March 11- 13
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The first stop in Dominican Republic - Isla Beata. As soon as we dropped our anchores late afternoon (the ride here was very rough! we were going about 3.5 - 4 mi/hours at most, with the waves and wind right at the bow, very exhausting) the boat with coast guard officials showed up and got in for checking our documents. Kevin and Rork presented the coast guard with a little "present" - a bottle of rum and he was very very happy about that. Uhh, keep officials happy!
Next morning we went ashore - to visit a little fishermen village and our "friend" coast guard. As we showed up, they put four chairs for us and a coast guard set in the front of us and asked if would like coffee. Of course we would like coffee!
His wife prepared coffee for everybody in the outside "kitchen" and we enjoyed it very much. Then we were asked if we would like a coconut, oh yes, of course we would like a coconut! Some young guy cut 4 coconuts from the nearby palm and cut them open for us. That was delicious. We tried to make a conversation with coast guard and his helpers, but it did not go far - our Spanich is limited and his English is NONE. We thanks for great hospitality and went for a walk around this little village. We bought some fresh fish for our dinner, even though it was not cheap, and we did not have our money changed yet from dollars to pecos. Dinner was great!
Next day we left this cute place for another long overnight passage to Barahona.
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March 14 - 19
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We got heavy rain during our night trip to Barahona, and seas were rough as well. So, we are exhausted at tired again....
We made it to the channel at about 4:30am - it's too early to enter the place we are not sure about and which has cargo ships traffic.
So, we drifted around for couple hours, just waiting for the sun to rise at 7am.
As soon as we anchored our boats, a boat with officials, coast guards, showed up first at Rork's and then our place. They checked documents and inside of the boat, and made Kevin to put his dinghy down. In an hour we got checked in and were ready to explore this town.
It's a relatively big industrial city - with cargo ships transporting sugar canes and something else, lyminar mines and some other industries. People here are NOT begging for anything, this is such a nice change! Seems everybody here is happy and doing fine, even though it's dirty on the streets - the trash is everywhere! Dominicans really love music - merenge, salsa, regaton. You can hear this music in every corner of city you go. We got new cim cards for the phones, some internet time, went to the supermercado and market, walked a lot in the town. We got a local guy Fernando to guide us around the town and since he speaks very well English, he could help us with translation and actually, teach us Spanish a bit. Kevin and Rork are slowly getting up to speed with Spanish, yea, that is helpful.
On the March 15th our friends "Island Perl", Rork and Sherry, left at night to Boca Chica where they have to meet their visitors and spent some time with Sherry's oldest child. It was so sad to separate! We had such a great and fun time together, helped each other, did all our trip planning together, but it's time for separation besides we have plans to sail down south anyway.
We said our "good byes" and we hope to sail together again maybe next year, will see....
On the next morning we had to be on the shore at 8:30am for our car trip to the Lago Enriquillo (a huge lake) with one of the coast guards and a friend of our guide Fernando. The trip was long, about 6 hours around the lake, but we have seen so much! The dominical nature, other cities, villages, parks and just how people live. We ate at the little places - just fried everything and drunk a lot of beer, including our driver-coast guard Ivan. We would stop about every hour at some bar on the way for a huge bottle of Presidente beer to share for three. And... we did not have seat belts on the back seats, and... everybody drives here crazy, and.. we saw one semi overturned in the ditch (how much beer he had while he was driving?????). But we made it safe back to our boat afternoon.
The trip was nice, but we did not see any crocodiles in the Lago Enriquillo, just saw a lot of uaguanas, very fat once.
We hand out couple more days in Barahona, with our new friend Fernando (who speaks English) and custom guys. Most of the days we spent in the bar on the corner across Customs, this bar belongs to one of the customs guy's wife. So, we met there all their family, talked, drun rum, practiced our limited Spanish with locals. We got new friends - two boats from Germany, and I had to practice my limited German finally. And finally on Wed.19th we got our "dispachio" in the morning and all our new local friends came over at 7am to the shore to say last "good byes" to us.
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March 19 - 24
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And we are off again in the seas, sailing to a new stop - Las Salinas. This is a nice clean little town of fishermen and nearby port workers. This place is much more off than Barahona - there are a lot nice big houses in the town, seems as the weekend spot for richer people from the big cities.
We anchored near our German friends we met at Barahona. It was nice reunion, and guys were very glad to see us. We met one italian boat with polish lady Hanna as a crew member, also a couple from England. Most of the days we were spending at the Hotel Salinas open patio cafe, drinking beer, coffee (nice!) and talking with all sailors cruisers, exchanging infromation. Yea, this is totally a new group of the cruisers - first of all, there are no any US sailors anymore, but mostly people from Germany and Belgium.
