Still Waiting

 

Waterfalls and Caves

 On the last day we had the rental car, we decided to travel north to El Limon waterfall.  The ‘brochure’ advertised a beautiful 1.5 mile hike to the falls.

The first 100 ft was downhill…

Most of the remaining 1.5 miles was uphill…very uphill!

The scenery was beautiful, and whenever I felt it impossible to take another step up, I just stopped for a moment and took pictures. I have a LOT of pictures 🤣

I thought this overlook meant we were almost there…we were not!

Smarter people chose to have horses carry them up the mountain. We were happy to step aside to let them pass.

The view of the falls (from the top) was amazing, but now we had to go down, down, down to get there.

The waterfall made a very strong current that was impossible for me to swim against (especially with my exhausted legs) so I worked my way around from the outside edge.

The hike was sooo worth it!

Since we have Starlink we never buy SIM cards in the countries we visit. The downside to this is we have no internet connection when we are off the boat.  After visiting El Limon, we wanted to drive to Las Terrenas to visit a nice grocery store. I decided to use Aqua Maps (our navigation app) on my iPad since cell service was not required. For the most part, this solution worked well. We made it to the store with no problem, but our trip back to the marina got interesting.

On this map, it’s hard to tell what type of road is shown (since land maps are not the purpose of this app).

I saw no reason to follow the main road for many miles in the wrong direction, so I suggested we take this secondary road. The red part was not paved, and ended up being five miles that felt like fifty! Purple was paved, so we were good once we reached the purple. Keith did a masterful job of off road driving, but in retrospect it probably wasn’t the best idea to take our little rental car on that route!

Definitely living ‘off the beaten path’! The camera really doesn’t capture the ruts and hazards of this road, where 5 mph was probably a little too fast! When we passed locals they definitely gave us the ‘crazy gringos’ look😳 The road looks well used, but mainly from trucks, tractors, and we saw one jeep.

With the road trips behind us, it was time to leave the marina, and visit Los Haitises national park. After receiving our dispatch, which allowed us to visit for four days, we were off. A thirteen mile hop across Bahia de Samana put us in a magical land of lazy mangrove rivers, sheer rock islands, and historically significant caves!

The mangrove roots and trees are huge!

There are over 400 caves in this national park. Many of them contain 500+ year old pictographs from the Taino Indians. The ink was made from jagua juice, dyes extracted from mangrove bark, charcoal, manatee fat, and bat droppings.

Birds and fish

Humpback whales spend two months, every year, in the Bay of Samana, as it provides the perfect environment for birthing calves.

Warrior

?? Aliens? These were very common pictures, seen in numerous places.

Another mystery was found in this cave.

It is not easy to access, with no clear trails.  Keith had to nose the dinghy up to the rock ledge, and I climbed up to explore.

Once inside, I saw that the ground was littered with shells.  All appeared to be approximately the same size, and these shells are easily 8-10 feet above the high tide line.

Here’s the really weird part…on one side of the cave there is a wall about 3 ft high and 15 ft long that is made entirely of these shells. 😳🤷‍♀️

How did they get here? How did they die?  How old are they?

I don’t see how they could have been deposited here naturally.  This sight reminded me of oyster shell mounds I have seen in the Chesapeake.  I won’t say any more, because I don’t want to contaminate your ideas.  What do you think happened here?

My next post will finish up our time in DR…we are almost caught up to ‘real time’😂

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