Dominican Republic

Alright you all have been wondering if we fell off the face of the earth, but it feels like it sometimes.  Life on a boat is slow paced and then coming to different islands - you find out what being on island time is really about.  At home, you wake up in the morning and find there is no coffee, so you either get in the car and run to Starbuck's, run across to your neighbor's house and borrow some, or get on the phone and complain to your best friend about it.  Not Here!  It's too hard to get the dinghy down and would take to long to run to shore.  You generally don't know or have a neighbor close by and if you did, it would be rude to ask them to supply you with not only the coffee but the electricity and water to make it.  I would pick up the phone to call someone and complain, but getting a working phone in a third world country is a whole other story!  I did however finally get the internet working AND on the boat AND on the phone, computer and Ipad.  You have no idea what it takes and how excited I am to have it!


First a bit of a history and geography lesson.  The Dominican Republic (DR) occupies the eastern portion of Hispaniola, the second largest island in the Antilles.  It is shared with Haiti, but they are quite different and have little in common.  The DR occupies 2/3 of the land with over 10 million people, at least 3 million live in the capital - Santo Domingo.  (BTW my figures are probably off, but it gives you an idea)  Dominicans speak Spanish and Haitians speak Creole - a corrupted form of French.  Christopher Columbus discovered Hispaniola December 5, 1492 and his brother founded Santo Domingo in 1496, thus Santo Domingo has become the oldest permanently occupied town in the Americas.

                           
We are currently staying in a hurricane hole (inland water for best protection against hurricanes) in the city of Luperon.  There are a few thousand of the nicest and most friendly people here.  There is a website that gives some info on the town and a video.  If you go to the video, don't be shocked - it is poor here, but safe!  www.luperon.info

                                                               Entrance to Luperon Bay.

You enter the channel and then go down away into the harbor.  You can see from in the distance the cruisers that are anchored in the harbor.