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Multisport Dominican Republic- Live and
Adrenaline Junkie's Dream
National Geographic Adventure
Jan/Feb 2000
By Tom Clynes
"Trust the rope," Frederic yells,
watching my legs shake as I back over the lip of a hundred-foot-high
waterfall.
I play out some slack, lean back,
and focus on my feet, careful not to repeat the mistake of
another gringo who chickened out after looking at-and thinking
too much about-the rocky maelstrom below. As I shuffle sideways
into the cascade, the water pulses over my feet and ankles,
splashing up in a body chilling spray. After a few tentative
steps, the fear disappears and I bounce down the waterfall
in long, elated arcs, whooping each time I crash through the
spume.
Rappelling down waterfalls is
just one element of canyoneering, a sometimes dangerous, wildly
fun sport that combines hiking, swimming, high diving and
rock climbing. Led by [our guide.] our group of six drove
in this morning from Cabarete, on the Dominican Republic's
north coast, to the mountain village of Caimito. After pulling
on wet suits, helmets, water shoes, and life jackets, we descended
through thick vegetation into the gorge of Rio Blanco.
The trail dead-ended on the top
of a boulder overhanging a deep pool, 25 feet below. I expected
Frederic to start setting up ropes. Instead, he threw the
rope bag over his shoulder and eyed the group.
"If its over eight meters, we
jump. Who's first?"
One after another, we launched
ourselves off the cliff, initiating a wild spree of splash
landing, rapids running, and rock scrambling that culminated,
three hours later, with the waterfall descent.
Canyoneering is an adrenaline
freak's dream-and, come to think of it, so is the Dominican
Republic. Just twice the size of Vermont, the DR is packed
with a continent's worth of outdoor adventures. In my ten
days there, I climbed the highest mountain in the Caribbean
and windsurfed in the best conditions east of Maui. I crawled
through caves decorated with Indian pictographs and biked
alpine valleys and remote beaches. I rode a motorcycle between
backcountry villages and rafted a white-water river. And I
went canyoneering. Twice.
My routine (if you can call it
that) was to spend a few days getting all dirty and banged
up, then bliss out on a beach lapped by turquoise water before
going out to play again. For beach and biking pursuits, I
based myself in Cabarete, east of the tourist town of Puerto
Plata. "Discovered" by a few Canadian boardsailors who had
set up camp here by the early 1980s, the location has steady
trade winds and a reef that kicks up a line of big, well sculpted
waves. Most afternoons, you'll see experts launching themselves
skyward a half mile off-shore, while novices learn to tack
in the gentle waters inside the reef. If your mast breaks
or if you get too tired to sail a forgiving wind pushes you
back onto the beach.
After a day of windsurfing, I
wandered along Cabarete's beachfront strip of restaurants
and bars, where visitors from Europe and North America mix
with the exuberant, outgoing locals. Like Spain on its post-Franco
binge, the Dominican Republic is on a roll, celebrating the
end of a long era of corrupt octogenarian leaders. Everywhere,
you see people dancing to the breakneck beat of merengue,
with the volume usually cranked up to distortion level.
There are still more horses than
cars on the roads, and no one dares to drink tap water or
count on a night of uninterrupted electricity. But soldiers
no longer round up political dissenters, and a growing middle
class has sprung up to harvest the island's newest cash crop:
tourism. Driving is still an adventure (most secondary roads
are potholed), but lately even police shakedowns have become
kinder and gentler. At a routine roadblock, a cop asked if
I had any beer in the vehicle.
"No," I said. "I haven't been
drinking."
"Well, actually," he said, eyeing
the cooler in the backseat, "what I mean is, do you have a
beer for me?"
Although the majority of tourists
are working-class Europeans who arrive on package tours and
stay at all-inclusive resorts, a growing number of independent
visitors are exploring the countryside, often on bicycles.
Valleys that stretch like hammocks between four mountain ranges
are laced with hundreds of miles of dirt road and single track.
A three-hour bike ride can take you through five distinct
climatic zones.
