Chinola Juice

My friend back home lived in Venezuela as a missionary for the Mormon Church.  She told me that her favorite fruit was Passion Fruit, that it made the most delicious juice.  She said it was called Parchita in Spanish.  Well since I don’t speak Spanish—something I need to fix, I googled it so I would know what to look for.  I found that here in the Dominican Republic, they also love Passion Fruit, BUT it is called Chinola here.  So I picked up a bag at the local mercado and brought it home. 

I almost didn’t get any, I mean look at them—they look kinda icky.  But they had huge stacks of them, and all of them looked like this, wrinkly and icky, so I figured that must be how they are suppose to look.  So I I bought them and brought them  home to see.

I sliced it home and took a sniff, and thought mmm… what a sweet smell, like a great lotion from the Body Shop.  I tasted it… and it does not taste like it smells, it’s not gross, but a very tart taste.  My friend said to not eat the seeds, so I had to do some more research on the seeds and how to make the juice.  Turns out, you can eat the seeds, but they probably taste like seeds, but I did find out how to make the juice.

Scoop the fruit into the blender, add 3 cups water.  Blend for 1 minute.  Strain juice to remove large bits of seed.  Add1 cup sugar and mix.  DELICIOUS! 

Since making it, I also ordered some Chinola juice at a restaurant, just to taste it to see if I got it right.  Mine was a little lighter on sugar, so I will taste test it next time and maybe add more.  I am excited to make it again and again through out our travels as we find it. 

Samana Bay Pt. 2

After Doug and Madison departed we looked at weather and decided we weren’t going anywhere, anytime soon.  So,  what to do next…  I thought it would be fun to make a drive down to Santo Domingo, the capital and see the colonial town established after Columbus and Ponce de Leon came to the Island.  A friend from home had given me her brother’s contact info.  He works for the Mormon Church and lives with his family in Santo Domingo.  I reached them by phone and worked out details to make a visit for the weekend. The biggest obstacle was how to get there.  We could take the bus at $10 US per person.  But I wasn’t very excited about that idea.  It is about a 2.5 hour drive and we probably would have been fine on the bus.  We looked at renting a car but the only car rental place in the area – that we could find on the internet was $200US per day for a van rental.  A taxi was $300 round trip, so that was what we decided to do.  Gas is very expensive here, close to $6 per gallon. 

Later that evening the baby came down with a fever, and then the 4 year old had one too.  So we decided to cancel our plans.  It was the right choice because over the weekend, the 2 were sick for 2 days, and then 2 more kids came down with fevers and colds for 2 days, and then David and I caught the bug.  Ugh. 

So we stayed on the boat and recovered.  During this time, the bay was windy for a few days.  We had positioned the boat so that the stern faced the wind.  This worked nicely.  We would open our back door each day and receive the beautiful breeze right into the boat each day.  It was so nice.  As soon as I would step onto the dock- into the sun, to walk the dog, or take Matthew to the play park I would roast in the sun, but the boat stayed nice and cool with the breeze.

One morning when the winds were lighter we loaded the kids into the tender and went back across the bay to the Los Haitises park.  We had heard about the Eco Lodge located just outside the park, thru the mangrove channels we had previously gone thru.  At the Lodge is a beautiful natural pool made from a nearby creek.  They rerouted the creek thru a series of waterfalls to form this beautiful pool and water park.  So we took the kids to play in the water for the afternoon.  Since we were there, it was easy to eat lunch at their restaurant on site.  The water was quite cool, being a mountain creek, but very very clear.  The kids enjoyed a few hours playing and then we hiked back to the tender for the bumpy ride back across the bay.  We were able to head straight across the bay with waves hitting our beam and lifting us up and over.  Then we hugged the shoreline as we made our way to the Marina.  The waves are the most “painful” when you take them head on.  So, this was a longer route, but MUCH nicer than the direct route to return to the boat.  Matthew was so worn out from the trip, he fell asleep on the way back, so it couldn’t have been too bumpy of a ride if he could sleep thru it.

