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.