8th to 13th - Luperon, DR

Monday, April 8, 2013

Location:  Luperon, Dominican Republic

I believe we are now stuck in the muck of this harbor.  In the morning, this place is as peaceful and calm as a picturesque lake.  By 10am, the trade winds start to blow thru here and by late afternoon, they can be howling.  BUT … since we moved over to this spot near the mangroves, our anchor seems to be holding beautifully. 

After a relaxing morning of coffee and homemade english muffins, we decided we would lower the dinghy and head into town.  It was around 10am.  Larry still had to visit Customs and the Port Authority departments to finish our clearing in process.  Luckily, this was quick and fairly painless to our pockets.  Customs only charged $10 and the Port Authority charged $20 ($10/person) for visitor passes.  In total, our clearing in to this country was $105.  We’re really hoping this isn’t typical because we will be passing through many countries along our way.  Someone had told us that clearing in/out of countries average about $12.  It’s going to take a lot of “cheap” entries for us to make up the $300 spent in the Bahamas, the $100 in Turks & Caicos and now the $105 spent here.

Leaving the dock area and heading into the town of Luperon, you pass thru a gated, secure area just at the end of the commercial dock.  This is where the customs/etc offices are.  It was our first glimpse of the DR … very different culture.  First, the process and port security could probably have been totally handled by a single person but here, there was a staff of at least 10 people.  And most of them armed!  However, everyone was extremely nice so that was good!

Now, for the town itself … wow, what can I say about Luperon?  I guess in my opinion, it reminded me of a town from the wild west movies (except not all buildings are wood and some are cinderblock).  The construction here would make you cringe.  Many of the buildings were wood, unpainted, windows with no glass just a curtain or blanket blowing in the breeze, and in complete disrepair and appear to be only one or two rooms.  You would not imagine someone occupying it, let alone an entire family calling it “home”.  Others were made of cinder block.  This was even more comical.  The amount of cement used to hold these cinder blocks together … well let me put it this way, if they built an 8 X 10ft wall of cinder block back home they would be required to use as much cement as these guys use for a full two story home.  And the re-bar use to secure the structure is next to none.  I need to get a picture of the most recent addition to Luperon.  It is currently under construction and actually has tree branches to hold up the second story.  Wow, definitely not up to American construction code!

But the town is quaint.  The people are awesome.  We walked the entire town (took maybe 20 minutes) and then settled at Wendy’s Bar.  Very large beers were only 70 pesos – about $1.73 US, but almost the size of a small pitcher back home.  They had free internet.  We got caught up on a few things we needed to do online and enjoyed the company.  Everyone knew everyone so also knew we were newbies.  They all came and introduced themselves and gave us the lay of the land.  Almost every one came to Luperon as a stop-over (just like us) but are still here years later.  Luperon is the “Hotel California” of the DR … you can check-out any time you like but you can never leave!  We need to stay focused so we don’t get sucked into this life!

This evening, it was hotdog and movie night at Wendy’s bar.  Hotdogs were 20 pesos (about $0.50 US) and they were awesome … BBQ’d and burnt just nicely like all hotdogs should be.  The movie was Armageddon.  We enjoyed the hotdogs and company but slipped out before the movie cause we were both exhausted.  Doing nothing all day is a tiring thing!

Oops, forgot to mention, while we were in town we went to a place that sells internet.  We paid 350 pesos (about $8.66) for 7 days of internet and we can get it here in the harbor on our boat.  Yippie!  I will try to spend time uploading some photos cause I think we have quite a few.