The Colonial Zone & The Ghost Town

Apr 22, 2009 109 0 0

Cap Cana, Dominican Republic

We left Bonaire headed for the Dominican Republic (DR), but with no specific harbor in mind. Crossing the Caribbean Sea is notoriously rough and there are strong currents pushing west, making our exact landfall uncertain. We wanted to make as much easting as we could, hoping to make it to the Mona Passage, our jumping off point for our next trip, to the Bahamas. The passage turned out as forecast, a close reach in moderate winds and waves. While not comfortable, it was not unbearable either and we made good progress arriving in the Mona Passage in time for the nightly squalls.

The fishing was fun, but disappointing. We started fishing our second day out, once the waves had calmed a little, and had a decent size Mahi Mahi strike. While we had the fish at the stern of Berkeley East and where debating about if we need to use the gaff or not, he jumped and spit the hook. Later we had a huge strike. Mary had the drag on the reel fully tightened down and it was still taking line and the reel was smoking. With most of our line gone, the run stopped and we started to pull the fish in. Over 45 minutes later we had an 8-foot blue marlin (probably 200 lbs – 300 lbs) along side the boat. As we discussed what to do next, he started another run but luckily, didn’t make it as far this time. We muscled the marlin back along side Berkeley East, still uncertain of what to do, but we wanted our lure back. We only had one left, having sacrificed one to the large shark off of the Testigos. After over an hour and one more run, we thought we had tired him out and he was just under our stern when he took off again snapping the line and taking the lure. We decided to take a break from fishing for a while and we will need to replenish our lures once we arrive in Ft. Lauderdale. This fishing is getting expensive.

As we approached the DR, we debated continuing on to Puerta Plato, another 30 hours, or stopping in Cap Cana. While we didn’t know much about Cap Cana, it sounded like a nice place to stop and it had a good marina where it would be easy to leave Berkeley East and tour the southern side of the island. So we slowed down and waited for sunrise to approach the marina.

Cap Cana is a massive residential and resort complex being built in an area the size of Manhattan Island. It is on the east side of Hispaniola, the island that the Dominican Republic shares with Haiti. Hispaniola and the DR are massive in size compared to the other Caribbean islands we have visited making touring by car more efficient then sailing Berkeley East from port to port. The DR is over 200 miles long and has the highest mountain in the Caribbean, Pico Duarte, at over 10,000 feet.

The new marina at Cap Cana and its surrounding condos are only a small part of the development. While the section we were in is complete, there is still a lot of construction underway on the next phases of the marina complex, villas and hotels,

The Cap Cana marina and resorts were virtual ghost towns while we were there. This turned out to be great as we had almost exclusive use to all of the resort facilities, pools, beaches, restaurants, beach club, etc… Most afternoons, we hung out at one of the pools or beaches and were the only ones there. Berkeley East was docked in a nice 100-foot slip, right next to a bar / restaurant.

After a two-hour tour of the resort, we were impressed, but not yet ready to buy a villa. The developments in the DR are struggling as loans for continuing development are hard to come by. Who wants to own a million dollar villa in a potentially bankrupt development?

We had chosen Cap Cana because it had a secure marina that would allow us to leave Berkeley East and travel around the island. So we did a two-day taxi trip to see the south side of the island, spending the night in Santo Domingo.

The drive to Santo Domingo was interesting and exciting. We went though little towns, seeing the real DR, outside of the luxury resort. The people were friendly, hard working and there was a positive feel to the towns. The towns were busy with people going about there daily business. The resorts and resort construction creates a lot of jobs, but the Domincans are struggling because the Haitians are coming across the boarder illegally and working for lower wages.

Our taxi driver drove like most of the Dominicans – crazy, weaving in and out of cars at high speeds and ignoring the lanes in the road. He explained that “you need to drive this way or you make an accident”. We just held on and enjoyed the scenery speeding by.

Santo Domingo is the capital and largest city in the DR. It is home to over 2.5 million people and has two sections, the modern section and the Zona Colonial. We stayed in the Zona Colonial, the old colonial section of the city. Santo Domingo, originally named Isebella, is the oldest city in the new world and was settled by Columbus’ brother. We walked around the city enjoying the many old buildings, including the oldest church in the new world and the first paved street in the Americas.

And Columbus’ brother house.

At night we enjoyed good food and local music at a music festival in the Colon square.

On our way back to Cap Cana we stopped at Cueva De Las Maravillas, a large cave complex off the La Romona highway. We had a private tour from a guide who was a student of modern language at the university. He was practicing his English on us. It was a great walk though large caverns’ with stalactites, stalagmites and ancient drawings. A little touristy, but we had a good time and helped the guide improve his English.

Our next stop was at Altos de Chavon, a Caribbean art center located above the Chavon river valley. Although built in 1976 this village was built to resemble 18th century Caribbean colonial architecture with coral and terra-cotta block, with cobble stone walkways. It houses an art school and galleries to display the student’s works. There were performers dressed in period costumes thoughout the village, walking the streets and performing for us. Like most of the resorts in the DR, Altos de Chavon was very quiet, with few guests.

After our land trip, we settled back into life at Cap Cana. We were enjoying the resort so much we found it difficult to leave. Each morning we would get up, check the weather and decide we could stay another day. It is hard to leave your own private five-star resort that only cost $55 day in dockage!

But while we don’t have a fixed schedule we do need to get to Ft. Lauderdale to meet up with our new push pit (being shipped to us from Taiwan) in mid May, so we are headed off to somewhere in the Bahamas tomorrow.