Luperon DR to Boqueron PR

Wow, this is a hard post to do because we are now in Boqueron, Puerto Rico after spending 3 days traveling from Luperon to Samana in the DR, a week in Samana, 2 days traveling here and have been here for three days and are planning to leave tomorrow for a town south and east of here.  Anyway, here goes.

After spending three weeks in Luperon we finally got settled weather to transit the north coast of the DR to Samana Bay on the DR east coast.  We started by anchoring outside of Luperon Bay at the Pinzon achorage, so named for Martin Pinzon, captain of the Pinta who broke off from Columbus in an attempt to reach Spain first to find glory by preempting Columbus's message of the new world.  Anyway, we left about 8PM in the dark, ran aground, then travelled for 12 hours to Rio San Juan where Ed realized that he had left the anchor loose to wash the mud off of it and it had become detached.  Ca-ching there went $750.   We carry two anchors so we were still able to anchor but now we are in the process of buying a new one when we get to Fajardo, PR.  Anyway, Rio San Juan is a small fishing town, not dependent on the tourist trade, where the people are friendly, the town clean, and it has an interesting mangrove river that is perfectly clean ending/beginning in the middle of town in a park.

After touring the town for the day, we then left that night and journeyed on to Samana Bay and over to Puerto Bahia, a 5 star resort with a nice harbor and reasonable rates of about $70 per day.  It got even better when they offered a free weeks dockage if we would participate in a promotional regatta which included several parties with free booze and food, plus dancing.   Of course all the cruisers said yes.  There were quite a few of us who left Luperon at the same time because of the weather window. Free is a great price!

We had a tremendous time touring by car the north coast beaches, visiting some waterfalls on horseback and a Taino Indian museum where we learned about their culture before nearly complete eradication by the Spanish similarily to the plight of native Americans.   We also visited Los Haitises (iteses) Eco Park across the bay where we visited a hotel, zip lined, and looked at caves.  We could easily have spent another week there!
https://picasaweb.google.com/lh/photo/N-L8eUkS-j7lVTaVwqPtWaUQY6_Ne21M0FbF6FsE5XY?feat=directlink
The regatta on Saturday, we took 17th out of 20 boats. https://picasaweb.google.com/102215137147020825958/RegattaInSamanaDr?authuser=0&authkey=Gv1sRgCP2ZyN7v-pCshgE&feat=directlink The wind was too light for our boat on the second lap and our downwind performance to slow but at least we were not last.  Still, we had a great time and the party that night was fantastic until Ann disappeared and I had to search for here for about 1/2 hour before a maintenance person directed me to a couch by the pool where she was sleeping.

Then is was time to say goodbye to our friends Will, Howard and Gene who we met early in the week and had a good time with at a sing a long that we put together with Ann playing keyboards, me - guitar also joined by two of the staff one who played classical Spanish guitar and the other who sang Meringue, the DRs favorite musical form.  We took Will with us to Los Haitises while Howard and Gene went with our friends, Sheila and Chris, on NeverBored.  What a blast and lots of laughs.  Howard and Gene were a couple, Will's husband was back in Boston.  Will became our helmsman for the regatta, what a blast for him and a convenience for us as it freed us to handle the sails.

On Monday, we left for Boqueron saying goodbye with very fond memories to the Dominican Republic, one of our favorie places so far.  Good people, music and food plus many places left to explore, we will be back.

Enjoying the Dominican Republic

We are still in Luperon; the winds have been 20-30 knots which is too high for leaving so we have been making the best of our time here. 

We went on the 27 waterfalls tour yesterday and slid down 7 of them as that is all we had time for. Ed and I also jumped off the cliff of the last waterfall.  It was a great adrenaline rush. We also enjoyed the company of Bill and Jeannie and Cathy and Larry of two other boats and they were along for the waterfall tour. 

In addition to the waterfalls we saw people carving soapstone, roasting cocao beans and we crushed some coffee beans. It was a very nice day.

We were escorted by Rosa VanSant; her husband is Bruce VanSant the author of the Gentlemens Guide to Passages South which is an important guide for people traveling down island. We were able to meet him last Sunday at a luncheon. We have also enjoyed trivia night here. Tonight there is a full moon party.




Prices are low here, beers are less than $2!

Waterfall Bridge, Imbert, Dominican Republic

 This bridge was part of the trek to the waterfalls.  It was crazy hard to walk on with a crowd.  It twisted and turned so we waited on the way back until it was empty.  What a blast!

Big Sand Cay to Luperon, Dominican Republic

We arrived in Luperon, Dominican Republic Sunday, February 26th after an all night sail leaving the Caicos
at 4:15 pm. . As I lay in the cockpit floor on cushions trying to sleep I was asking Ed, "remind me again why we are doing this?" The winds were supposed to be 15knots from the E but were 20-2K from the SE which gave us a tougher sailing angle and the seas were 3-5 ft with occassional 7 footers. Ed took some sea sickness pills which really helped him. Upon arriving at 9am it rained but only briefly. The harbor is surrounded by lush green mountains and is lovely but gone is the beautiful aqua water and beautiful sand beaches of the Bahamas replaced by a harbor with mangroves.

This morning we were greeted by Pabo;a local who will bring us water and fuel out to the boat
and sold us a Dominican Republic Flag. He seemed very helpful.

We checked in today and I was happy to have a working knowledge of Spanish as I really needed it.
It certainly is different here, seems to be a very poor country. There was a line of goats(cabras) going
down the street today and lots of people riding horses. This will be a very different experience.
We are waiting for our friends to come but the weather windows are not right for coming this way
so we are making new friends. We had lunch at a very nice restaurant with a pool, laundry facilities
and internet but we didn't know about all those things until we arrived there. I have seen no nice
resorts here. We will keep you posted and are going to try tomorrow to post some pictures to our
blogsite. We are getting 38 pesos for every dollar.

March 1st: We went to Santiago today by gwagwa (a taxi crammed with people) and motorbus. Santiago is a big city of almost two million people. We found it difficult to get around due to language issues but eventually someone would understand and point us in the right direction. We toured a large monument to the revolution, went to a large grocery store, the bank and enjoyed lunch before the 2 hour trip back to Luperon.

Food is inexpensive due to the large agricultural basis of the country, rich soil and rain-trapping mountains. We typically eat, drink and have dessert for about $20 for two! It is about double that in the Bahamas and Turks&Caicos.

We plan to stay here for another week or until the trade-winds go lighter allowing us to travel eastward in the night calm as the cool air rolls off the mountains. We plan to go on a waterfall tour next week where we will slide down 27 chutes into the water wearing helmets and life jackets. Pictures are coming soon, we have good internet access.

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George Town Rake and Scrape

George Town, Exumas, The Bahamas Rake and Scrape Band. The guitarist is to the right out of the picture, the guy in orange has a saw that he is playing rhythms on.    A typical song is "Mama don't allow no rake and scrape".  This band plays every Monday night at Eddies Edgewater in GT.