Story: The 10 Day Dominican Republic Motorcycle Tour - Day 2

Day 1 had been such a hard day; I felt I had been beaten. Given that, we got up around 9 AM. Our plan was to get up at 6, but we just couldn’t do it. We have about 200+ km’s to drive today, plus having to find trails that we knew were there but didn’t know how long they took.

So up we got, noticing our beach house was surrounded by other Dominican residents. There was a common yard, like a big yard in the middle of a community of houses, and everyone from the community was sitting in the middle of it, drinking their morning coffee. Dominican coffee is drunk very strong and very sweet, small amounts of it, like an Espresso. The smell of fresh coffee made me jump out of my bed and head for the yard. As everyone was sitting there, they wondered where we had come from and what the purpose of this 10 day cruelty meant. We explained our passion for motorcycles and the spirit of adventure that drove us; however, this was met by their reasoning that we are just foreigners with a crazy idea. Gringos, always up to crazy stuff…

After taking a quick dip in the ocean, we started packing our stuff up slowly. By 11 AM we were ready to go, way behind schedule. But we pulled out of the community and started our drive down the north coast of the DR. Passing many touristic towns with many a shirtless pasty white folk heading towards the beach; we knew this wasn’t really the DR. The north coast is littered with resorts, hotels, beaches, restaurants and souvenir shops that made this area a very mainstream tourist attraction. It wasn’t really the outback we were seeking, but we knew beyond lay the real deal. Snaking down the road following pristine white beaches flanked by a blue Ocean and foamy waves, it started getting quite hot in our riding suites. I decided to take off part of my gear and just ride in a shirt.

After an hour we arrived in the town of Rio San Juan to stop briefly and take a look at “Laguna Gri Gri”, which is a fresh water lagoon that exits into the sea. All along the lagoon are mangroves, colored fish and strange looking aviaries. Normally you would snake along the lagoon all the way to the ocean in a boat, but we didn’t have time today. We took a few pictures and videos and continued on our way.

Around 1 PM we got to the town of Cabrera, famous for the Playa Grande Beach, were many times around the year surf competitions are held. As an amateur body board surfer I really did want to stop by here and take a quick dip, but there was no time today since we had gotten up late this morning and were paying for it now. We drove into town and stopped at a local small “Comedor”, which is a type of local restaurant that serves meals only at lunch time and only Rice, Beans, Chicken and Salad, but very tasty and very cheap. While there, Alec pointed out that his memory chips were already full from taking so many videos the previous day and that he needed to stop at an Internet Café and unload his footage to his portable hard drive before continuing. This suited us fine. While Alec took to the Café, Jared and I went to visit an old friend who has a surf shop here.

After about an hour of waiting for Alec, he calls us on the CB Radio and explains that since he forgot to bring his memory card reader, the transfer of the video footage to the portable hard drive would take up to 2-3 hours to complete. By that time it was already 3 PM and we still had quite a ways to go. Our plan for today was to complete the north coast and find the trail that takes you through the National Park “Los Haitises” to the beginning of the East Coast, across the bay of the Samana Peninsula. That meant still quite a ride and many “wheels to be turned”, as Jared puts it in his Dominican Spanish. Since there was nothing we could do, we were forced to wait for the transfer to complete. By the time we pulled out of Cabrera it was around 5 PM.

Once we got to the town of Sanchez that borders the National Park, it was time to find the trail that leads around the park to the town of Sabana de la Mar, the beginning of our drive down the east coast. Since there was no direct trail and no vehicles are allowed within the National Park it was bound to be a feat to find a way around. At this point Jared noticed is low-beam bulb on his TTR was out and he only had the high-beam available. There was still some light out so we stopped at a spares shop to get a replacement bulb (stock stuff) and to ask directions. The guy at the desk told us that the trail/road was further on down the road but that he was not sure there was a direct trail and it was already getting dark. Nevertheless, we headed down the road to the indicated entrance. Once there, it was already completely dark around 7 PM. We pulled into a gas station that was littered with bull frogs. Oddly enough, they weren’t very scared of us. The whole area was a swamp so they are attracted to the lights and fed on the bugs that fall from the lights at the gas station. Yet, we were still preoccupied about what we should do about the fact that it was dark and the trail was hard to find. We asked some people at the gas station about the trail that was marked on our map and they said it was extremely rough and hard to find… especially at this time of the night.

We quickly agreed that it would not be fun to find a trail in the middle of the night in the middle of nowhere. So I suggested we should head up to the town to Samana instead, sleep there and cross the bay of the peninsula per boat in the morning. This way we would have an awesome sunrise at sea and start early from Sabana de la Mar on the other side. The deal was made and off we went. Samana was around 25 km away but we had drive slowly since no one around here bothered to put their headlights down, the road was full of potholes and there were bugs the size of my finger crashing into our helmet masks. After about 20 minutes down the road in the dark, it decided to rain. We had to pull over under an abandoned house and wait it out. It rained for a while, Jared even tried his rain dance but nothing worked. Finally, after 45 minutes it stopped and we were back on the trail and entered Samana around 8:30 PM.

The additional problem was that we didn’t know where to stay. It wasn’t our plan to stay here, so we headed over to a friend’s house who we knew would give us shelter for the night. Hotels were out of the question since they were rather pricey in this touristic town. He gladly put us up in an apartment that was empty, and after drinking a few beers, playing some guitar and reminiscing the day we said goodnight to the tropical evening around us and headed to bed. Much adventure was still to come… more than we would have ever expected.

Day 3 continues in the next article...