January 16 – January 21, 2024; 12300 nm and 1767 days after departure from La Rochelle

What a detour! The direct trip to the DR from San Blas would have taken us about 750nm. The detour via Aruba, St. Martin, the Virgin Islands and PR took us 1750nm. Imagine that on land. That would be like e.g. driving from Cologne to Paris via Munich and Basel. On the other hand we had the chance to see even more of the Caribbean – which was great!

The DR is such a beautiful country. In my, long time ago, former student life I also worked in a travel agency. Back then I always thought the DR was a destination for people who like to visit the Caribbean in an all inclusive resort on a lower budget. To me it sounded rather boring and so my interest of visiting the island was rather poor. It was not at all on my bucket list. So glad I changed my mind and we decided to visit the DR. Because now I think it is one of the most beautiful Caribbean islands. It just has so much to offer.
Well, we arrived in Samamá Bay, in the northeast of the DR after a two night sail and we immediately fell in love. The nature was just amazing and the people super friendly. Thanks to a nice local, named Domingo who spoke a liiiiitle English we managed the check in procedure within 2 hours. Which was pretty fast from what we heard from other sailors💪. We also learned where to go when we wanted to move on. In the DR sailors must get a “despacho” from the armada when they want to move to another anchorage. That can be a bit annoying because sometimes the officials don’t show up for work in time (or at all) or the despacho takes a few hours to get. It is actually just a paper with your names and boat details on it. Oh, and you can’t get it earlier as you need to leave immediately once you hold it in your hands. That might interact with your leaving plans especially when you need to pick a perfect wind/weather window at non office hours.
Anyhow, fortunately for us it was no issue. When we wanted to leave to visit the national park “Los Haitises” on the south side of Samaná Bay, a nice young officer did a good job. He even spoke some English and prepared the despacho for our desired time, two hours later.

After two days recovering from the trip and exploring the village Samaná we anchored on the opposite side of the vast bay of Samaná at Los Haitises in “Bahia de San Lorenzo”. It was stunning! Los Haitises is truly a hidden gem full of fascinating caves, pristine beaches and mangrove forests. And lucky us, we were right in the middle of it – alone. So, so beautiful. Sometimes it felt like being in the movie Jurassic Park with so many green nature surrounding us. The only part missing were some dinos. Though I was glad that we didn’t see any😁.
We anchored close to a small river mouth, “Río Caño Hondo”. This river meanders through the mangroves and leads to a little dock somewhere in the park. In the early morning of the next day we jumped into our dinghy and started the trip through the mangroves. What can I say? I know, I keep repeating myself but hey it was just so so incredibly beautiful. Calm, quiet and peaceful. Pictures don’t really show it but slowly rowing through a mangrove river is somehow magical. One seems to be in another world…No,no,no I am not exaggerating!

We had read that there was a cozy eco lodge in the park, which was only a few miles walk away from the dock. As it was still early in the morning – we didn’t have any breakfast yet, we were hoping to get a nice, big breakfast at the lodge. Again the walk there was more than pulchritudinous (hahaha just looked it up, it means beautiful- just in case somebody doesn’t know; I can’t even pronounce it, just wanted to use another word). I was surprised to see paddy fields. Had no clue that the DR would produce rice but anyhow I loved them. The fields (see first pic) looked so lush and green and in the back the mountains – what a picture!
Once we reached the eco lodge we learned that they only offer lunch to walk-ins. 20 US $ per person including using the facilities of the lodge. That was a fair deal but we had to wait 3 more hours before we would get some food. Transversing the property was a natural river landscaped into numerous waterfalls. That was quite nice but we didn’t feel like using the numerous pools yet. Instead we explored every corner of the lodge and were lucky to leverage the terraces with their comfortable seating to hide from a sudden rainfall. As we still had so much time until our already complaining stomachs would be served, we went for a hike in the vicinity of the lodge. After the rain of course😉. We were rewarded with more amazing scenery. Workers riding their horses into the woods (see feature photo) and cows happily grazing in the nature.

