With The Grace of the Sea

What we’ve been up to – dan

We’ve been doing lots and not much at all. To put it another way we’ve been all over the activity spectrum but before I get into that I want to talk about “experience” in general and how that relates to what motivates me to write this blog. Several friends have indicated that they’re living vicariously through our adventures and while that’s certainly ok it’s not the effect I’m hoping to achieve with my writing. Rather than to entertain, amuse or pass time, I’m hoping that these words will encourage you, the readers, to seek your own heart’s desire and to pursue that desire, in your own best time, to your own fullest expression, whatever that might be. I haven’t a clue what that might be for you, but I’m certain you know. You might not be immediately conscious of that knowledge and have to look deep inside for your own answers, I’m sure you’ll be rewarded if you do. So whatever you read that we’re doing at the moment; working through a storm or sailing easily with the trades, sitting on a beach or sliding down a waterfall, what we’re really doing, the important part, is that we’re living life to our fullest.

Now on to what we’ve been doing lately. We’ve been swimming and snorkeling off a beach that is just outside the harbor. One day I broke out my windsurfer but didn’t have quite enough wind to manage a water start. The visibility isn’t great so the snorkeling is so-so but the swimming has been fun and refreshing.

We’ve also done a little bit of yoga on the beach and even in the water (hydro yoga?). We spent a little down time on the boat where we took turns reading to one another. We finished Whom the Sea Has Taken. After reading that book we were left wondering why anyone would subject themselves voluntarily to 204 days on an unstable and uncomfortable raft drinking bad water and poor provisions. We are the architects of our fate and sometimes really wonder about the “houses” that we sometimes build for ourselves. We then burnt through Richard Back’s wonderful little book called Illusions and started My old man and the Sea which we’re finding most enjoyable. That’s some of our laid back activities.

One day we traveled to Santiago, the second largest city in the D.R. And on the more adventures side; we joined several other cruisers and traveled up a jungle river, then slid down through slot canyons and over a dozen waterfalls. That was a beautiful and incredible day. No mater what we do we always start out and end up back in Luperon harbor. The harbor, not unlike much of the D.R., has two almost diametrically opposing aspects; the wonderful and the not-so-wonderful. The harbor, like most busy harbors, can be dirty, sometime oily, sometimes it smells fishy, other times it smells septic, sometimes they burn trash on the jetty that leads into town. It also feeds a lot of people. We watched fishermen hand casting nets as well as setting light gill nets all through the day. We have seen murky swimmers going along the mangroves collecting oysters and at night we’ve seen the most amazing display of bioluminescence I’ve ever seen. When we drive our dingy back to the boat at night it looks like one of those cars one sometimes sees in the city with black lights underneath and the wake often glows for several yards behind us. Toss a bucket of it in the air at night and your get a Milkyway Galaxy of light. The harbor is also a spectacular place to watch the sunrises and sunsets. That’s were we’ve been staying.

Yesterday has to be one of the peak experiences of our trip. We managed to hook up with an elusive caballero (horseman) called Tobacco and rode his horses up the side of a near-by mountain. Susan has ridden horses since she was a little girl, owned a few and even raised a couple. I’ve done a bit of riding myself, not enough to call myself a rider but I do love it.

Tobacco, the man, is an excellent horseman as well a very engaging person and his horses are grand. Susan and I both rode mares who were accompanied by their foals, which was very charming and added another dimension to the whole experience. Tobacco told us that he has about ten routes that he rides; some went along a beach, some to a river where you can swim. We ended up going into the mountains and were rewarded with some of the most amazing countryside I’ve ever seen. But let me back up a bit. We had arranged to meet Tobacco at the town square. That didn’t seem odd to us, as we had previously seen horses ridden in town. We were sitting on a bench at the appointed hour and were waiting for the Caballero and his horses to show up when a motorcycle pulled up behind us and I felt a tap on my shoulder; Remember me the smiling cherub face of Tobacco said. He indicated that we were to join him on his motorcycle, all 100 cc of it and all three of us. For some odd reason we complied and the three of us were soon zooming down the road, headed to the outskirts of town.

We arrived at a house that was modest by D.R. standards, un-exceptional except for the small herd of horses standing in front. We soon mounted and were joined by a young boy and a small pack of dogs. It didn’t take us long to get out of town and into the country. Paved roads turned into dirt tracks that got rougher the farther we went. We passed through some beautiful farms and the terrain become rougher, steeper and as it did our little pack of hounds wore down as the dogs dropped out by ones and twos until there was just one left. The remaining pero was paradoxically the smallest of the pack, a wiener dog, no less, but it had a great spirit and obviously loved the excursion at least as much as we did.

I’ve never been a fan of small dogs in general and the wiener had been one of my least loved breeds but I’ve learned not to underestimate wiener dogs on this trip. In Bermuda we befriended a single hander who had a mighty wiener aboard. The dog’s name was Rocky and he would bark and growl whenever anyone came near their boat. Try to board and he gets real ugly and even bites. I’ll never forget Peter’s warning to us regarding Rocky; “Never look the wiener dog in the eye, he takes is as a challenge”.

We rode the horses up into some very rugged and high pasturelands on precipitous trails. At one point a large bull charged Susan and the wiener went into full-on guard mode and charged that poor bull right back. The mighty wiener drove that big bull off in a fit of barking and repeated ankle level attacks. Our hero.

We rode through small fields of 18” high grasses and for long periods we could only see the tip of the wiener dog’s tail. We dismounted in one such field to rest the horses and the child took some bark from nearby tree and slid down the grassy hill like he was on a toboggan, wiener dog in tow. From there we started our long way back down the mountain and into town. At one point two bright yellow butterflies fluttered down the path and for quite a ways stayed within arm’s reach of me. It was after dark when we completed the ride that had lasted four amazing hours. With some sadness that our ride was now over, special warmth in our hearts and smiles on our faces, we bid our ridding companions our fondest thanks and good-byes.