Those going on this day trip from Santo Domingo to Sanoa Island start at the Pizzerelli Pizza Palace at six forty five in the morning.
There is no one on the street this morning when I walk to our assigned pick up point, but, at the pizza place, there are five of us who are met by Isidro of Colonial Tours. We follow him down stone steps, out of the Colonial Zone, where we load onto our tour bus transport. Picking up more passengers in Boca Chica, along the way, we are full by the time we all get to Bayimbe where we board several small boats and a catamaran and putt putt out to Sanoa Beach, our destination.
Santo Domingo is, I have found, far away from the best beaches of the Dominican Republic. The real sand and surf activities are on the north shore of the island at Punta Cana, Bayimbe is a cute little town being discovered and developed by foreigners and Sanoa Beach is clean and secure for all travelers even if locals walk the beach selling their jewelry and local crafts that you have already been showed a hundred times.
On our sail back to the mainland at the end of the day, where we re- board our tour bus and return to Santo Domingo, there is dancing on our catamaran, too much booze, but very happy passengers.
It is dark when we all get home, a twelve hour trip for sixty five bucks, a value when you add all the pieces.
I never see these beaches without wondering about sailors marooned, Robinson Crusoe, pirate treasure buried by the foot of palm trees marked by an X on a yellowed map hidden deep in an old chest that has been in storms around Cape Horn.
A trip to the Dominican Republic isn’t complete without getting sand between my toes.
After each trip, new moments join old moments in one big jigsaw puzzle.
Today’s moments can stand on their own, but, they seem to pick up depth and velocity when they hold hands with older ones.
Comparing moments brings wisdom, but learning, I have been told, is best done with a Pina Colada in one hand and a barbecue wing in the other.
These are a pair of Scott’s work shoes from when he used to work hard.
Instead of being covered with paint, which was Scott’s trade when public school teaching became intolerable,one of these shoes has residue from floor tile adhesive on its toe.
The problem with these shoes comes up in Caribbean or Latin American countries where shoe shine hustlers want to clean them on sight. They swoop down out of nowhere and are fiddling with my shoes before I can wave them off.
Part of travel is using precautions. Make a copy of your Passport to show to people in lieu of the real thing. Don’t wear flashy jewelry. Don’t tell strangers where you live. Don’t drink water, except bottled. Go in groups at night. Don’t do things abroad you wouldn’t do at home. Get all your shots. Use sunscreen. Use local currency. Don’t insert yourself into police business or arguments between men and women.
My newest precaution, added to this list, is going to be to clean this adhesive off my shoe.
I could wear my Croc’s but they are the worst walking foot wear ever created.
Visibility is restricted on airplanes.
Looking out through a small porthole, flyers can see parts of their plane, but mostly see clouds. Sometimes the clouds are white as your grandfather’s hair while other times they are puffed up like a boxer’s bruised right eye.
The terra firma of the Dominican Republic fills my porthole as we fly over the island and begin our descent. Instructions for landing are given over a sound system in Spanish and English. We are thanked for our compliance, urged to take all our belongings with us, go through Customs, enjoy our trip and fly United again.
This island is large, with plenty of water, and grows everything, and the surrounding sea has plenty of fish. This island is the size of Georgia and is one of the largest of the Caribbean islands, behind Cuba and Jamaica.
Setting down with a bump, on a wet runway, this ninth Scotttreks trek, has begun.
I’ll be stepping back into history this trip, jumping into the Unesco certified Colonial Zone in Santo Domingo where Spain established its beachhead in the New World.
Landing, my travel notebook is empty, waiting to be filled.
Some of what fills Scotttreks is by choice; but the rest is up to fate and the travel God’s.
Where my attention goes is what I write about and photograph, and what draws my attention usually doesn’t have lots of bells and whistles.
Before you get somewhere you have to go somewhere.
The collection of airports this trip will be those in Albuquerque; Denver; Newark, Houston and Santo Domingo. With checking in, security, eating, waiting, layovers, flight time, twenty hours will go by as quick as a Clint Eastwood, Dirty Harry marathon on Saturday afternoon television.
