Luperon, Dominican Republic

February 18, 2014

After 12 hours of wonderful sleep last night, we got up this morning and had some boat projects to accomplish before we started the day.  Daniel washed off all of the salt crystals that were all over the boat and D-Time and I stayed inside and defrosted the freezer.  The freezer has to be defrosted every so often and well, that’s taken care of for a while.  After that, there was an announcement on the VHF radio of a local “swap meet” for cruisers and “southern BBQ sandwiches”.  Well, it sounded interesting so we went into town to investigate.  When we arrived, we told them we were there for the “southern” BBQ and wanted to know what made it southern.  Apparently the cook was from Louisiana/Mississippi – and that was good enough for us.  She asked where we were from (said we had an accent ??) and I said Alabama, originally, and she told us that her daughter wants to go to the University of Alabama.  Really, we’re in the Dominican Republic and we come across a girl that wants to go to ‘Bama?  Crazy.  I had carried my “Alabama” tote shopping bag and had an extra with me.  After I spoke with the daughter about her desire to go to Bama, I shared one of my tote shopping bags with her.  She was so happy for the treasure. 

After lunch, we went walking through the town and saw a couple of pigs running around “downtown” and about 5 sheep “grazing” on the lawn of the town square.  The town really did shut down from 12 – 2 for “siesta time”.  It was interesting.  We found one very small produce store we went into to purchase some fruit and vegetables.  Did I mention the native language is Spanish?  I’m only on level 1, session 3 of my Rosetta Stone Spanish language course and Daniel’s high school Spanish is just a bit better than my Rosetta Stone Spanish.  There we were faced with different fruits and vegetables and didn’t know what to pick.  I saw a pineapple, I recognized it, and Daniel said – let’s try something local.  Okay, I said, but what is what??  I asked the lady and the man, apparently the owners of the store, what everything was and they told me, in Spanish.  Uh oh.  I called our son, Brian, for help but he quickly reminded me that he teaches ENGLISH to people who speak Spanish.  I called our daughter-in-law, Sonia, and thankfully she was available.  Via FaceTime, I took her through the small store and let her talk to the lady behind the counter.  Apparently, Daniel and I had already picked up and paid for a papaya and another “fruit” (that actually turned out to be a pumpkin!).  After Sonia quit laughing (she said you don’t even know how to cook the pumpkin vegetable), she helped us pick out a bapana and the papaya and we happily left the store.  [Note:  Once we got the papaya home, I had to place another FaceTime call to Sonia to ask how to cut up/serve a papaya.  It was delicious!] After we picked out our fruits, the lady behind the counter held up an extremely fresh chicken, skinned, by it’s neck, and asked if I wanted to buy one?  (My chicken comes in a package and wrapped in plastic, no thank you.) 

One thing I forgot to mention about our arrival yesterday, when the commandante came on board C-Time, he kept telling us that this is a very safe place to be.  We thanked him for the information.  He proceeded to get off our boat and said, do you have an extra rope?  I need one to tie to my boat, it was stolen.  Not by someone from here, someone from somewhere else.  We felt like it was a “tip” and gave him an extra we were going to dispose of anyway.  Then we went into town and as we were leaving the dinghy dock, Paco (the guy that runs our mooring area) saw us and told us that, it’s very safe here, no problems at all.  We told him thanks for the information.  Then he offered us a ride into town and we said, sure.  We hopped into the back seat of his truck and there on the floor board is a sawed off pump shotgun.  We were like, I thought you said it was safe here…he said, oh, that’s not for Luperon, that’s for when I go somewhere else.  Oh, boy.