While David and I fought off the sickness, the kids had a great time playing in the afternoons with their new friends from another boat.  A French family joined us in the Marina.  They had a set of twins, a boy and a girl, 9 years old.  The kids all had fun playing together all week.  We heard from this family about a lady in town who rents car for an affordable price.  So we called her and rented a car for Saturday afternoon till Sunday Afternoon.  This way we could do a little touring Saturday, and go to church Sunday.  We loaded the kids up in this well worn Ford Escape, a small SUV.  4 of them sat across the back bench, and Calvin rode in the back with the baby in the baby car seat.  And if that wasn’t crazy enough, you should see how the Dominican’s Drive.  I had to remind myself that when I grew up, it was okay for kids to share seat belts or ride in the back of the car, at least that was how it went in my family.  My mom would drive around the neighborhood loading up every kid she could find in our van to drive us all 45 minutes away to the coolest park ever.  She did this every month during the summer.  Kids filled the seats and the back of our 12 seater.  David’s family had a 15 pass van, and his dad built a little portable crib to keep in the back for their little ones to sleep in on family trips. He remembers saving up for a portable TV and VCR so they could lay in the back of the van and watch movies on trips.  Times have changed.

But drivers in the US at least follow rules on the road.  Maybe there are no rules to follow here, I don’t know.  In general they drive on the right side of the road, unless there are potholes (which there are a lot of) or they are passing (which they do constantly).  There were a few scary moments.  Still, we enjoyed driving around the Samana Peninsula.   The kids hoped we’d get out at the beach to play in the waves, most of the beaches we visit have little to no waves, so to see waves at a beach is very enticing to them.  The north shore of DR has quite a few beaches with great waves.  Unfortunately, the skies were not cooperating, and it rained and sprinkled through out the day.  We visited Las Terrenas, were we drove along the shoreline watching the kite surfers, not afraid of a little rain.  We also got out for a short walk there and visited a French bakery for some yummy treats.  We loved driving thru the mountains and the windy roads.  The scenery was beautiful. 

The next morning was a big day.  We drove to church in a town an hour away. As we drove thru the little towns and villages along the way, many people were out walking in their Sunday best, either heading to church or on their way home. It was neat to see that so many were taking time from their day to worship our Father in Heaven and our Savior Jesus Christ.

An hour later, we arrived at the spot on the map and couldn’t find the church.  We were late, so this was making me a little anxious.  We expanded our search area looking for the street (which there aren’t many street signs to help with this) and the church sign.  After a few minutes we ended up back where the map shows the building, and I rolled down my window to ask a lady—in my non existent Spanish “Donde La Iglesia ….”  (I had learned the name of the Church in Spanish as a missionary, and have used the useful knowledge many times in the last 2 years)  She responded with “ Las Mormonas?” To which we said “Si”  ( I love that the people here know our faith here, they very much know both the name of the church and the nickname given to us.)  She then gave us directions in Spanish, to which all I knew was the direction she pointed, and that we would need to turn right.  I had a hunch that we needed to take a small side street—really barely big enough for a car.  So we went up, turned right, and then went, hmmm.  I had seen that we had passed a little ally, so we went back and turned down the alley.  As we drove down it, there was a little neighborhood just hidden down these alleys, hidden from the main streets.  We still didn’t find the church so we stopped to ask again, This kid lady told us to go back up the alley and turn left.  So we backed up to another little alley on the left and turned down, and halfway down the street as we passed by another alley on the right I caught a glimpse of the sign we had been looking for!  We backed up again and found the small church building hidden in this little alley neighborhood.  We made it in time for the last half of Sacrament meeting and the rest of the classes after.  We enjoyed visiting with the members there, only a few spoke English, but they all welcomed us with in Spanish with open arms.  They were drawn to the baby, and he was passed around, cuddled and kissed by half the women there.  It’s a good thing he likes that kind of attention, because it happens often.