We got a new jock now when coming to talk with our new sailor friends - "what language are we speaking today?" Definitelly, English is in minority here, who would think so? But no matter which country and nationality are cruisers, everybody is very nice and friendly and helps with anything they can if you need to. It's amazing "brotherhood"!
We took a local bus to the nearby city Bani - very nice and very clean city. Ate there in the cafeteria with the local workers and I was afraid to get some bacteria, but seems worked out well. We still did not find a place where to buy coffee beans, weird, because they grow coffee here.
Three nights in the row we are not sleeping - Las Salinas town seems is having some kind of celebration this weekend. And, on the temproraly built stage in town they start playing latino music every night from 9pm till at least 2am. And, it friking LOUD!!!! Very LOUD. I love latino music, but not that loud and not in such quantaties, and we already learned all the songs they are playing all over and over again. I hope somebody is actually dancing all night, at least it would not be in vain. We never made it there to the party. We are still gringos and even locals are tolerating us, not sure we would not get in trouble when they are under alhocol or other influence. While I am working on the streets I get a lot of not healthy attention, I am rubio now (sun effect on my hair) and there no other blonds around. Kevin said we need to buy me more baggy cloths to cover me up, but it's soo hot here!
All native English people left from this place and now we "officially" joined the German club! All the cruisers are speaking German, but they still like us and it's fun to talk with new people (luckily they all speak at least some English).
march 26,
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Today we went into Santo Domingo. Spent most of our time walking the streets of the old town. It seems to be safe, at least during the day. The nights are supposed to be kinda rough. We won't go out at those times. We have to walk over a floating bridge to the city. The water in the marina is more poluted than we have ever seen. But that doesn't stop the locals from fishing in it. We decided to not eat any fresh fish while we are here. You would not believe how much trash is in the water. It is so bad, the marina we are at actually put up a blocker so the trash will not come in. All that did was trap the trash inside and trap some outside. There are no other cruising boats here, just us. There is one boat from Pensacola, FL, but it looks like it's been here a while. The water in the bathrooms does not work. So showers will be taken on the boat. We need more fresh water. This is going to be challenging also. Hopefully we can take a taxi to the store and get some. The city is kinda dirty, not as dirty as the water, but still a little trashy. The tourist place is nice. but once you venture off those streets, things go downhill. We managed to see a couple museums. One was Don Diego, Christopher Columbus' son. His palace is right on the bay and can be seen from our boat. We can actually see the boat from the palace, but our cameras' batteries were dead. We also found the La Hispanola School. This is were we signed up to take Spanish lessons. Our classes start in the morning at 8:30. We had to take a test so they could judge our levels. So...now we go to class for four hours per day every day util Friday. Then we might get the weekend off and we can go back on Monday if we like. It really depends on how long we can handle this marina. The marina is a little rough. So far so well, nothing has been stolen, but it can happen at any time. Maybe after class tomorrow we will go see Christopher Columbus's park and tower they built for him.
Lots of walking around and practicing our spanish with people as we try to order and ask venders for things. It is challenging, but we are getting better. Soon we will be able to understand what they are saying back to us. Right now, it is hard to understand. Lots of tourists in this area, not where the marina is, but across the bay. There was a cruise ship here yesterday, but he left sometime last night. It was not a beautiful cruise ship, it was a cruise ship that is outdated and now has a Panama home port. It needed a paint job. Our boat will need a paint job too after we leave this place. I can only imagine what the bottom will look like.
Tomorrow will be a busy day but should be fun.
March 29,
We walked and we walked and we walked. Spent the day walking and eatting and dropped off our clothes at the lavandaria. The clothes should be ready on monday after 2pm. Today we walked along the shoreline passed the hotels and casinos. Then we went up one block and walked back. Passed some car lots and many homes. After we got back to El Conde, we started walking agin in the same direction, this time to the Mercado Nacional. Along the way we found a huge park with lots of security and places for children to play. They also had gym equipment outside. Marina wanted to work out, but decided not to. After leaving the tourist section, el conde, the neighborhoods seeemed a little cleaner, but the crime, we were told, was just as bad. Again someone told marina to remove her necklace. (when we go back to the boat, we took the necklace off) The area we made it to was supposed to be the restaurant area, but we did not see too many restaurants. The next area was the shopping district, but it was getting late, so we went to the grocery store. The grocery store is huge and also has other stores on the other floors. The grocery store occupied the entire second floor and looked much like a Whole Foods of type. Not quite as much in selection as whole foods, but still had everything one would want. We bought some items and 20 liters of water, then took the cab home. We also stopped and ate a meditaranian restaurant. It was nice, but a little expensive at $72. After the Grocery store we took a cab back to the boat and unloaded our groceries on to the boat. Poured th water into the boat and then, shortly there after, Marina screamed. We found a stowaway. It was a rather large cockroach in the closet. Not quite sure why he was in the closet, but we managed to kill him. The theory is, this marina has lots of trash laying around and probably made his way onto the boat either via a rope tied to the dock, or on the grocery bags when we set them on the ground to load them on the boat. Maybe on the water jugs? We really want to believe this was the only one and we have never seen one since or after. So far so well, but we are watching. When we leave here, we thing these types of things will stop. Very certain this place is part of the problem. It isjust dirty. Spent the night on the boat, we did not go to the music playing near Don Diego's house, we were too tired from walking all day. Tomorrow we will go to the Faro de Colon.
