Buenos dias!
We’ve been in Luperon, Dominican Republic, for the past week. We have fallen in love with this place and it’s people and hope to return some day when we can stay and explore por mucho tiempo. We had such a great weather window to leave the Bahamas that we never checked in at Turks and Caicos; just anchored overnight at Provo and headed across the banks next day, anchored at Big Ambergris Cay then on to Luperon. Instead of the normal headwinds, we had flat seas and light ENE winds for a lovely reach all the way to Luperon. Even had to reef sails to slow down to keep from getting there before daylight. We’ve seen our first (and second) green flash at sunset so we know we’re really in the tropics.

Luperon is a small agricultural village with the best small boat harbor in all of Hispanola (the island that D.R. and Haiti share). The Spanish speaking locals are very poor, but even more, they are happy and friendly. In town, local transportation is motorcycles. In the country, it’s burros and donkeys. We rented a car for a couple of days with “Sunrise” and drove to Puerto Plata and Santiago to buy provisions and see some of the country. This is a very beautiful country with green mountains and palm trees cohabitating quite nicely. On the 2nd day of our jeep rental, I drove and Bob navigated. On the way back to Luperon, we ended up on a gravel road (very large “gravel” … many would say “rocks”) and forded 3 streams to get back to town. The locals along that stretch probably don’t see many turistas. We did a lot of smiling and waving. Yesterday, we took a guided tour. The hilight of the tour, in fact of our entire trip so far, was climbing the waterfalls outside of Imbert. I cannot begin to describe this experience. Our group consisted of 3 couples, plus a family of 5 (including their 3 sons ages 5 to 12) (yes, they’re cruising on a sailboat, too). Our able guide, Juaquin, led us up the mountain and across many streams. When we got to the falls, it was unbelievable. There was a rock cliff with a large pool at the base. We swam across the pool to get to the first fall which was climbed with the aid of a stick ladder. Then we entered the first of the rock canyons. We waded and swam upstream to the next fall. Juaquin gave us detailed instructions on the hand and foot holds to use for climbing up through the falls and was there to pull us up by hand at the critical points. There were 7 falls in all, each more spectacular that the previous. This was no walk in the park but what an experience. The trip down was much quicker, sliding down the upper 5 falls. The real interesting part was the last 2 (the first two going up, including the one with the ladder). You couldn’t slide down them … you had to jump. It was especially funny to see the 5 year old doing a cannon-ball off the real tall one!

We received a very high compliment from Juaquin on the way to falls in the van. We were talking and laughing with him and he said, in his best English, that we were “happy people, like Dominicans; not like the Germans”. We are now waiting for the trade winds to calm down enough for us to head out along the north coast to at least Samana. The first day we were in Luperon, we found friends from Houston, Mark and Bunny on “Wild Goose”. They had arrived just the day before from Cuba (small world, eh?). They left the next day for Puerto Rico. They got a weather window to make the whole 250 miles in one jump. I talked to them on the radio after they arrived and they said the Mona Passage was “like a lake”. I hope we can get half the weather they got! Hopefully, the next you hear from us will be from Puerto Rico, too.

Adios,

David and Claudia