As soon as church ended we had to rush back to the boat, to return the car, and get ready to head out.  We were going to spend all night moving the boat to the East Coast and a Marina in Punta Cana.  Plus, I still hadn’t seen any whales, and I wanted to spend one more time out looking. 

Back at the marina, we let the Navy know we would be leaving soon.  He notified M2, the DR intelligence officers (who look like teenagers dressed for high school)  M2 and the Navy come out and lightly search the boat upon arrival and departure into the port.  We told them our plan was to leave the marina and anchor at the nearby Cayo Levantado until 8pm, then we would leave the port and head to Cap Cana.  They said okay.  What is interesting to me, is that the 40 year old Naval officer was deferring to the young M2 teenagers.  The Naval officer fills out the departure documents, and collects the fee, but the  M2 guys are the ones who “approve”  the departure.  They are the ones who search the boat and give the final “okay”.  At this point, the naval officer told us, that the fee for the despacho was “$20US, and that if we wanted to, we could tip them.  He then finished filling out his paperwork while David laid the $20 fee on the table.  David, who was not going to “tip” them, aka, bribe them,  headed out to the back deck to ready the tender tow lines. So I was left in the living room, with the 3 officials, who were “hanging out” for their tip.  They eventually left, but it was a little awkward.

After we got the boat anchored at the island nearby, we loaded into the tender and headed out to the mouth of the bay to look for humpback whales.  They come here every winter by the thousands to mate.  It’s still early in the season, and the tours were not operating just yet.  I hoped we would see at least one leaping from the air, but we didn’t even see a tail splash.  I was disappointed, and told David that someday we would most definitely come back to see the whales.

After our short whale hunt trip, we loaded back on the boat, ate dinner, then readied ourselves to leave.  The anchorage was VERY rolly.  So much so, that I told David that the night had better go well, because I was not turning around to go back to that anchorage.  After dinner, we got the kids ready for bed, then pulled up the anchor.  We had a 12 hour voyage ahead so we couldn’t leave to early.  We had called the marina to let them know we were coming.  They told us they have dock hands available at 6:30am, but since the sun doesn’t rise until 7am, we really didn’t want to arrive before it was light.  So around 7:30pm we pulled up the anchor and headed on our way.  It was a dark night, so I couldn’t even look for whales on our way out of the bay.  Bummer.

The fisherman who stopped by the boat at the anchorage wanting to sell us their fresh catch. 

Samana Bay

We spent 2 weeks at Puerto Bahia Marina on the beautiful Samana Bay.  We witnessed gorgeous, stunning sunsets every night. 

The town of Samana is about 3 miles away from the marina on a winding mountain road. The first time we went to town by boat, in the tender.  But with choppy water it was a rough ride.  So the next trip into town we decided to use the scooter we have on the boat.  The scooter came with the boat when we purchased it.  It is a cheap scooter, but has come in handy making quick runs to a store for parts or to pick up a rental car.  There have been times when anchored we wished we could get the scooter down and use it, but only when we are dockside are we able to off load it.

So we got the scooter off the boat and would take it to town often to shop or see what was going on.  It is not a large town, but it is busy with locals and often tourists from cruise ships.  Most people ride scooter or motorcycles, but no one wears a helmet. In fact David left his helmet on the scooter overnight, and in the morning it was gone, he went inside the hotel and was told they had brought it inside for security.  My thought was—why would anyone steal it—no one would buy it, because no one wears one.  Except us.  If they kids rode to town, they had to put on their bike helmets.  The roads are narrow and both cars and scooters swerve around each to pass who ever is going slower or stopped in the road.  Same with oncoming traffic.  I have seen a car pass us, with an oncoming car passing a scooter as well, and every one just tries to share the road and not get hit.  It is quite and experience, all on a mountain road going up and over to get to Samana or back.

