Mud,Mud,Glorious Mud

On a morning when the north wind is howling through the Keys and the temperature, away from the wind chill, has plummeted to 60 degrees, one imagines fondly a life lived far from the tentacles of the cold. Cold is relative, and a 60 degree January day on the Great Plains would be cause enough to do some gardening in one's underwear. In Key West it's a test of character and will to keep functioning normally in such arctic weather.Its at times like these that a middle-aged man's thoughts turn to a recent weekend spent in heat, humidity and mud. It was on a hot humid day in the not-too-distant past (Sunday) that I found myself having a conversation with a man on a mule while standing up to my knees in quite possibly fecally-impacted waters.It was at this point in our drive through the back country from Luperon to Puerto Plata that I felt a burning desire to turn back and take the main road. However the truck was perched at an awkward angle, I could see no way to safely reverse or, God forbid, actually turn so we were committed to what was to come. The man on the mule was not reassuring. "No," he said shaking his head. "It's not much better up ahead. Less water perhaps. More mud." He laughed hollowly when I asked, joking, where the nearest tow truck was. "No hay grua!" he grinned toothlessly. He told me with pride that they had electricity these days, even if the road was a tad old fashioned."Stay on the high side," was his advice as I climbed wordlessly back into the truck with a hollow feeling where my chest used to be. Oh dear, I thought to myself, what have I got myself into?

When we got up before dawn in our splendid five star hotel room in Santa Domingo the idea was to hurry out of the city and head north to Santiago 200 kilometers up the four lane Highway One across the mountains, Then we would visit the sailor's haven of Luperon, cruise through Puerto Plata, visit Scott's refuge of Sosua where he lived 15 years ago, and buzz back to room service and a bottle of wine at the Hotel Intercontinental.

Aside from a little rain, which made the industrial city of Santiago look worse than it did in the sunshine we executed the first part of the plan flawlessly. I knocked off a quick picture of Santiago's only claim to tourist interest, the monument to the nation's heroes, and we turned onto Highway Five, greasy in the rain, towards Puerto Plata on the north coast.At Imbert, in the sunshine beyond the rainy mountains, we turned off towards Luperon 20 miles away, in time for a 9:30am breakfast. Luperon was our morning's goal because it is a sailing cruiser's destination. I have been reading about the delights of Luperon for 20 years, a secure anchorage surrounded by mangroves, a nice little town with easy bus access to the facilities of Puerto Plata, the end of a long bash south through the islands of the Bahamas and the Turks and Caicos. Luperon is said to be well adapted to its place along a sailor's migratory path to the Caribbean. As former cruisers my wife and I enjoy the company of maritime travelers.Well, suffice it to say, Luperon was a major disappointment. It did have a nice bay to anchor in, filled with boats and muddy waters entirely unsuitable for swimming, our major recreation while cruising, and the town itself was somewhat run down, to our eyes. Just to prove how small a world it is, on the pier we met Pablo, the owner of a marina in Panama where our cruising friends Ian and Anna keep Gecko, their catamaran. We also found the cruiser hangout, an American-run restaurant now called Capt Steve's offering laundry, internet, food and swimming pool, as the best cruiser haunts do.But the owner, married to a Dominican woman is tired of the life and is looking to sell. Meanwhile he offers a nice $5 (150 peso) breakfast, American style, decent coffee, pork chops and the fixings: The main road into town from the jetty was lined with small shabby businesses and blood ran in the gutter, doubtless from some porker sacrificed for the New year's holiday to come. It was a picture of a small industrious town in a very impoverished economy. Which is fine and dandy, though I couldn't for the life of me imagine spending months here whiling away a tropical winter when there are beaches and islands and incredible reefs not many miles away. I crossed Luperon off my list of places to sail to.On our way out of town we spotted the entrance to a dirt road marked on our map as a brown dotted line headed along the coast towards Puerto Plata, avoiding the main road at Imbert. We took the plunge. I have never been much of an off road driver, most of my land travels I have taken on two wheels, and when I'm driving a vehicle I can't physically push I tend to be conservative in my choice of paved roads. This one got away from me completely.

