The water's brown and turbid, and there's nowhere to go fishing. Other than that, it's hard to find fault with Luperón. Granted, there aren't any volleyball courts, and the morning cruiser's net is only twice weekly rather than daily, but if we wanted the amenities of George Town we would have stayed there. Instead we have lush green hillsides, 22-oz El Presidente beers for half the cost of those 12-oz Kaliks, and the whole of the Dominican Republic to explore.
The harbor is essentially land-locked, and even when the wind kicks up, as it does every afternoon, the boat hardly rocks. Now that we're in the tradewinds, we have an unvarying daily pattern of windy days and calm nights, and we describe a big clockwise circle around the anchor each twenty-four hours. As in Camelot, it only rains at night; sometimes it's just a sprinkle, sometimes a real boat-washer, but we've had some precipitation just about every night, and only one rainy day. We've got buckets out to catch the rain funneling down from our bimini top, and there have been a few downpours where we've gotten six or more gallons despite our rather primitive rain-catching system. It's good to have the rainwater, since we're reluctant to run our watermaker in this foul harbor. Bottled water's fairly cheap here, but since we're not collecting coconuts or catching fish, it's nice to be gathering something!
Echoes of George Town run through the cruising community here. Luperón is a crossroads where southbound cruisers on the "Thorny Path" meet those going back from the Caribbean toward the US; many people stay for hurricane season, and a few stay for years. On a hike in the hills above the anchorage, we counted 70 boats. Both Steven Pavlidis (author of a lot of excellent Bahamas guidebooks) and Bruce Van Sant (author of the standard 'bible' for cruisers heading from the Bahamas to the eastern Caribbean) are here. The social scene is centered on the little marina. On Wednesday nights there's entertainment, a Canadian duo who sing old rock and roll standards, great for dancing; Fridays are special dinners (BBQ night, lasagna night, etc.) and merengue, and Monday is potluck night. Several girls on a couple of boats bake bread for a few dollars a loaf, and a South African woman sews courtesy flags for $10 a flag; unlike the Bahamas, the Dominican Republic has very few barriers to cruisers who want to earn a little cash.
Most people on the streets of Luperón are locals, though, not cruisers, and although cruising boats contribute to the local economy, we're not the only game in town. Orchards and pastures surround the town, and luxury resorts and hotels line the beach, not far away. A walk down the main street, Calle Duarte (just about every town in the DR has a street named for the primary hero of the revolution) reveals a place caught between wealth and poverty, between the old days and the modern world. There are tin-roofed shacks made of wood so poorly nailed together that you could slip a hand through the gaps, and there are big stucco houses, white with bright trim and decorative bars on the windows. Old cars, small motorbikes and scooters with two or even three riders, and burros all vie for space on the narrow, crowded streets. Power failures occur regularly, adding the noise of generators to the usual din of motorcycles and loud music. A dozen or so "supermarkets" the size of an American two-car garage carry a variety of canned and dry goods, but for meat you must visit the open-air butcher shop where fly-covered carcasses hang from the back wall, and vegetables can only be bought at stands along the street, or from the vendors who roam around in pickup trucks piled high with pineapples, bananas, and plantains. Children play on the sidewalks and young men lounge next to their motorbikes, hoping to be hired to deliver a package or a tourist somewhere. All in all, it's a sometimes frustrating but always fascinating place.
On Saturday, April 7, Aqui Lucas, a local restaurant, had a big party to celebrate their one-year anniversary, and invited all the cruisers for a free dinner and a first drink on the house. We thought that was a wonderful idea, especially since it just so happens that that date is our anniversary too! Hard to belive that it's been ten years now since Britt and I got married, and two years since we moved aboard Windom. But we celebrated in fine style at Aqui Lucas, and after we told the owners in our mangled Spanish that it was our anniversary as well, they sent over the musicians to serenade us to much laughing and clapping. The food was excellent, and our friends kept buying us drinks (an 8-oz bottle of very fine local rum plus two cokes costs about $4 around here, so it's easy to be generous), so we stumbled home a little worse for the wear but very, very happy.