Just a few miles away, out in the bay is a little island—Cayo Levantado.  It is a pretty little island.  There are 2 or 3 resorts on the island along with a tourist flea market and some snack shacks and beach bars.  On the best side of the island is a great public beach.  When the cruise ships come they anchor between this little island and the town of Samana and a lot of the tourists come here.  We spent a few afternoon hours at this great beach on New Years Day.  Several little run about boats anchored off the beach and music was playing from them, and lots of people swimming in the water and playing on the beach.  It was a nice afternoon.  The water was pretty, but not even close to the beauty of the water of the Exhuma’s.  Alexander enjoyed sleeping and playing in the tender where I blocked him off in a little area to keep him safe.

Our 3rd day there took Doug on a diving excursion.  He set out in the morning, and so did we—to the Los Haitises National Park.  Across the bay 11 miles is this gorgeous, remote National Park.  We loaded in the tender and set across the bay in a little overcast weather.  We had to wait out a little rain out in the bay.  We stopped, not wanting to go further in the storm, and just sat in the tender waiting for it to pass.  We have a couple of umbrella’s in the cabinet so we got those out and sat under them as the rain passed.  We were then greeted by a double rainbow.  Did you know that if you see 2 rainbows side by side, one is reversed—reflecting the other?  We have never noticed this, one of the kids, I think Isabel, pointed this out to us.  Next time you see a double rainbow, check it out.

Once the sky had cleared we headed closer to land.  We were greeted with lush green, jungle hills.  It is beautiful.  We found a little dock and tied up and walked ashore.  The tide pulls in A TON of trash to this particular cove, and Isabel was just disgusted by it. 

Ashore in this cove we found a trail sign and a trail to a couple of caves.  We had fun exploring them, even though Alexander received a little present from a bat—a little poop dropped right on top of his head—Am I a bad mom if I say “better on him, than me!”  Let’s face it, right on top of the head—It would be much harder to clean our of my hair, than it was out of his little bald head. 

After we were back in the tender we found a couple of mangrove channels to explore.  They were beautiful.  In Florida and the Bahamas the mangroves grow like bushes, here they grow like 12 foot trees.  It makes it seem like you are traveling thru a jungle.  In fact we often felt like we were on the jungle cruise ride an Disney World and started telling some of the jokes from that ride as we journeyed along. 

After our mangrove tour, we found another cave- Willy cave.  This cave had an information sign- in Spanish of course.  Luckily, we have Madison, who speaks Spanish, and she translated for us.  In the 1960’s – 1970’s the Willy family lived in this cave, in fact the mom gave birth to 2 kids—in the cave. Now that is a strong woman.  The cave had little signs that told us which room was which, like the living room, or the kitchen.  I much prefer my house over a cave—especially with the amount of bats in that cave.

Our charts for this area are sparse, they don’t show much.  And there’s not a lot of info in any books or on the internet, so really we just found things by simple exploration.  We happened to see another boat head down a little channel, so… we followed.  We ended up at a small dock where a park worker was collecting a small fee to hike down a short trail to see the big cave with petroglyphs from the Taino Indians that lived here over 500 years ago.  There were lots of petroglyphs with signs of interpretations.  There were petroglyphs of whales which show that for hundreds of years the whales have been visiting this area.  There were 5 or 6 walls with petroglyphs drawn all over them.

After we left that cave I had planned to ask the park rangers what else we should see in the park, but when we arrived back at the dock, they were gone.  We are not sure if they arrived with the other boat that had tourists on it, but both were gone.  We explored another little inlet and found again another dock, this one was cement and decorated with shells.  But all we found ashore was a short trail thru the lush, humid jungle to a Lagoon and a little beyond.  I had read somewhere that in this park they filmed parts of Jurassic Park, and hiking on this trail made me wonder if a dinosaur would come chasing us soon.  We started to notice the mosquitos and the trail ended, so we turned back for the tender. 

The day was getting later, and I didn’t pack more than a few crackers for the kids.  It was past lunch time so we headed back for the boat.  The ride back was a little bumpy and Matthew did not like it at all, he cried and cried, a combo of a hungry tummy, tired, and bumpy waves, it was not a good combination.  My back didn’t care for it either,  I noticed that night the muscles in my back were sore.

