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.
Cocoa is grown mostly in West Africa but is also cultivated in the Dominican Republic,Grenada and Nicaragua, all located in the same geographical band circling the waist of our planet.
Cocoa is labor intensive to grow and turn into products people will buy, but it brings us chocolate, which tastes good to most everyone and is healthy now, unless you ask your dentist.
This Cacao Museo is located north of the Parque Colon, in Santo Domingo, and it surprises to see all the products that are made with cacao beans as the base ingredient.
Business is slow at the museo this afternoon, but reading the health benefits of unprocessed cocoa is going to send me to a health foods store when I get back to New Mexico, right after I get my healthy bottle of rum at my neighborhood liquor store..
My bar of chocolate goes down sweetly and when I leave the museo, I can still taste the chocolate all the way back to my guesthouse.
Chocolate,as ancient Aztecs believed, does keep Doctors away.
Even back in pre- history, people were afraid of their health care providers, and fear of going to the dentist has always been universal.
Promoting chocolate as healthy is a quite brilliant piece of marketing.
If it tastes so good it can’t possibly be bad for us?
This little plaza is dedicated to an important poet with a simple stone inscription.
Pellerano was a man who moved to the Dominican Republic from Curacao, stayed, and also raised a daughter, Luisa Castro, who was one of the most influential woman writers of Latin America.
” La Nuestra, ” is a glowing statue in the plaza of a Dominican born poet and activist, Judith Burgos, who died of pneumonia in Harlem at the age of 39 who was, likewise, a shooting star.
Little niches pop up in the Colonial Zone as you walk, with simple signs on walls saying this was the residence of a past President, this was where a playwright wrote his searing social criticism, this was where a priest was martyred for his beliefs, this was where the first hospital in the New World was established.
Poets use few words but the words they use must fit exactly, contain enough punch to outlast time with time’s changes of culture, etiquette and politics. Poets write about grand things as well as things as minor as a cup of tea, a morning walk, or a cat sitting on a window sash as the sun rises on a bougainvilla bush outside the front porch.
This is a quiet little plaza towards the south of the Zona Colonia. on the same street as the Larimer Museo and the Cathedral at Parque Colon.
Societies recognize their fleeting spirits, the ones who touch clouds, see deeper and farther than the rest of us.
This plaza is a small intimate poem you read out loud to yourself on a warm March morning as you stroll the shaded walkways.
Larimar is one of Earth’s creations, formed by great pressures, huge temperatures, great shiftings of the Earth’s crust over millions of years. It is found only in the Dominican Republic where it is mined, cut, polished, and fashioned into fine jewelry.
One of the shops off the Parque Colon in Santo Domingo is the Museum of Larimar which is both a museum and retail shop that sells larimar, as well as amber, another Dominican Republic treasure.
This little upstairs museum has English as well as Spanish descriptions in its history of how Larimar is created, how it is mined, and how it is used by it’s devotees. The sales ladies are low pressure and the soft blue and white gemstone is pleasing to my eye. Any of these necklaces would look well around a dainty woman”s neck, dressed for a nice dinner engagement with the person of her choosing.
There are street vendors in the Zona Colonia who have propositioned me to buy their stones. They hold a cigarette lighter with a flame up to their pieces to show their product is real and not plastic. Buying the gem in this museum, however, gives me a written guarantee and certificate of authenticity for not much more cost, which makes it a better bargain.
What is hard is seeing worn photos of tunnel rats who dig deep to find the gem. Their faces, in these photos of the exhibit, are dirty and their mining implements simple, shovels and pry bars and even bamboo sticks.
Most things we covet have tales of hardship behind them.
Shouldn’t these real gemstones, millions of years old, wrestled from the Earth, polished and turned into jewelry, be worth more than the pieces of paper we purchase them with?
Will we ever get all the men out of the tunnels?
Playing Alto Sax is no easy affair.
Playing solo, in public, with no supporting team, is similar to shooting a game winning basketball free throw, in a championship series, with everything on the wire.
Parmenio plays with spirit.
There is room, in music, for all of us.
Even though our two playing styles and melodies are different, we alto sax addicts have to deal with intonation, technique, and what goes on between our ears when we throw sheet music away and play from our hearts.
Hearing another alto sax player who plays because he wants to is a joy.
We all play because we love it, but there are times I want to put my horn up for sale.
Melodies, like words, don’t always come easy.
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