We've spent a lot more time socializing and touristing than on boat projects, but slowly things are getting done. One big project was the windlass motor, which had a great deal of surface corrosion; Britt removed it from the windlass installation (a long and difficult job, done in an awkward position), carefully sanded off all the rust, and painted it with four coats of Rustoleum paint. Hopefully this treatment will keep it in better shape, because this would be an expensive part to replace. Britt's also been designing the boat alarm system we'll build, and he lubricated the latches and hinges on all our hatches, which had been getting stiff. I've baked some bread, practiced some Spanish on a few tolerant locals, and thought real hard about doing some teak and stainless steel maintenance. (Obviously, Britt's the industrious one in the family.)
Our trip on Monday 4/9 to Santiago, the country's second-largest city, was more a boat-project trip than a touristing trip. Kim and Mike from Hallelujah, who we met in George Town, organized the rental of a van and driver for a day of intensive shopping for them, us, and Steve Pavlidis. Santiago is a big and modern city, and we gleefully spent money in the huge hardware stores, auto-parts stores, pharmacies, and fabric stores. Our driver, Eduardo, had lived in New York and spoke very good English, and he came into the stores with us and translated when needed. We occasionally split up for different needs, and I was extremely proud when, in the middle of working through my list of needs with a pharmacist, completely in Spanish, Eduardo came by and the pharmacist told him that we didn't need his help because I spoke Spanish well enough!
The pharmacies in the DR seem strange because everything is behind the counter, even things like aspirin and eyedrops. On the other hand, prescriptions are not needed, and many of the drugs are astonishingly cheap by US standards. I was able to find something pretty close to the expensive allergy inhaler I have been using, for a quarter of the cheapest US price; on the other hand, Kim was aghast at the relatively high price of vitamin C, which is sold as individual pills costing around 35 cents each. In other stores, we also found many items at far less than US cost, such as 12-volt relays (for the alarm system) and batteries. We bought some fabric for sewing projects, two new coffee mugs, and a runner carpet to replace the one that got bleach spilled all over it earlier this year.
We specified that we wanted "cheap local food" for lunch, so Eduardo took us to Cafeteria Yenny, which was not a cafeteria but a little no-frills restaurant, packed with Dominicans. The six of us had a huge and delicious meal -- corn fritters and avocado for appetizers, followed by rice and beans, salad, and meat stew, with beers and soda -- for a total bill of around $22. (We are so pleased with how inexpensive it is to eat out here that we do it a lot. This means, of course, we're spending more money than we did in the "expensive" Bahamas, where we ate out rarely. Funny how you spend more in the cheaper places!) After lunch we headed for the huge Supermercado Pola for provisioning. Since there were only a few things we were actually out of, I was able to avoid buying expensive imported things (I figure we'll get our last US-brand things in Puerto Rico) and stock up on the inexpensive local products, some of which are cheap indeed. Best deals include citrus fruit (grapefruit for 10 cents a pound!), bananas, and produce in general, coffee ($2.40 a pound for whole bean!), sugar, and of course rum (we've been drinking Brugal Extra Viejo, which runs about $5 per liter, but there are cheaper grades and brands). We also bought inexpensive jams and juices in interesting flavors (coconut-pineapple, mango, passion fruit), and lots of powdered whole milk, which is unavailable in most of the US, and UHT (boxed) milk, which is less expensive here. Meat is cheap too, but since we don't have a freezer I just bought a few steaks and a little chicken. It was a bit alarming to look at the big numbers ringing up on the cash register, especially since in the DR they also use the $ symbol for their peso, but the total bill of $1,753 only translates down to about $106 US. Such a deal!
After more than two weeks in the DR, we're starting to get itchy feet. There's one more thing we'd like to do before we leave, and that's to climb -- or attempt to climb -- Pico Duarte, the highest mountain in the Caribbean. It's going to be an adventure even before we set foot on the trail, as we need to take five different buses to get there, and I'm not looking forward to negotiating for a guide. If it looks like it will cost us a ridiculous amount of money, we might not even get on the trail. But the hiking part sounds doable. There are shelters along the trail, which is good since we left our tent in Colorado, and it should just take a single overnight to reach the summit and return to the base. As soon as I shake this stupid cold (the price of being around crowds), we'll mount our expedition.