We arrived in the Dominican
Republic at about noon today. Did you know
there are mountains here? I didn’t know –
what a surprise when the sun came up and clouds moved away – mountains in Haiti
and Dominican Republic. It is a
beautiful country, the part we’ve seen from the coast anyway. We called on the local VHF radio and Papo
(local guy in the mooring area) came out in his boat and showed us to our
mooring for the night. He helped us hook
it up and everything. The price: $2.00 per night. WOW! A
“cheap” mooring ball in the Bahamas was $20.00 a night. After we were all set up with our mooring
ball, the local “officials” then came and made an “inspection” of our
boat. Three men came on board, 1 of
which spoke a medium amount of English.
We’ve read that the main person, the “commandante” comes aboard
expecting a “tip”. Seriously. We just came 30+ hours on awful seas, he
could have whatever he wanted as far as I was concerned. But I thought I would try the old fashioned
way. I took out some cookie dough and
made some fresh chocolate chip cookies.
A dozen. There were none left
after the three men left. They each got
one of our precious Coke Zeros, too.
They filled out their paperwork and then proceeded to walk around the
boat and had us open lockers and storage areas for them to “inspect”. The commandante was very interested in the
food I had in our refrigerator. Oh
brother! Anyway, we passed inspection
and then had to go ashore to clear customs.
Imagine 4 small buildings joined together with a desk and 1, maybe 2,
chairs in each tiny building. We had to
go into each, meet with an “official” – some spoke English, most didn’t – and fill
out basically the same paperwork and give them more money. $63 for our boat to come in, $20 to the
commandante for his entrance form, $20 for 2 tourist visitor cards, $10 for an
agriculture card (even though our cupboards are bare with no agricultural
products) and another $20 to somebody for something.
After our wallets were cleaned
out, we walked into town searching for food.
We found a local phone company and I purchased a SIM card and a data
card for $17 U.S. and then we went and had a wonderful lunch (with fresh banana
milkshakes) for 2, for $7.00. Nice,
inexpensive place. We hope to stay here
a week as another weather front passes.
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