Part Two: The Bad
OK, everyplace has its good and bad, and the Dominican Republic is no exception. Their reputation has been pretty rough in the past. I know I would have liked some current information prior to going there. So, even though I try to focus on the good stuff typically, I’ll try to share the straight dope here. Read more
We spent over three months in the Dominican Republic: long enough to get a real flavor of the country and to explore it pretty widely. By the time we left, I felt it was a place where I could happily live, but in which I would hate to have to do any serious business. The country, and the people, are just lovely. So let’s start with that! Read more
A quick note first – hurricane Matthew just blew past Crooked Island. Our thoughts are with the people there, and in the rest of the Bahamas. With all our hearts, we hope no harm came to them.
We left Rum Cay determined to sail – not motor – to our next destination. We couldn’t be sure, until we got away from the island, exactly what the wind would be doing. To accommodate the uncertainty, we set a number of potential destinations in our chart plotter, and decided we’d make the eastern-most one that the wind would allow. Clarencetown, Long Island if the wind was south of east, Crooked Island, Plana Cays, or Mayaguana if we had a little more luck and the wind was pure east or north of east.
It turned out that we could not have been luckier if we had tried, because we ended up at Crooked Island, which we would have otherwise passed by, and it was just amazing. Not just the island itself, which would have been enough, but the beautiful people we met there, both on land and on another boat.