culebra, PR
Gwen
We left Sapodilla Bay after three days on the hook and made our way across the Caicos Bank. We were aiming for South Caicos, part of T&C, to wait for a window to make passage to the DR. We headed out, a convoy of 5 boats, Serenada, Leeloo, Simplicity 2, Nightwatch and Slow Waltz. The conditions on the bank were a little rough, lots of chop and wind, you guessed it, on the nose. Since we began easting in the trade winds, Guillaume has noted that we now have two points of sail: on the bloody nose, and just about on the bloody nose. Conditions such as they were, we decided to fall back to Six Hill Cay, a small island with a white sand bottom and crystal blue water, and some protection from the wind, however the swell did wrap around the island, so the anchorage was rolly. While we were there, we went in the water to inspect the hull, rudder and prop. We were alarmed to find about 15 wraps of twine around the prop. Guillaume recalled a sudden loss of speed, before whatever we had snagged, broke loose (probably some fishing gear).
All told, we were weathered in for 6 days, waiting for a decent weather window to make the 20 + hour passage to the DR. We finally weighed anchor at 9 am. Our 23 hour passage took us over ocean depths greater than 12,000 feet, under millions of stars and off the coast of Big Sand Cay, two humpback whales. Serenade, another boat we met in Miami had taken the same weather window. There are two main ports of entry that cruisers take when entering the DR. One is Luperon, an anchorage, and the other is Ocean World, a marina. The water in the Luperon anchorage is “fouled”. We were told that if you drop a dock line in the water, that you should wash your hands if you touch it. No thanks. The other negative about Luperon is that you have to deal with Spanish-only speaking officials all on your own, who may or may not ask you for a “tip” or extra fees whereas in a marina, you have a marina representative who speaks English and will facilitate your check in and all will be on the up-and-up. Not to mention that Ocean World is pretty swanky place, with a casino and swimming pool and a reasonable price at $1.66 / foot. So in case you didn’t figure it out, we went to Ocean World.
We tied up in our assigned slip, and Greg, our friend on Simplicity 2 went about arranging a car since we decided that we wanted to travel over land to the south shore of DR to visit Santo Domingo, the historic capital. Six of us (Leeloo, Simplicity 2 and Slow Waltz) set off in our rented SUV arranged by the concierge. It was about a 2 hour drive. That’s 2 hours of high speed frogger, dodging chickens, horses and motorcycles carrying families of 4. Greg was our fearless driver and fit right in! We get into the capital, and now we are looking for the old city armed only with a cartoon map contained in a glossy brochure. Dominicans are driving by us and pointing at our tire and speaking very fast (it all sounds fast) Spanish. We poke out the window and sure enough, the tire is flat. We find a spot to pull off and Mario, Greg and Guillaume start installing the spare. Unfortunately, it is also flat. So here we are in the middle of downtown Santo Domingo and no one speaks English. There are certainly lots of volunteers to help six gringos in a rental vehicle who don’t speak Spanish. How do we go about negotiating a price for an unofficicial taxi to take us, we hope, to a tire shop to get our tire fixed? We manage to negotiate a price of $30 USD (down from $50) and we decide that Greg and I will go, since I seem to speak about 20 words of Spanish that I recall from a couple of Spanish courses I took in University. The shop tells us the tire is shot and they will sell us a new one for $55. It feels like a big accomplishment when the guy drops us off at the SUV with a functional tire. Except, the traffic cop had called his buddy in to help even though we have already made arrangements with the other taxi, and since he followed us to the tire shop and then insisted on installing the new tire he’s not letting go of the car until we give him some extra money. We had to be quite insistent that we had paid the agreed amounts and then some before they finally let us go. Sheesh! Unfortunately we lost 2 hours of daylight to tour the capital. Oh well, we made the most of it. Toured some beautiful 16th century buildings, had a cocktail and headed back to Puerto Plata. An eventful day.
DR is our first stop where the first language is not English. Someone asked me if language was an issue, and before we arrived in the DR, clearly not. However in the DR, it is definitely an issue. It is the exception where someone speaks English. I installed a couple of apps on my ipad and I have been practicing my very rudimentary Spanish skills. It’s pleasant to say a few words in Spanish to the locals, they seem to really appreciate it.
One day we wanted to check out some nearby waterfalls. We drove out to 27 waterfalls and did a 7 waterfall hike up and rode the falls down. The falls go through a canyons etched in limestone with multiple pools. There were some 20 foot jumps. It was a fantastic day. We hired a videographer to follow the six of us. Sometime when I have a good enough connection, I will post some video.
Our next stop in the DR was Samana. Stay tuned!