Luperon, DR
19.54.025N
70.56.934W
People who don't cruise often ask those who do what they do all day. Well, I can tell you now that a lot of your time is spent waiting. Yesterday we had arranged to have fuel delivered to our boat this morning at 8 am. Being thoroughly versed in island time (from our days being stationed in Puerto Rico), we knew not to expect it until 9 am or possibly later. Although Roger & Elaine have been living aboard their boat for the last 3 years, they are still very much the type A personalities (they still wear their watches).
At 9:15 Dale asked me if we should call the delivery people to make sure they knew where we were located within the anchorage. I suggested we wait to see how long Doc-No-More could hold out. A few minutes later, we heard them radio to see what the problem was. 'Handy Andy', the delivery people, said they would call back in 10 minutes. A half hour later, Doc-No-More called again. They were assured that the fuel was on its way. A little after 10 am, an inflatable dinghy towing a hard bottom dinghy with a rubber bladder full of diesel finally arrived. A very muscular young man explained that their outboard motor had been stolen during the night and he had to borrow another dinghy to deliver the fuel. It seemed ironic that cruisers generally lock up their outboards so that the local hoodlums don't steal them. It would appear the local businesses need to do the same. We surmised that one of 'Handy Andy's' competitors had tried to even the playing field.
Since they had to take our jerry cans in to be filled with gasoline as opposed to the diesel they delivered, Dale took me into Steve's establishment so that I could drop off the laundry and connect to the internet. It was dial up and very slow but since I could connect, it didn't matter. In fact, Dale had gone back to the boat, received the fuel, and returned to pick me up before I finished reading the e-mails, paying the bills and uploading our latest posts to the blogspot. This put us just in time for lunch in which Roger & Elaine joined us.
Did I mention that we meet the most interesting people while cruising? While waiting for our lunch to be served, Elaine introduced us to "Bruce", another cruiser who had sought them out for a medical opinion. Roger offered his opinion as a retired urologist and suggested that he get a second opinion from Dale, whom he refers to as a 'real' doctor. I'm sure that if Dale were to write this up in a medical record it would read as:
A 55+ year old, 275#, w/m presented with an un-bandaged 1.5" round, open puncture wound, approximately 1.5" deep, 4" above his posterior left ankle. Said wound was dry with an obvious brown power applied throughout. Patient advised that approximately 8 weeks ago while riding a motorcycle at night, he ran into a bull which gored him in in the leg. He sought local assistance and was advised to apply a brown powder made from grinding the inside bark of a palm tree.
What can you say to something like that? Dale looked at it, told him it didn't look infected but that it would probably take 6-8 months to heal. The guy said that he probably needed to go grind up some more bark.
Then we had lunch.
The rest of the afternoon was spent searching for fruits, vegetables and bread (the nuts had already sought us out). There are several vendors along the various streets but you'd find bananas in one place, pineapple at another, potatoes, tomatoes and eggplant from the back of a truck; you just had to keep looking to find everything you needed. Thank heavens Dale & I only needed bread. At first we asked for directions to the bakery in our extremely bad Spanish but that only got us so far. Then we reverted to just following our noses to find the aroma of freshly baked bread.
Tomorrow we're off to see the waterfalls. Everyone tells us that we've got to take that tour because it one of the best ones around. They also told us to take an extra change of clothes because the water is cold.