It started out with a motoconcho that I simply couldn't keep up with. How he rode, with a passenger and parcel so fast I don't know, and I can only attribute his sure-footed speed to experience. Then we forded a couple of streams, a broken bridge or two, some sand, then rocky hills, picked up a couple of field workers looking to get home, and as we slid down a steep incline we came upon a sight froze my blood. Another Isuzu, a Trooper, stuck in the mud surrounded by "helpers." If they are stuck, I said to myself, what's going to happen to me? The good news was that the Trooper was two wheel drive and with some shoving and digging he got out of the mud leaving me a completely messed up hole to plough through in low-ratio 4-wheel drive. "Schumacher," one of the passengers complimented me as my Isuzu reared up out of the mud and came to a stop on hard ground. Its the car, I thought to myself, not the driver. "If we're going to do much more of this," my impeturbable wife said, "I'm sending you to that off-road driving school in California." She settled her arm in its cast on a pillow and our hitch hikers got in the back for the rest of the drive through glorious scenery,and on a continuously mashed up roadway, less on the rocky hilltops and more in the muddy valleys. Further down the road we picked up a couple more hitchhikers, walking out of the fields burdened with packages. They asked us to stop at a roadside collection of huts where they washed off their mud in the stream, ate a coconut, chatted with the neighbors and picked up a pig in a sack for the ride to Puerto Plata in our truck. It made me feel a bit like a plantation owner, driving around with people in the bed of the truck when there were perfectly good seats inside, but when in Rome...On the paved road the woman howled with laughter as the 50 mile-per-hour wind tore her hair from her headscarf, the pig in the sack seemed less amused but calmed down after I dug a hole in the sack for it to breathe through and we traveled without incident, as bizarre a combination of people as any on the roads that Sunday morning in Puerto Plata. Little did passers-by know where we had been to church. Like they say, God protects drunks and idiots, and we made it through without a scratch, and I was definitely not drunk.

Dominican Adventure I

The east wind was blowing strongly across the little peninsula that juts out across the south coast of the Dominican Republic and is home to the grandly titled Aeropuerto de las Americas, the international hub that serves this half of the island of Hispaniola. We climbed into the alternative car Mr Hertz's representative told us was all that was available. It wasn't the compact we had reserved but it ran, had air conditioning and the diesel engine wasn't too loud, really, and the bench seat wasn't too hard really, and we are adventure travelers after all. So here we were Friday morning, with nowhere to go and nowhere in particular to be. So, do we go to the Five Star Intercontinental and check in, or just... take off?Sabana de la Mar? Sure, why not?

The first thing we ran into was a traffic jam blocking Highway 3 east out of town. Fire fighters were spraying down a large oil spill and all traffic was diverted through narrow side streets. That took a while, me crunching the Isuzu into first gear and revving the industrial diesel into a semblance of active life. After an hour of rumbling down the four lane highway at 60mph (100kph) we ducked into San Pedro Macoris, an industrial town which the Lonely Planet later advised held nothing to excite a tourist. That became painfully obvious; the locals were as shocked by our arrival in their bakery and sandwich shop, as the Lonely Planet was by the idea anyone would be "touring" this old river port and its dilapidated riverside warehouses. To me it smacked of Joseph Conrad and Nostromo, one of his lesser novels and, perversely, among my favorites of his, dealing as it does with Central American chaos.

The open country north from San Pedro wound through cane fields and sunny plains bounded to the north by jagged green mountains. The road was littered with random potholes and cars took to sudden swerves, indicating a particularly toothsome example of hole-in-the-road. A great deal of time we too found ourselves on the wrong side of the road avoiding potholes just like the locals, and when we missed the holes and didn't avoid them and bumped through them, my wife ground her teeth as her recently operated wrist ground itself inside her cast. She continues to amaze me, she is that tough. This whole trip was her idea: why be in pain at home on the couch when you can be in pain on an adventure?

She amazed me all the more as the road took off up the side of the mountains and she groaned not once as we bounced and lurched through holes, over holes, around holes; and where the road was torn all up at random, we just bounced through the jungle. Aside from her injured arm it was totally wild, totally removed from our cozy South Florida world we had been living in at breakfast time. This was the land of stick houses, and donkeys and kids begging by the side of the road. Other kids, the lucky ones had transport to get them to and from their work in the fields. Just two hours from our world, and its a salutary reminder of just how lucky we are to live where we do.

When we were sailing my wife and I had time to adjust to the new worlds we visited over a period of years cruising, but when we drop in on the DR for just four days the culture shock is as striking to us seasoned travelers as it might be to someone seeing the true Third World for the first time. But all this aside, the ardent traveler still needs refreshment, perhaps a splendid view of Samana Bay, an iced carbonated colored water and a fried rissole of ground meat and yucca:

And then, like visitors to the moon we jumped back into our capsule and launched ourselves off again, little the wiser for our encounter with this alien world. More of the same crumbling dirt roads, wild passing antics on the straight stretches, more cane fields and motoconchos, as the motorcycle taxis are called.

