Had a great day today following a great night's sleep.
I did not mention in my last update a problem with my original choice of hotel. I had booked a hotel from Santo Domingo that was listed in a Tourist's Guide from France. It sounded good in the guide, the owner, Jose (Jusie) sounded nice on the phone and she assured me it was a quiet hotel on the beach. Well it was also a disappointment, not as nice as it sounded. But I decided that I had slept worse places on this trip with less comfort... at least there was lots of hot water and everything seemed clean if not nice. The noise from the road between the hotel and the beach was horrid. The motors were roaring past until 1:00am and started up again at 5:00am. Then there were the nieghbours up talking until 1:00am and the music bar next door that was open until 1:00am. I hardly slept.
The next day I asked to be moved to a garden room as far from the road as possible and Jose complied. I went to the town to do some looking around for a couple hours and when I returned my floor was covered with water, one of my bags was in a buddle of water on a small desk, the seat cushion of the desk chair was soaking as was everthing I had stacked on it. When I went to Jose her solution was to mop the floor (but leave the buddle on the desk) and change the sheets on the dampened bed. Not good enough. I needed to calm down and think.
I ate lunch then went down the road looking for the PADI dive centre. There it was, at the front gate of the Aligio Beach Resort. So after checking out the dive centre, I went and booked a room at this lovely, all-inclusive resort for 2 nights. Today I extended that to a third. So back to the Hotel Papagaya to get my stuff and pay my bill.
So today I did the all-day excursion to Samana Bay and the Haitises National Park. A wonderful day. After a quick breakfast I gathered my stuff and went out to the road to meet the guagua that was to pick us up. It was on time but 2 other guests were late. We drove through and over mountain roads to Samana. There we met a speed boat that took our little group of about 12 across the Samana Bay to Haitises National Park. We walked through two different cave networks at two different locations. These were the homes of the Taino aboriginals who were the only people here when Columbus arrived.
Columbus had believed that he was in the gold rich East and thought that the natives were trying to hide their gold from him. So he worked them to death, quite literally. He whipped them and took them as slaves, starving them and chaining them so they could not run and hide. The women were regularly raped and the children put to work as soon as they could walk and carry tools. The Taino people decided to do something about. They believed that their only salvation was to go join the gods. They made a tincture of an extremely poisonous plant and everyone drank it. The entire Taino population was wiped out by this act. This also meant that the Taino Art and Culture was also destroyed.
The loss of the Taino slaves sent Columbus and his fellows to Africa in search of slaves that were transported to the West Indies in ships where they were stacked by the thousands like cargo, shackled together at wrists, ankles and necks. They were given no food or water and many died enroute. The dead were left to rot where they laid. The living, no doubt, wished they were dead too.
Dominican Republic history lesson is now over. This subject tends to cause my blood to boil. The greed of man has always caused so much suffering for the innocent.
Back to the excursion. We boated through and walked in Red Mangrove "swamps" with the biggest Mangroves I´ve ever seem. Red Mangrove is the one that lives in salt water near freshwater streams where the freshwater and salt water meet. They don't mix but the mangrove takes the salt water and filters it so it can use it and thus curbs the flow of salt to freshwater. I may not have that exactly right. The guide spoke in french and some such details escaped me. Though he could speak at least 5 languages (Spanish, French, English, German and Italian), when he began repeating lots of stuff in English that he had just said in French I told him not to because I was able to understand him. His French is extremely good and everyone else in the group was French or Italian.
We took a couple of short beach breaks to stretch our legs and have a drink. They were always trying to get us to consume alcohol. I did my best to comply but the rum and coke was too much... I hate cola drinks... so I had straight rum or ron as the Dominicans say. I normally hate the stuff but this Dominican stuff is fabulous, especially the coconut ron which is made with the real thing. I think the DR must be one of if not the world's largest coconut producers.
We visited a large archipalago of islands that are part of the park. It is somewhat similar to the thousand islands in that the islands are quite small in area. The difference is that these are totally untouched, uninhabited islands that are, typically 3-10 times taller than they are wide. One of these is home to 21 species of birds along with iguanas. There are 2 types of pelicans, hawks, turns, gulls, 3 types of herons and several exotic birds whose names I can't recall.
In one cave we saw a centipede that was about 15 inches long and about a half inch in diameter. When I spotted it I said "hey, look at the snake" then I realized it was a centipede and everyone came to look. The guide was shocked. He'd never seen one that big either.
We were back in the boat to cross back over to the peninsula where there was a typical Dominican lunch waiting for us on a beach in a farming village. Crawfish, clams and chicken fried up with rice, peppers and tomato in giant fryers similar to a wok. There was Presidente beer, white sangria with banana, pineapple and coconut, cacao rum and rum to drink. There was coleslaw Dominican style and, for desert, coconut shredded and sweetened with fresh liquid cane sugar. Getting hungry??
After eating we were back onto the bus, alas, to take the hour long drive through villages and over the mountain back to Las Terrenas. I nodded off to sleep twice. Some of the group actually slept through most of the drive.
Now I´ve showered, had a couple of beers, written in the other travel journal, had supper and am about ready for bed. It's 9:20 pm. Bedtime for this weary traveller. And the no-see-ems are starting to break through my citronella oil which must be weakening.
Good night to all.
Posted by gailene at April 10, 2003 08:51 PM