Our plan for Hurricane season 2023 was to take a mooring in Luperon Bay, Dominican Republic. We had friends who’d spent several seasons hiding away from hurricanes with great success there and we hoped we’d have similar luck. Originally our plan was to leave George Town and visit the southern Bahamas Islands and Turks and Caicos, however weather and a deadline in the Dominican Republic (DR), as we had manage to get appointments at the US Embassy for our B1/2 Visas, meant we’d have to skip a few stops and head to Luperon directly.
The coast of DR can be pretty wild and we’d been looking for a weather window where the swell and wind would be on our side for the 3 day passage we needed to make. This came in the form of a pretty calm patch of weather, which promised to keep the waves low and a steady breeze which may be enough to sail a little. In fact what happened was an uneventful (except for excellent fishing once again) 3 days with zero wind, completely under motor along with our buddy boat, SY Wings.
Our check in was completed by noon and in search of a beer and some food, we wandered back into the town and into a bar called The North. Owned by ex-cruisers this would become a regular haunt as they served great burgers and breakfasts and ran other cruiser activities like Euchre (card game) tournaments and movie nights.
They were super helpful, filling us in on all the weekly cruiser activities at The North and other establishments. Got us connected to the harbour WhatsApp group, Rat Pack which was a huge source of information and sometimes downright ridiculous discussions between fellow cruisers. We had a lovely lunch and then made our way back to the boat to get ourselves sorted after the sail, as it had been so calm on the crossing there wasn’t too much to do, other than give her a good clean.
Over the next week, we enjoyed getting to know the area, meeting a lot of cruisers who like us are using Luperon as a Hurricane hideout for the season and quite a few cruisers who arrived several years before and just haven’t left. Out first few weeks settled into a pattern of sorts, Monday-Wednesday were pretty quiet, Thursday was Captain’s Table at Las Velas Marina, Friday we all got together at Wendy’s Bar for karaoke and Sunday’s we all met at New Amsterdam which had a lovely swimming pool and the owners cooked a different dish each week.
Once settled into the routine of Luperon, along with lots of new boat friends, we started to look at the rest of the DR for activities and places to visit over the coming months. Our 1st excursion out of Luperon was a fun day exploring Puerto Plata with friends from the other yachts in the harbour. We hired a minibus and driver for the day and set off to explore the city and do some provisioning.
Our first stop was the Ysabel de Torres Mountain. You take a cable car up the mountain to see the nature reserve and get an incredible view of the city and coastline. It was pretty quiet at the top, with only a few tourists as it was still early morning giving us an unencumbered tour of the park and area. We did get stung by the guide, which we had thought was part of our entry fee, we only found out at the end that he wasn’t and we owed him cash for being our guide.
Annoying but our own fault for not checking.
Returning to our driver, our next stops were various marine, hardware and plumbing stores. This took us the rest of morning and by the time we’d found them, it was lunchtime and time for a sit down. Asking our driver to take us to a local restaurant we ended up at a place called Big Lee’s - this was neither local or that great, but it was the regular stop for the weekly cruiser shopping bus so I think that’s what our driver thought we’d prefer.
After lunch we stopped for a stroll and beer in the town centre, which by now was full of tourists from the cruise ships, and then headed to the large Supermarket, Jumbo to fill up the cupboard once more. It was a really fun day, we topped it off with a few beers back at Las Velas Marina.
As the date for our US visa interviews in Santo Domingo approached we booked a car for the week and found an AirBNB near the old town. We’d been given lots of advice about driving in the DR, as the rules of road appear to be somewhat fluid and everyone told us not to drive after dark, as lights aren’t always used and the cows, pigs and other animals wander freely, which is a massive hazard in the Dark.
Picking our car up from Nino, the local rental guy, was super easy and off we went for a week in the capital and hopefully a successful set of Visa interviews so we could travel to Puerto Rico and the US in the following years to come.
The drive to the capital was good, the main motorways and roads are good, you have to get used to a few local driving habits, for example, a left hand turn can be taken from any lane at traffic lights!, if you’re only going one junction on the motorways it is ok for small vehicles, motorbikes etc to use the hard shoulder in the wrong direction, these are just two of the countless examples of what we saw on the drive. Once in the city, it was a maze of one way streets and whilst we heard it wasn’t safe to park on the streets, this is exactly where we parked our car directly outside our hotel and we didn’t have any issues.
Our first day in Santo Domingo started early as we headed to our initial biometric interview, this was in a shopping mall so parking was easy and by the time we arrived the queue was already pretty large. There was a large screen advising what time appointments were queuing and as we now had about 2 hours before our allotted time, we wandered around the mall and grabbed a coffee. Not wanting to be late we made our way back to the queue about 30 minutes before our time, only for the screen to now say it was taking people for appointments after our time.
Joining the queue we waited patiently in line, as we got slightly closer to the front an official checked out paperwork to ensure we had an appointment and had everything we needed. We then proceeded to go through a variety of checkpoints and queue until we finally got to the booth where our official biometric was taken. Ross and I had been separated by this point, I finished a little ahead of him, as they had to find a stool for him to sit on as the camera didn’t go high enough if he was standing. It was a bit laborious moving from queue to queue, but straightforward and with our paperwork stamped we could now leave and be ready for our next interview in a few days time at the Embassy itself.
For the rest of the afternoon we toured some sights of the capital, finding a lovely brew pub and enjoying a few pints. We had the next day free so we decided to explore the rest of the old town, a few museums and enjoy the city. It was a great day, however both of us were distracted by pending face to face interview the next day. Our interview was early and we’d been advised to give plenty of time to park the car for our 8.30am appointment. We got to the embassy around 6am, and the car park was starting to get full and the queue outside the embassy was already large.
You can take nothing but your paperwork into the building, no smart devices or bags etc, so we locked up the car and with only a car key and folder joined the queue. We stood for what felt like a very long time, before the queue began to move and we made our way through the various checkpoints and queues once more. When we finally reached the interview booth, it was about 20 minutes after our scheduled time, so we were very glad we arrived as early as we did.
The interview took about 20 minutes, initially the lady spoke in Spanish, not expecting a pair of Brits, but she soon switched to English.After answering all of her initial question, she asked for some paperwork we didn’t have, when we explained we hadn’t brought it with us she went to check/ask with a colleague and then a few minutes later we were given a slip of paper saying we’d been successful and our Passports would be ready for collection in about a week. Phew, she had us nervous for a while there!
We decided to return the car to Luperon the following day, as there was no point staying longer when we could get our passports back directly. On the drive back we took the mountain road between Santiago and Puerto Plata, enjoying the views and winding routes before arriving back in Luperon early in the evening in time for a beverage with friends at Las Velas.
As luck! would have it as we arrived back in Luperon, I received notification our Passports we're ready for collection, much quicker than we had been advised. So we arrange to hire the car again for the Thursday and planned a day trip with friends to pick up our passports and visit several marine and hardware stores.
As always a great read I am so glad it’s all working out for you x