They are little 100cc and 125cc two stroke motorcycles by Suzuki and Yamaha and Chinese interlopers, ferrying Dominicans about their daily business on the highways. And so, home to our five star world of satellite TV and $12 pay-per-view movies just two hours away from a world where it might take a week to earn twelve bucks. My mind was reeling as I cranked the air conditioning and looked out from my fifth floor hotel window at Santo Domingo, Holy Sunday, the teeming capital of this contradictory land.

Caribbean Time Shift

What a strange and wonderful wonderful world: wake up in Fort Lauderdale and have lunch on the shores of the Bay of Samana in the Dominican Republic. It was a short two hour flight and we were picking up a rumbly, slow diesel truck for our wheels. On the way down I had looked out the airplane porthole and watched the islands of the Bahamas slide by 5 miles down, Bimini, Andros, Ragged Cays and into a cloud bank faster than I could turn the pages in my book and I thought about all those weeks spent bashing into wind and wave on our boat trying to get as far south as time allowed. A matter of weeks, not minutes!

Then we landed in another world and started driving as usual, and we were in the very Third World of dirt mountain roads, bumping my wife´s wounded arm, passing little stick houses and horses and pigs and pot holes and we reached the only beach in the Dominican Republic that isn´t really a beach, just brown frothing water a very brisk sea breeze and strange fried rissoles for lunch- pictures to follow.

Back over the mountains dodging potholes and into the lobby of our five star world, soothing music, 11 dollar (US) rum punches and all services in three languages.

Very confusing, very stimulating. All in wonderful summery 85 degrees and perpetual sunshine. Sometimes Key West just isn´t warm enough.

On The Road Again

My wife is certifiable. We have to be in Miami tomorrow to get her operated wrist a new cast and she has decided we need to take advantage of a work-free weekend to travel. So Friday morning we leave the ground at Fort Lauderdale and regain sea level two hours later in the capital of the Dominican Republic. She got a couple of cheap tickets, dusted off our passports and loaded up with cash and fresh batteries in the camera. Santo Domingo here we come!

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Meanwhile I was in Key West today and parked my Bonneville in a motorcycle lot next to another machine that has long interested me. Its the tiddly ride in the stable produced by Erik Buell, but in many respects I think it is one of the more interesting.

For somewhere south of five grand you get an ultra low maintenance 500cc single cylinder (half a Harley Davidson engine) motorcycle that has a top speed around 80 mph, shakes like jello and gets 70miles per very expensive gallon. It uses a final drive belt, the engine valves need no adjusting and the fuel and oil are carried low in the frame. Its an easy bike to ride with no chrome to polish and a modest size that makes it easy for smaller riders. The streets of our country should be flooded with these bikes. Too bad Buell doesn't offer decent luggage and a nice windshield to create the ultimate inexpensive commuter for a new century. Don't get me wrong, I love my Bonneville, but the Blast could well live up to its name for lots of riders.

Riding With Rilke

The saying" bright enough to read a book by," is sometimes used to describe a full moon and lately its been that way on my street. I'm lucky enough to live where street lights have yet to penetrate so every night is a light show, stars on no moon nights, and crisp white light bathing everything for the other ten nights a month. When we were out cruising I preferred traveling by night, partly because it was cooler, partly because the ocean is a marvelous place at night. On moonless nights I sat in the cockpit of my sailboat and watched a deeper darker sky than a city dweller could imagine possible, and the term "velvet" sprang to mind. But to be on a tropical passage under a brightly shining moon is another brand of magic altogether and even though the silver disk obscures the stars, I really do prefer a full moon. It's an event I notice even when the moon is just starting to rise over the mangroves with the sun still high enough in the sky to be able to...read a book by. I was turned on to the book in question by the Moto Philosopher, a mention of a motorcycle biography by a Canadian university professor who told the story of riding to Texas on his highly unsuitable Ducati. The notion that a 700cc standard motorcycle might be "unsuitable" for a journey of several thousand miles is a modern conceit, propagated in a consumer driven economy where every garage should house a multiplicity of cycles, one for each purpose. A huge cruiser to travel, a dirt bike for fire roads, a scooter to commute and a classic to admire and on and on and on. Ted Bishop turns his back on that theory, falls in love with a Ducati Monster in monstrous matt black and takes off across America. Except this isn't the oily reminiscences of a wrench monkey. Bishop feels like he has climbed his mechanical peak when he has checked his chain final drive tension every evening. And perhaps, that is why the book is delightful. It is about riding a motorcycle, seeing places and enjoying America in all its grotesque glory. That's because travel writers love to zoom in on the weird and the whacked, and Lord knows there's plenty of grist for their mill in these United States.The other reason this book makes a good read is because Bishop is a professor of literature and he's a part-time detective and he's on the hunt for first editions and buyer lists and all sorts of other irrelevant nonsense. Don't get me wrong I love to read but Virginia Woolf and James Joyce are not anywhere near my list of classics I need to re-read, since I last hacked them in school. Thus Ted Bishop's orgasmic research in the ivory halls of Austin's academe don't do much for me, but I appreciate his well written fervor. On the other hand, T.E. Lawrence and Richard Burton (the explorer, not the actor) are writers of a different and much more interesting caliber, so they, and the Ducati keep me going between chiffon waves of Woolf and Joyce and their drawing room dramas. I am having a blast with this story; everybody should.

