TRIP INTO THE DOMINICAN REPUBLIC MOUNTAINS

February 20, 2014

My birthday is coming up and in celebration my husband is taking me on a trip :-).  Ok, so we are already on the trip of a lifetime - but still, my birthday is coming up and we will use any excuse to expand the adventure.  Our Kiwi friends, Mark and Amanda, wanted to go up into the mountains of the Dominican Republic and asked if we would like to join them.  It happens to be Amanda's birthday as well, so let's have a birthday party!

We left C-Time at about 10 this morning and Mark and Amanda had arranged with their mooring ball owner for us to rent a car from a local person.  We were to rent it and drive it for a couple of days.  We figured a local Avis person or something.  We stand on the street in Luperon and a man named Franklin pulls up in his Ford Explorer with his 12 month old son.  He tells us, in broken English, to get in.  We figure we're going to a car lot.  We drive about 8 blocks across town and Franklin stops.  He said, "You pay me now".  So we paid him $100 U.S. for 3 days in a relatively new SUV.  Franklin then says, "Ok, bye" and walks off.  I'm like, really???  We are all standing there with our mouths open and after we got ahold of ourselves, we started the car and drove off.  First stop, buy 10 gallons of gas at a cost of about $55.  Then we headed towards Santiago.  The traffic in Santiago was as crazy as driving in New York City or even, Bogota, Colombia!  Mark did an exceptional job, but man it was some crazy driving.

We stopped for lunch and then headed on to Jarabacao.  It's up in the mountains and is supposed to be a resort destination.  We stopped at the information center in town and the lady helped us find a really nice hotel room for $25 a night.  The place (Hotel California – no kidding) had a nice pool, beautiful gardens, a cemetery next door and chicken cages.  It had roosters that crowed all the time.  Crazy!

We then went into the downtown area to hunt out a place for dinner.  The town was full of drivers, mostly motorcycle or moped drivers - I mean it was full of them.  You would try to cross the street and would have to wait for a dozen of them to pass.  And it wasn’t just the two-wheeled drivers, it was what they would have on their vehicles that was a bit odd.  We saw some two seater, two-wheeled vehicles with 3 or 4 people on them or we saw some with a washing machine, lumber, you name it. 

We never actually saw anything "resort" about the town, like you would see in Charleston or Hilton Head, it was more like a town on the Mexican border.  Lots of noise, lots of people, lots of crazy driving - and no one really getting anything accomplished.  Don't get me wrong, the scenery is beautiful - the mountains are wonderful to see.  Just different.

Feb. 21, 2014

(Day 2 of Trip into the Mountains)

Constanza

We went into town this morning and found a quaint place for a quick breakfast and then we were off again - heading towards the town of Constanza.  Our first stop along the way was a beautiful waterfall.  It was about a 25 minute walk down the mountain and probably an hour back up but the waterfall was gorgeous.  They filmed part of the movie Jarrasic Park at this waterfall.  After huffing it back up the mountain after seeing the waterfall, we were off again towards Constanza.

We went through a small town and saw an open restaurant and decided to stop for lunch.  We had a very typical lunch of small pieces of fried chicken, lots of rice with a small serving of beans in a bean soupy type mixture that you're to pour over the rice, and a slaw type salad, all for about $3.50.  It's really quite good.

Constanza is up in the mountains with a lot of very fertile soil around and the locals take advantage of it and grow lots of different things.  We stopped at one roadside market and bought some “fresh from the fields” strawberries.  There are little roadside stands everywhere full of all kinds of fruits and vegetables. YUM!  We finally made it to Constanza and it was a small "resort" town, not too much unlike the one from yesterday.  We went searching for our hotel and were told we needed 4 wheel drive to get there.  Thank goodness we had it!  It was up, up, up a mountain to about 4500’ elevation.  The lodging, once we arrived and checked the place over, was a bit rustic but it made up for it in the view!  The mountains are right out our door and they're just beautiful.  I mean, it was a nice cabin we shared with Mark and Amanda, we each had our own bedrooms but the electricity worked sporadically (not at all this morning).  There was no hot water in the shower, only cold ice water from the mountains and the toilet wouldn’t flush – until Daniel fixed it.  After that, it wasn’t bad at all.  The lady that owns the place, Emma, is a bit flamboyant to say the least.  She speaks very good English, as she used to live in the States.  She would tell us stories from over the years and her arms were waving and she was dancing – it worked though – Emma was a great hostess.  She made us a Cuban dish that literally translated means “dirty clothes” – pulled beef with mashed potatoes – and it was delicious.  We were the only ones staying in her cabins that night but that was fine, she took really good care of us.  She had Manuel (her helper) build us a campfire and we spent a while sitting by the campfire.  After Manuel, who spoke no English, got the fire going and we all sat down, joined us at the fire, with a shotgun in his lap.  We were all taken aback a bit and couldn’t ask Manuel what in the world was going on (rebel guerillas in the mountains? mountain lions, what???) since he didn’t understand English.  You could have heard a pin drop as we sat by the fire just staring at each other, and the shotgun.  Emma soon joined us and we questioned the purpose of Manuel and the shotgun and she told us, it just seems to make visitors feel better when he has it.  Ok.  Manuel smiled a lot, so I wasn’t really threatened by it…much.

