Luperon, DR
19.54.031N
70.56.897W

I believe I've mentioned before how just doing the simple things can take an entire day. Today was one of those days. We hired a minibus to take the four boat crews (Doc-No-More, MTNest, Moon Goddess and us) to Santiago to do our grocery shopping. Janet at the marina loaned us her Price Club Card so we were excited to go shopping American style. However, we knew that we had to be back to the marina by 5:00 pm because Mike (MTNest) was going to be performing at happy hour. He's a very talented keyboard and saxophonist. (Remember back when we were in Georgetown and I thought the guy who played during the Christmas sing along might be a preacher? Well, he's a retired music teacher and has a rather ribald sense of humor.)

We stopped at the monument to various revolutions in Santiago and climbed the 365 steps to the top. After we descended, we apparently offended the local who opened the door for us because we didn't tip him to his expectations. We've been told that there is a fine line between tipping for a service and being "stupid". The only thing this guy did was open the door; we certainly weren't going to tip him the $5 he wanted from each of us and he wasn't very happy with what we offered, so we left.

We then went to a Radio Shack at the local mall to pick up a couple of motion detectors we had been told about. (We heard a first hand account of an incident in Venezuela where a boater was boarded by would be thieves.) While we were at the mall, we had lunch at their food court. All of the Dominicans were eating at the Kentucky Fried Chicken, Dominios and Chinese food take out, and all of the 'gringos' were eating at the DR fast food place. Dale & I decided to eat at the Puerto Rican sandwich shop.

From there we did our grocery shopping. First at the Price Club and then at another local grocery store. Unfortunately, when we returned from our second store, our driver was missing in action. It took us a hour to track him down. I don't think we ever did completely understand where he disappeared to. Of course, this put us dangerously close to running out of time as we were over an hour away from Luperon.

Unlike our way to Santiago when we got caught behind a horse drawn buggy (like what you might see the Amish drive,) on our way back we were behind a convoy of trucks hauling dirt/mud up the mountain side and then down the other. We didn't pull in to the marina until 5:30 pm and then we had to dinghy our food back to our boats before returning to watch Mike perform.

However, it was a great ending to the day. A couple of the other boaters got up to sing while Mike played the keyboard and Nancy played guitar. It's amazing when people have such clear, beautiful voices sitting next to you but put a mike in their hands and suddenly every squeak comes out.