At eleven this evening, waiting for Newerk ticket agents to check in to work and get us boarded, all the familiar sights are in play..
There are transport golf carts picking up stragglers who have trouble walking long distances between terminals and gates. There are security men and women with walkie talkies on their hips, blue ball caps, and whistles dangling around their necks,looking vigilant. There are pilots dressed for work, standing in line for coffee but able to whisk past security easily. An announcement, repeated often, advises us ” not to take luggage from strangers and report such incidents immediately..” Bartenders do inventory and waitresses make sure they have two pens for taking orders.
The Newark air terminal is clean and a United Airlines hub. There is shopping here for those that want it and many travelers, even at this late hour, are plugged into the internet, charging cell phones, playing video games or watching movies.
Some hours later, leaving Newerk, flying at night around eight hours, Scott is coughed up in Santo Domingo feeling like Jonah exiting the damn whale that swallowed him.
Picked up by Berluis at the Santo Domingo airport, whisked down Avenida of the Americas past palm trees with the Caribbean Sea on one side, industrial areas, hotels, restaurants on the other, my Airbnb accommodations are waiting for me.
Escaping snow is one of my main directives.
If I see a penguin, I’m going to check my airplane ticket, call the pilot a drunk, and demand a full refund.
If I wanted to be cold I would have gone north instead of south.
” Tumbling Tumbleweeds” is a Roy Rodgers cowboy song, sung around the campfire with fellow cowhands on a starry night, with a crackling fire, when the herd is quiet and coyotes are howling harmony.
The song’s lyrics are plaintive as the western landscapes shared by cowboys, Indians, outlaws, and cattle.
” See them tumbling down/Pledging their love to the ground/Lonely, but free, I’ll be found/Drifting along with the tumbling tumbleweeds.
Cares of the past are behind/Nowhere to go, but I’ll find/Just where the trail will wind/Drifting along with the tumbling tumbleweeds.
I know when night has gone/That a new world’s born at dawn/I’ll keep rolling along/Deep in my heart is a song/Here on the range I belong/Drifting along with the tumbling tumbleweeds… ”
The last lines of the song crawl into my tent and bite me.
We all have songs to sing, but tumbling is what I like to do the most.
The New Mexico Rail Runner is New Mexico’s foray into mass transit in a state that is rural except for four larger cities along the Rio Grande north to south. In 2018, our entire population was just over two million. The impetus was to spend federal money on a project that was doomed to failure from the start but gave governor Bill Richardson something to crow about besides knowing the leaders of North Korea. The project started in December 2006 and has proved critics to be astute.
” Ridership on New Mexico’s commuter rail system has tumbled so far during the past decade that legislative analysts now recommend closing or limiting service at one location -in downtown Bernalillo….. the state should not open new stations and focus on making the Rail Runner Express more competitive with those commuting by car…. ” (from Train ridership continues to fall in New Mexico, Albuquerque Journal, 2019)
” Last year, the train made 2.8 million on fares, while the cost to operate the Rail Runner was $28.4 million. Plus, the department estimates the total debt repayment over 20 years amounts to $784 million….. “(KRKE News-May7,2015)
This train, Scotttreks suspects, will be here long after Scott is gone.
Closing the Rail Runner and putting the savings into free health clinics would have been a better return on taxpayer money than subsidizing government workers who lived in Albuquerque but commuted daily to Santa Fe.
It’s hard for all of us to find a Doctor in New Mexico, especially when we need one.
Knowing this state like we do, residents don’t understand,or like, the waste and abuse of power by their elected officials, but they keep voting them back into office, decade after decade.
It takes a lot of hard and dedicated work to stay one of the poorest states in the Union.
Route 66 is the most famous United States highway that joined others to became the U.S. Interstate Highway system that linked our 50 states, made remote places accessible, let restless spirits roam to where they belonged, spawned a history of music, posters, legends and stories.