Emma is big into animals. Dogs, horses, donkey, birds, chickens, iquanas, you name it - she has it.  She proudly boasts that she has 23 different species at the place.  It is really cool, temperature wise, too.  We brought jackets and needed them.  Totally different from being close to the ocean.  

February 22, 2014

Constanza to Puerto Plata to Luperon

Emma made us a nice breakfast of scrambled eggs and bread with strawberry jam…and coffee.  We said our good-byes and took off back over the mountains heading home to our boats.  We really were missing them.  The mountains of the Dominican Republic have a lot of poor people with small shanty type houses but they are clean and proud people.  They are also very welcoming and kind to strangers.  If we ever got lost or needed directions, all we had to do was ask and they were most happy to help. 

On the ride back through the mountains we decided to try and take a route back that would have us detouring Santiago.  The traffic was just awful our first time through and we really wanted to skip it if we could.  After a few wrong turns, we ended up on a very new “interstate”.  It was like any interstate we had back in the U.S. except at about every overpass we came to, there were guards there that would stop us and make us leave the interstate.  We would see people driving on it, but they made most of us leave the interstate.  It was weird.  Finally, we tried to explain to the guard that we needed to continue on, we were heading towards Puerto Plata.  He didn’t understand English and as we were trying to explain in our broken Spanish that we just wanted to continue on, another driver pulled up and stopped and explained (in Spanish) that he wanted to go to Puerto Plata.  They let him through and we yelled out “Puerto Plata” too, and just followed him.  We saw people walking across the interstate, we saw people biking on the interstate and eventually we came to a toll booth and had to pay about a $1.50 to keep going.  We were happy to pay.  So, we kept going.  We finally came to our “off ramp” but it was blocked with orange cones.  We weren’t allowed to actually exit.  Weird.  We are all thinking, we really need to exit here…if we go further we end up in the wrong place heading the wrong way.  So Amanda happily hopped out of the car and moved the orange cones so we could drive through.  She put the cones back, hopped in the car and we went down the exit ramp and kept on our way.  Yea, Amanda!

On to Puerto Plata.  It is a nice little village on the coast and we would like to look it over, but it’s getting late and we need to get lunch, get to the grocery store and back to the boat before dark.  We pull over in the downtown area and hop out and start looking for a local restaurant.  Daniel and I are standing on a street corner just looking around when a local policeman asked if we needed help.  We mentioned that we were looking for the “supermercado” (grocery store) but evidently we weren’t saying it right because we finally said we were looking for leche (milk) at a supermercado.  He smiled and said, follow me.  Mark found Amanda and brought the car around and Daniel and I hopped in.  We had a police escort to the grocery store.  J  We found lunch inside the grocery store, we loaded up on groceries and we high-tailed it out of there back to our boats. 

Mark had to return our “rental car” while Daniel went with some random guy in his dinghy to get D-Time for us and our groceries.  Mark said he pulled up to where we were dropped off by Franklin and asked a bunch of guys sitting around if they knew where Franklin was, and one of them said “I’m Franklin” (which was NOT the Franklin that rented us the car).  Mark gave the guy the keys and well, someone has the car – we hope it is the guy that actually owns the car.  In the meantime, Daniel gets D-Time and takes me and our groceries to the boat and then gets Mark and Amanda (and their groceries) to their boat. 

For dinner tonight we had fresh from the field strawberries, fresh from the field mandarin oranges, mango, grapes, apple and strawberry jelly on top of some kind of twisted bread.  Delicious! 

We had a fabulous few days in the mountains of the Dominican Republic but as Dorothy in the Wizard of Oz says, “there’s no place like home”.  We are glad to be back on C-Time.