That afternoon we loaded up in the tender to look for the whale trench.  One of the places in the mouth of the bay where the whales like to “hang out”.  It is a deeper portion where they can dive and jump.  It was choppy and bumpy, but we suffered the ride in hopes of seeing whales.  The tours don’t start for another 2 weeks, but we hoped we’d get lucky and see the early whales.  There weren’t any and I was sad. 

The next day, both Doug and Madison had flights home.  Doug to New Zealand, and Madison back to Idaho for Medical School Interviews.  They were on the same flight out of DR, which worked out nicely so they could ride the 4 hour drive to the airport together.  They had planned to rent a car for the drive, but ended up taking a taxi.  We were sad to see both of them go.  This meant David and I would be left to move the boat with just us and the kids.(hoping for flat seas).  It was so nice having Doug visit.  We loved having him on board, not just because he was a huge help with our 2 big moves, but we hadn’t seen him in a while and it was fun to catch up.  The kids loved getting to know Uncle Doug better and learning about him and his interests.  He made us some delicious Focaccia bread one night, which we all devoured as we dipped it in a lime infused olive oil from New Zealand.  He told us all about New Zealand—and we can’t wait to visit.

David and I will be waiting for a calm weather window to move the boat with just us and the kids on board… we’ll see what the weather brings us. 

Samana

After Church on Sunday, the waters were beautifully calm.  We checked the weather report and after some debate we decided to move further east along the coast to Samana Bay.  It was a tough decision.  The weather looked like it would be nice over night for the move to Samana, waves would be far apart and on our beam.  Winds would be light.  We weren’t sure we were ready to leave that area of DR.  There was more we could see and do.  Plus the airport nearby was where we would need to send Madison home from in a few days. 

I did want to move to Samana Bay.  It was one area I really wanted to go see.  They have a cool national park there, and the Humpback whales migrate there every winter and would be coming soon.  I wanted to make sure we had a chance to stop and see the area.  The big push to move on to Samana already was the extra crew that would soon be leaving.  Doug would need to fly home – for his real life and work.  And Madison would be leaving us to go home for several weeks.  Once she leaves we are not sure we will move the boat without calm and settle weather, or help.  So we decided to move on to Samana.

We prepared to leave late afternoon and would move all night to arrive in Samana in the morning.  In the Dominican Republic the Navy Patrols the ports and you must get clearance from them to move on, even if to another DR port.  The Navy must come to your boat and fill out a despacho form for you to take to check in at your next port.  The charge here was $20 USD.  We settled our bill with the Marina, had the Navy give us our clearance and Despacho.  We were off just before dinner.  We watched the sun set over Puerto Plata. 

The weather was nice, the waves were settled and far apart.  It was a smooth night.  Again because of the extra crew, Doug, Madison, and David handled most of the overnight shifts.  I awoke early in the morning and could tell we must have been on the bay, protected from any large waves.  The winds were so light the bay was almost perfectly calm.  We watched the sun rise and it was beautiful. It was Dec 31st, so this was the last sunrise of 2012. The night went so smoothly and we arrived before the marina staff.  We idled outside the marina and pulled in the tender.  We wanted to go in and dock, but with out dock hands to tell us which dock to go to, we weren’t sure about entering the marina, Puerto Bahia.  We had called them the night before, so they were expecting us sometime this morning, just not this early.

David took the tender in to look at the Marina and to figure out where we could dock.  By the time he came back and we tied the tender off on the boat, and started into the marina the dockhands were arriving and were ready to help us dock and tie up. We got settled, checked in with the Navy here, where we were told there would be no charge for a despacho to leave to another DR port, only a small $10USD charge if our destination is outside of the DR. 

The kids went to the resort playground, and pools and played.  It was New Years Eve, but since we travelled all night David and I were tired.  Or we’re just getting old.  David was asleep by 8pm.  The kids all went to bed at regular time.  Only Doug and Madison stayed up to ring in the New Year.  The Marina had a party with a band, which Doug and Madison listened to from the boat.  Below is the last sunset of 2012.