Huuuungryyyyy. Strolling in the nature and admiring it was great but meanwhile we were starving. We headed back to the lodge hoping for an early lunch. Still no sight of a starting buffet. To distract our starving stomachs we decided to use one of the pools. We were still the only guests at the lodge. At least we haven’t seen any guests so it was especially nice to have a swim in the natural pool and let our backs get a massage from a waterfall. The water was soo cold that we needed to warm up in the sun in a sun lounger. And then, suddenly some movement at the buffet area!!!! OMG could it be true? Our stomachs jubilated with excitement that they would soon be able to receive some food. Slowly we got up to the buffet area. Slowly, slowly, much too slowly the buffet was prepared. I was tempted to help the waiters to get the buffet starting. Then, finally the relief. The feast had been opened! Yippeee!!! We were the first and still only persons at the buffet and enjoyed a typical Dominican lunch of meat, fish, rice, beans, vegetables, salad and fruit. It was delicious. We could hardly stop us from gorging the food. After a few bites though, we became normal humans again and realised that out of the blue some tourist groups were getting closer to the lodge. The main reason for quite a big buffet. Leaded by tour guides two groups of about 30 people came to the lodge to have lunch. Fortunately our bellies were already satisfied. No need to fight for food 😉 at the buffet. Pleased and ready for a walk we went back to our dinghy through the magical mangrove river and back to Altimate.

As we were only allowed to stay four days at the national park Los Haitises we moved on two miles to get a bit closer to some caves we wanted to visit the next days. Somehow we were not as smart as the day before. We aimed for leaving early again to reach the caves before the tourist boats would come. Well it did not quite work out, we just slept too long. In the end it was ok reaching the first cave with another tourist boat. There were only about 15 people and the guide was super friendly. He let us listen to his speeches about the history of the caves. His boat boys even gave us some bottled water to clean our feet as we had to walk through mud to get ashore. Much nicer to put on proper shoes on clean feet.
The name of the cave was “Cueva de la linea”. Found deeper in the forest, this vast cave was filled with Taino (historic indigenous people of the Caribbean) drawings, giving us a better sense of Taino religion and culture before their society’s ultimate demise with the arrival of Europeans over 500 years ago. Well to be honest we did see some drawings but we couldn’t really get what those meant. We should have listened more to the nice guide. As well, we both somehow are not so amazed by caves. It was dark, slippery and we always needed to watch our heads. Of course it was special but didn’t get us super excited. Yet, on our list was another cave named “Cueva de la Arena” that one was located on a pretty secluded beach. The cave’s several waterfront caverns held as well Taino carvings in the rock and sleepy bats in their natural habitat. For whatever reason, here we were the first visitors that day. That was nice as we were actually able to see the bats. I had the impression when more people were in the cave the bats didn’t move anymore. We liked this cave way better. The waterfront caverns looked very special with their spooky sunlight rays and water splashing in.

Those were the nice parts of our trip to Samaná. The annoying part happened on the little leg from the other anchorage. Our dear and very trusty autopilot was suddenly struggling, then suffering and shortly after couldn’t steer anymore. Damn! What a bummer! To give the non sailors an idea, a boat without an autopilot could be maybe compared to driving a big truck without a steering booster. Imagine a 2 days passage steering the whole time – that would be extremely exhausting. Long story short we needed to fix the problem before thinking of going further to the Bahamas. Luckily we have a great handyman aboard. El capitano managed to find the source of the trouble pretty fast. One of the high-pressure hoses of our hydraulic autopilot system was leaking. No pressure, no steering as easy as that. After taking out the hoses, it was visible that as well the second hose was very aged and at the limit of its life. The harder part now was to find out where to get those high pressure hoses and even worse where to get the right fittings. American and British fittings are only slightly different and not even visible with the eye. With a problem like that we decided to go to Bahía Marina Samaná.

After figuring out the source of the failure of our steering master we enjoyed another peaceful day in the lovely bay of Samaná. In the afternoon of our last day we moved to another anchorage in front of a gorgeous pristine beach. We were looking forward to stretch our legs and later enjoy a sundowner at this lovely beach watching the sun fall into the horizon. Hahaha, right after our anchor was set we were attacked by billions of sandflies. Now we knew why the beach was so pristine! Noway to go ashore when as well the lazy flies would be able to eat us up. So, that trip ended up in just a super short stop. The anchor was lifted back up and we headed further away from the beach, right into the middle of the bay. No strolling but we had still a nice sundowner on Altimate’s side deck. Cheers!