DAY
4 – Monday January 16, 2017:
This morning, I got up at 6:00 am after a wake-up
call, had a much-needed shower and then got ready for embarking on my first
adventure: the Caribbean VIP
Safari. I knew I’d be busy all day and
would not be able to go swimming or to the beach. Still, I was looking forward to this new
experience. I went for breakfast at the
Larimar buffet at just after 7:00 am and, while I was waiting for the buffet to
open at 7:15 am, I met some Americans who were planning to go on the Dune
Buggies adventure this morning. I did
not book this one for myself, but Brent, James, and Dave are planning on doing
it on Wednesday afternoon.
My own adventure started with me being picked up at
the front of the main building and being taken to a meeting place (a Texaco
station) a short distance away where passengers who speak the same language
were grouped together. There were about
seventy-two passengers altogether in three trucks. The trucks looked like open-air jeeps, each
big enough to hold twenty-four passengers, the tour guide, and a driver. I was put with twenty-two other passengers
who all speak English. This was done so
that our tour guide could talk to us and we’d all understand what he was saying
to us.
After this re-arrangement was complete, the three
full trucks took off for a nearby mountain range, about an hour away. What I remember most about the mountain range
is that the roads are extremely bumpy and unpaved, which I would have
expected. This country is still much
undeveloped. In the mountains, poor
people live on their own homemade homesteads and support themselves by
farming: either raising animals such as
cows, or reaping naturally-growing crops from the land. It is a jungle-like landscape with some of
the land cleared for farming where needed.
We stopped after a while at a homestead specifically used by the “Bavaro
Runners” company (which runs the Safari adventure) for showing the passengers
what this "typical homestead" was doing to support itself.
The women who lives there has a cute baby daughter
named Sofia, and she picks raw coffee beans and raw cocoa seeds (nuts), dries
them in the sun, roasts them over an open fire, and then grounds them up. The ground coffee can then be used to make
hot liquid coffee to drink. The ground cocoa
seeds can be used to make liquid hot chocolate to drink. The processing of the cocoa is a bit
simplistic, because other things are added to enhance the flavour, like
molasses (derived from sugar cane) and vanilla (dark or white). All of the ingredients for making a hot
chocolate drink are available to the homesteader from the land.
There are other things to be had, as well: paprika, oregano, coconut oil, coconut
butter, and something called “Mama Juana”, Dominican rum. These things are made by the homesteader and
sold to the visiting passengers when they stop here. If the homesteader didn’t do this, there
wouldn’t be any way she could make an adequate living from the land. Today, I bought some coconut oil for Dave
because he has very dry skin and this oil is supposed to help alleviate dry
skin, and can also be used to make getting a suntan much easier. I also bought some coconut butter for myself
so that I can alleviate my own skin conditions and help get a suntan.
After a while, we left the homestead and headed down
the mountain and back out onto the country two-lane highway. The road is still very bumpy, even on the
flatlands, and this bumpiness seemed to jostle almost every bone in my
body. I didn’t mind at first; it was
very refreshing to enjoy the sunshine today and to feel the breeze on my face
as the truck sped along the highway. We
were headed toward the Chavon (I think I spelt it right) River for the next
part of the adventure.
At this point, we all got off the trucks and
proceeded down to the shoreline to board this strange looking boat. It was a thatched hut, big enough to hold
eighty to ninety people and was supported on the water by three big white
pontoons on the bottom. This boat would
be where we would have a hot lunch along with something alcoholic or
non-alcoholic to drink as we motored down the river. The whole trip would take an hour and a
half. It was very enjoyable to be on
this boat. I bought myself two necklaces
and two pairs of earrings from local vendors later at the dock area. I really didn’t need two of each piece of
jewellery, but I bought them anyway, thinking I was helping the natives a
little.
After the boat trip was over, we headed back out the
way we’d come in and passed through the city of Higuey, which has a population
of 300,000. Although it certainly is not
the largest city in the Dominican Republic, it showed us a cross-section of
very poor and very rich people’s dwellings.
It made me sad that the people of the Dominican Republic are largely
poor, yet have a great attitude towards tourists like us. They welcome foreigners into their country
because they know that we are good for their economy. Otherwise, they would be even poorer.
The final thing we did today was to visit a
sugarcane plantation, which also included a small cigar factory. What this visit amounted to was tasting
sugarcane harvested right from the plant itself. I thought it tasted like sweet wood – not
something you could eat, but sweet. This
is used to make molasses and then sugar as the sweetener we’ve come to know and
use regularly. As for the cigar factory,
I tuned out of the presentation somewhat because only a few of the men present
even smoke cigars and were thus interested; none of the women there were
interested at all.
Finally, after everyone had visited the bathroom
again (we’d had our first chance at relief at the homesteader’s place in the
mountains), we were anxious to leave and reach the tour meeting place to
reverse the re-arrangement of this morning, and then each be dropped off at our
respective hotels. By this time, I was
truly exhausted and was sure I would not have any energy to do anything but eat
dinner with Brent, James and Dave, take my daily meds, get myself ready for
Swimming with the Dolphins tomorrow morning at 8:00 am after breakfast, and
thus be prepared to go on my own second adventure. This one would only take about three hours,
so I am looking forward to it very much.
copyright 2017 - Anne Shier
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