Merry Christmas Mr Smith

I found out another thing from my wife this Holiday Season as we got ready to bag some wine and chocolates and head out to a festive Christmas Dinner in town. "Today's the day Jews look forward to eating out Chinese," she told me, much to my surprise. Who knew? And I've been married to her for nearly 15 years. Apparently her family tradition was to go to Lake Tahoe and take a splendid day on the slopes when the gentiles were all giving thanks for the arrival of their savior. Jews are still waiting for theirs and Confucians are pretty much on the fence about the whole mystical savior thing, as far as I can gather, so one lot goes round and orders food from the other lot. We did the Christian thing this year and stuffed our communal faces.The family gathering involved as it often does in Key West, out-of-towners, pasty white and excited to be under hazy skies in 75 degree temperatures filling themselves with good cheer and alcohol. The family in question, of a colleague of my wife, is an extraordinarily jolly family of seven siblings, their parents and 6 grandchildren. We spent Christmas afternoon laughing and telling stories and generally being silly. They exchanged home made stockings,and were so kind to each other it positively made an observer wish he was part of such an extended family. The true meaning of Christmas, enhanced by a splendid tree, and of course the great fortune of renting a home with a canal front for fishing and a pool to swim in.Rather them than me in such chilly conditions, but I saw nary a goose pimple before the lights went out. It was a delightfully Key West moment, as we plunged into darkness and the party carried on regardless. We went home in darkness, Highway One a ribbon of taillights winding through darkened mangroves and moonlit lagoons. It was delightful, especially as the lights came back minutes after we got home, and restored everything to normal.

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The Conch part of the program was executed a couple of days ahead of the Day, under the stars in the candle-lit backyard of a colleague of mine who put on another magnificent spread. This time we shared a groaning table with a large bunch of off-duty police officers, which is a state of affairs that can be quite startling until you get used to it. I rather enjoy it these days, sharing stories of good police cheer and a few occasionally macabre laughs along the way.

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So among the good cheer was the entirely sober and very funny police chaplain and his partner, an officer with the State Police office in Key West. The chaplain, who I shall call Steve, because that's his name, is a police officer endowed with a mischievous sense of humor, very dry, and a worldliness that may be part of his nature but is enhanced by working the beat in a world wide destination town like Key West. Not to mention taking care of the souls and states of mind of men and women who deal daily with more than their share of human misery.

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He and my wife, who teaches at the Juvenile Jail have a history and they were talking about this and that and juveniles, and in the Christmas spirit the success stories that make them cheerful, the straight and narrow regained, etc... when Steve points out that as a cop and a chaplain he ends up getting known in the oddest places.

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"I was on Oahu this year, on vacation with John, minding my own business and this kid comes up to me and is all over me, shaking my hand and being real friendly." The story goes on about this small world Key West-in-the-wilderness encounter, "cheerful probably because I didn't arrest him for something or other," Steve went on between forkfuls of roast pork. "I have no idea, can't remember him a bit, but he remembers me. Doesn't matter where I go in the world I meet Key Westers." It's at this point a tired looking detective at the end of the table takes a pause from bottle feeding his infant and says: "Does he have spiky blond hair?" And Steve nods through a mouthful of rice, and between them they checked the descriptors, which is cop-talk for what he looked like, and it may well be him. "Yeah," the detective says laconically. "Got a ton of warrants out for him and I heard a rumor he ran to the Islands."

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"Hey!" Steve shrugs cheerfully, "they weren't my warrants! No wonder he was laughing when he met me!" and he dug back in to his plate.

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Merry Christmas Mr Smith wherever you are, and perhaps its time to go straight or turn yourself in. All in the spirit of the season you understand.