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April 5-10
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Sailed to Boca Chica - it's nice and very cute Marina here. Not too expencive either. It has restrooms, showers, laundry, a little nice restraurant - everything you need to take a break from the dirty stay in Santo Domingo!
We sailed with Estee - our new friend from the Language School in Santo Domingo, she is Dutch from Amsterdam, and very young.
Unfortunately, the sail from Santo Domingo to Boca Chica was not pleasant and Estee got a bit seasick on the way here. But we made it.
She spent one night with us on the board and we celebrated Marina's 48th birthday together next day, it was nice to have somebody other than Kevin say "Happy Birthday" ;-)
We met with our old friends - Journey (Monica and Johnatan) and Fidelis (Eric and Jinn), had a dinner with you and hand out around in the Boca Chica little beach town.
Our neighbores in marina were two Dutch brothers (Ron and Ben) on the amazing weird huge boat - originally made as "mine sweeper", but rebuilt later as a civil ship withtout guns. We became very good friends with them and spent fun and full of laugh "happy hour" nights on their boat. It was so sad to separate with them,because it's not so easy to find people you click right away while you are cruising.
But, oh well, we have to sail to Puerto Rico and hope to see our new friends sometime somewhere again...
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April 12 ...
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We made it to Puerto Rico!!! It took us almost 40 exhausting hours to sail to Ponce (the port on the south of the island) and cross dangerous Mona passage - the deepest part of Atlantic Ocean. The ride was VERY rough, especially on entering the channel to Ponce. But we survived two sleepless nights and days with just couple problems - this time kind of serious problems: engine overheated and we ran over a huge crab pot! That was terrifying! But our "Lucky 7" survived both and continue working as a tank ;-). We spent absolutely amazing time in Boca Chica - the last stop in Dominican Republic. It was my birthday and we celebrated it with a lot of new and old friends. Our Holland young friend, Estee, sailed with us from Santo Domingo and we met two wonderful and very funny brothers from Holland and spent very very funny night on their one of the kind boat. It's 1960 built in Amsterdam mine finder rebuilt into cruising boat, huge! Now away from US cruisers we meet a lot of people from different countries - so much fun! And... I am so glad that I am not the only one now speaking English with heavy accent ;-)
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April 13...
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Kevin fixed the prop problem - we hit the crab pot on the way, but we discovered another problem - little amount of disel in the oil pan in the engine. We took all of our injectors to the disel shop in Ponce - to check if they are licking, and sure enough the mechanic found 4 licking injectors in our collection, luckily, he is going to fix them before we move on. But the suspicion is that the main problem is in the injection pump not the injectors. On Friday, 04/18 Keving spent some "cozy" time with our iron horse and we decided not to get the pump out but just change injectors and see if our "disel in oil" problem will disappear...will see.
Kevin found disent dentist in Ponce to finally make a crown for his implant. Too bad we don't have insurance and have to pay full cost ~ $1000. Oh well, he needs the tooth and we will get it!
Puerto Rico is a huge island and the public transportation realy sucks here. So, we rented a car to drive around and check places.
The best attraction so far is the long drive in the mountains - it's amazing sceenery on the oceans (both sides) and the drive itslef in the jungle, especially at night! It's creepy. Amazing to see little settlements in the mountains - the houses on the very tall sticks nobody knows how they were built, and the way puerto ricans drive here - most of the cars don't turn on the head lights, and it's very hard to see them from the sharp corners on the turns, the blood is freezing on such turns. Visited Salinas - the gastronomy place in Puerto Rico, Arecibo - not much there, but it's Juan's birth town.
On our trips we saw some bizarre things: a lot of young guys are riding the horses without any sadle or padding, these animals are so miniature, that some of riders have thier feet almost on the ground; then they park their horses near houses (do they have garages for them too?) and wash them using the yard hose - in the way we washed our cars in Austin - that is just very funny!