From November 26, 1926 until June 26, 1985 the 2,448 miles of highway joined Illinois, Missouri, Kansas, Oklahoma, Texas, New Mexico,Arizona and California. It started in Chicago and ended in Los Angeles and brought millions of people to the Pacific Ocean, the end of the line for souls tired of the Depression, the Crash of Wall Street, the Dust Bowl, World War One, World War 2., conformity and financial ruin. California sparkled in their eyes like the gold in its rivers and mountains.
Roads have notoriety in human history. The Romans built roads to link their empire. Jesus rode a donkey on a dirt road into Jerusalem. The Oregon Trail opened the West to city slickers looking for a better life.
If Route 66 kept going, across the Pacific to the Orient, I would put my bicycle on it and pedal all the way till everyone I met spoke a different language.
Roads that take me to new places are hard to say no too.
Highway 285 winds it’s way through Espanola, Ojo Caliente, Tres Piedras, Antonito, and eventually Alamosa, Colorado.
Another way to see this high country is riding a narrow gauge railroad that runs from Antonito, Colorado to Chama, New Mexico and back.
This narrow gauge train runs on steam and there is a man who works his shovel the entire trip, pushing coal into a hot firebox that heats water that makes steam that moves rods that turns wheels rolling on narrow tracks.
Richard and I pull off the highway and watch the antique train pull into the Antonito station.
These cars used to carry goods and people but now carry sightseers who want to revisit the past, imagine themselves in an old John Wayne movie and take their kids on an afternoon trip.
I look for John Wayne to climb down off the train with a big wide brimmed stetson, a red bandana around his neck, six guns wrapped around his waist and a badge on his chest.
All that get off the train this afternoon are kids with cell phones, overweight adults with walkers and oxygen, and railroad employees getting ready to go home.
Re-living the past is not for the faint of heart.
Real railroads, these days, carry shipping containers filled with stuff made in China.
On the back of the airplane seat, directly in front of me, is an entertainment console with music, movies, and diversions.. If I hit a flight tracker button on the console, I can see the path of our current flight in midair, the wind speed, plane speed, miles traveled, miles to go. A little symbolic airplane, on the screen in front of me, is following a perfect white line that connects where I started this trip and where I am ending this trip. Right now, my plane is half way across the Pacific Ocean.
The worst thing about this flight is that I will have to wave at Denver as we fly over it and then board a plane in Minneapolis to fly back to Denver which adds hours to my journey. My car is parked in one of the Denver International Airport parking lots. If I was a parachuting guy, I could pull a D.B. Cooper and bail out, without any money, just to save hours off my trip.
One of these days, Scotttreks will fly around the world without having to backtrack, take all direct flights, and eat caviar in First Class.There will be plenty of leg room and all stewardesses will be knockouts, hired entirely for their hourglass anatomy.
Scotttreks has become my own personal flight tracker.
Keeping track of where I am, in space and time, is a project I can’t, in good conscience, leave to anyone else.
Keeping track of my travels is not a chore or a responsibility, but I do call it a healthy obsession.
Sitting at a computer and juggling words doesn’t cost me a penny and traveling to see the world isn’t a bad way to gin up things to write about.
This tunnel is well lit.
Some tunnels are rabbit holes, some filled with pack rat vaults. Some tunnels are underground, dark and womb like, leading to gold and silver leprechaun caches. Some tunnels are constructed with giant boring machines, go under seas and through mountains to large impressive cities. Through some tunnels we enter this world, and through others, leave.
This horizontal escalator is a metaphor for our times. Pampered, we need to walk, but aren’t forced to.
Two girls pass me, in a hurry. One lifts her phone and takes a selfie.
This gleaming tunnel moves us all steadily forwards. We go where we are told,are put where we are wanted, are entered on flight lists, and ring up charges on our credit cards in a debt-centric world.
I think I’m in a rabbit hole and, like Alice, trying to find real and valuable isn’t always easy.
This flat escalator, if I stayed on it, could roll me right off the edge of our Earth.
When I come to the escalator’s end, I pick up my little suitcase and get back to walking like i was designed to do.
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