Between windsurfing outings, I
rounded up some riding buddies at Cabarete's Iguana Mama bike
shop, and spent a few days shacking out a rented Stumpjumper
on trails with names like "Choco Loco" and "Rocky M.F." The
latter begins with a technical uphill section that weaves
precariously through a field of coral rocks. Once we got through
that, we rewarded ourselves with a cool swim in a flooded
cave, then plunged towards the beach on a series of vision-blurring
downhills. Later in the week, I brought the bike out to the
remote and rugged Samana Peninsula, which extends 30 miles
into the Atlantic from the northeastern corner of the Dominican
Republic. There, I spent two days exploring the single-track
trails that dip and climb between forested bluffs and palm-fringed
bays and weave through thickly forested mountains.
After a daylong sidetrip for white-water
rafting near Jarabacoa in the center of the island , I arrive
with my climbing companions-Alex from Santo Domingo and Tricia
and Amy from the eastern United States-in La Cienaga, high
in the Cordillera Central. The village doesn't have electricity,
but live music wafts across the main square, which is aglow
with soft moonlight in the early evening. We're here to round
up some pack mules for the climb up Pico Duarte, the highest
mountain in the Caribbean.
This 10,400-foot summit in Armando
Bermudez National Park isn't really a difficult ascent, but
the mules will allow us to go gourmet with the food, and to
take our time exploring the valley's villages and Indian petroglyphs.
A park rule that stipulates one muleteer for every three mules
is basically a make-work scheme. We're willing to play along,
but when we talk to a certain Don Francisco about renting
some mules, his math seems to be based on his own mule multiplication
table. We want mules for gear only, but he says his son needs
an extra mule to ride. And because we now have more mules,
we'll need another son as a muleteer-with another mule to
ride. Francisco also insists we bring along his young son,
little Vito (with his own mule), because he cried the last
time his brothers went off to Pico Duarte without him.
By the time the elaborate negotiations
are completed, we've let ourselves get talked into leaving
La Cienaga with an expeditionary force of seven mules and
three guides.
Among the ranches and arid pine forests of the Cordillera
Central, horses and mules are the prevailing mode of transportation,
and people move to the lilting, low-key beat of the country
music called bachata. Each valley is the picture of tradition,
with farmers using 19th-century agricultural techniques and
racks of tobacco drying in front of little pastel houses.
Even in the remotest corners of the country, people are everywhere.
Kids run up and beg us to take their picture, and adults invite
us in for a cafecito, strained through nylon stockings and
served in small cups, super strong and loaded with sugar.
The Cordillera Central is often
called the Dominican Alps, but the range looks more like central
New Hampshire, with rolling, pine-covered mountains. Just
as the sun begins to set and the temperature starts to drop,
we pitch the tents at a campsite called La Comparticion. We
cook some chuletas ahmaudas (smoked pork chops) with rice,
coconut and habichuelas (beans), and get the mule drivers
hooked on roasted marshmallows. Little Vito tries to dry my
pants (muddied in a mule mishap) over the campfire, and ends
up setting them on fire.
In the morning, winter had arrived,
replete with shivering campers and frost on the ground. Its
hard to believe we're in the middle of the Caribbean. We cook
breakfast, pack the mules, and zigzag toward the summit through
a field of trees felled by Hurricane Georges. A decomposing
mule lies in the middle of the trail, giving off a huge stink.
Passing through this "death zone", I ask little Vito what
happened to the mule.
"Se murio", he says. It died. The kid is indeed proving to
be a valuable addition to the team.
After scrambling through a boulder
field, we reach Pico Duarte;s summit, which consists of a
pile of rocks topped with a cheesy statue of Juan Pablo Duarte
(the father of Dominican independence), two flags and the
inevitable cross. Tricia pulls out some rum and Camembert
cheese ("a Dominican tradition," she jokes), and we toast
our arrival at the roof of the Caribbean. The clouds shroud
the view, and the wind is so cold that we wish we had brought
gloves and jackets.
After a few minutes, we begin
the descent to La Comparticion, where the sun has brought
the springtime back. By mid-afternoon, we'll be down in summer
again, heading for the beach.
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