Explorations

When we learned from the weather gods that depature would be impossible before Sunday, WW proposed we go exploring. On Wednesday, therefore, we took a cab to Sosua, about 20 kilometers east of Puerto Plata. Our driver delivered us to the middle of town. It's a pretty place but muchas touristas. We blended in. A lot of real estate agencies with lots of pictures: WW was in his element.

After lunch, the driver took us to the beach, which is lined with huts selling mass-produced, "authentic" art from the DR, Haiti, and the long-extinct Tainos. WW bought a Sosua cap. As each shack is passed, its owner dashes from wherever he or she is lurking (often with a neighbouring shack-keeper, passing the time) to beg you to enter. The standard phrase seems to be "Just one minute, please. Just one minute." There is a firm belief that, once trapped inside, we will be suddenly swept away by the beauty of the figurines, paintings, and fake amber jewelry we have seen only in every other shack here, in Santiago, in Santo Domingo, in Jarabacoa...but this shack's offerings will prove suddenly different. We have become adept at saying "no, gracias" and at keeping moving. Heaven forfend one should gaze on any object for more than 0.06 nanoseconds. That will get three entrepreneurs launched at you, each trying to convince you that her or his identical item is better.

Guides are a similar proposition. They start accompanying you, whether you want them or not. But by far the worst are the ones who try to drag you off to sign up for a lifetime of timeshares. They travel on golfcarts and whisk you away to the office where the hard-sell man works on you for hours, including free drinks and meals, and tours of the apartments, flats and villas. We survived one experience of this, which was, actually, pretty interesting. (We declined to enrol.) But they are everywhere, like carrion seekers. We must have been approached by an even half dozen while we were in Sosua alone.

That said, all these people do respond to a firm no. After they've shown you the picture of the baby they are trying to earn support for, they back off if you really don't want them. I think they've figured out that trailing after people who have firmly declined their goods or services is not a paying proposition.

We headed back to Colfresi (where Ocean World is located), watching as miles of sugar cane rolled by. I had wondered, when I first saw the cattle here, why they weren't de-horned. It's an easy enough procedure and means fewer inter-cattle injuries, not to mention handler hurts. Well, I saw why on the way. A field full of grazing cattle, all tethered by one horn and a long strip of canvas strapping at a decent distance from each other. Calves won't wander from their mums, so this system keeps the herd together-ish, and means fences can be optional.

Horses are often tethered by the road where they graze during the day...or collapse from the heat. For the last week, this hasn't really been a problem. The daytime temperature has hovered around a cool-for-here 26C.

We arrived back at Django pleasantly fatigued. We have been listening to recorded books after dinner, and had finished Pride and Prejudice (an excellent recording by Penguin). We moved on to Crime and Punishment. Thus cheered, we hit the berth.