La Samaná Peninsula, Dominican Republic
June 15-17, 2018
La Samaná is not on the A list of tourist wish lists.
The first location sun-starved tourists think about when considering the Dominican Republic is Punta Cana.
Most tourists gobble up the features of Punta Cana and it’s hard to argue with that. It’s easily accessible from Santo Domingo, has all-inclusive resorts, scores of hotels, 20 miles of white sand beaches, and the allure of the azure ocean at the eastern tip of the island. Tourist agencies tout Punta Cana vigorously as a world-class attraction. Many fly directly to Punta Cana, never see anything else of the island.
The Dominican Republic is the most popular tourist destination in the Caribbean region, and ranks 6th overall in the Americas. Tourism, through hotels, taxi services, gift shops, independent vendors, employs well over 100,000 people, more than a tenth of the country's population. When tourists leave the Punta Cana region, tanned and relaxed, they depart feeling that they’ve had a Dominican experience. Not quite.
Then there’s the under the radar La Samaná province and the little towns and beaches hidden away there.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Samaná_(town)
http://www.godominicanrepublic.com/samana/
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Samaná_Province
The province, the only peninsula on the Dominican Republic, juts out like a geologic afterthought from the northeastern shore of the island, Samaná Bay on its south coast, the Atlantic on its north coast. It’s a three-hour haul to its main city, Santa Barbara de Samaná, from Santo Domingo, 207 km drive on a recently improved well paved highway. Once you arrive, choices abound from active exploring to laid back touring. It has been called "a paradise of the Dominican Republic", justified even if the source is a tour agency. The scale of tourist development in Santa Barbara de Samaná, Las Galeras, and Las Terrenas is puny compared to the Punta Cana area. For now.
The trek gives you a geography lesson in the topical variety of the island - pastures, palm tree plantations, coconut forests, rice fields, sugar cane fields, a stubby mountain range formed from volcanic activity eons ago, intractable uneven landscape dominated by rocky outcroppings and a handful of blink and you missed them small towns. The steep terrain in the Sierra de Samaná is high enough to have its own micro-climate. It’s not unusual to enter in sunlight, drive through a thunderstorm in the highest elevation of 1000 feet, and return down to planet sunlight several miles later.
The capital city of Santa Barbara de Samaná is smoothed out around the edges, doesn’t have much local flavor but its bay, the second largest in the DR, is reputed to be one of its most beautiful (I have no idea how anyone can rate dozens of beaches on the DR without exhausting scores of synonyms for ‘beautiful’).
For eco-tourists, it’s a point of departure for a daily boat trip to Los Haitises National Park, a spectacular and limited access landscape of geology, flora, and fauna.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Los_Haitises_National_Park
Santa Barbara de Samaná comes to life once a year. From January to March, the waters off the small city are on the migration route of humpback whales. Thousands of tourists take boat rides to witness the whales during mating and calving season. Most whale watchers return home without exploring the coastline that leads east along the coast to the north shore of the peninsula. Too bad for them because that’s where the island culture takes a bow. Considering its beach assets and unassuming rural beauty, it’s the most unspoiled area in the Dominican Republic.
The lay of the land:
http://ontheworldmap.com/dominican-republic/large-detailed-tourist-map-of-dominican-republic.jpg
https://www.google.com/maps/@19.2069664,-70.5750546,346134m/data=!3m1!1e3
http://samanacollege.org/samanaimages/samanapdf/lgsamanastar.pdf
I would never have known about or seen any of this fabulous peninsula without connections my travel companion has in the Dominican Republic. Her Dominican friends seem to know every inch of the island they love and are proud to share it. Oh boy, El Cabito, La Palapa, Playita des Las Galeras, Playa de Rincón, Caño Frio River, D’Víejá Pan, here we come.
To be continued….photos in a day or so!
Freddy G's Dress Rehearsal for his 80th
June 2, 2018
Dear Gail and Fred,
This started out as a short thank you note for inviting me to such a warmly celebrated birthday party, a so called decade birthday for a man who celebrates them as if they’re try outs for the real ones. Like a performance of Fandango or The Natural Wonders, the short note started to lift off on its own.
When Fred exclaimed “It’s a lie!” when urged to say a few words after being serenaded, twice, in the birthday song, under a deep cobalt blue sky behind their house in Somerville. We all knew that the 80th part was a lie, one that a guy like Fred can get away with. After all, he was 70 years old for about five years a while back.
What is the gospel truth is that the glue that holds this crowd of celebrants together is music, not any kind of music, but the kind of music that draws as disparate a group of people as you’ll find at any party I’ve ever been to.
Geez, look around. Millennials to old time hippies and boomers. I’m damn certain the party is full of democrats, republicans, atheists, heretics, religious practitioners, every sexual preference, business driven to layabout characters, and all of that is checked at the door. Who comes through the door tonight is a parade of lifetime friends of Fred’s and Gail’s and patrons of their bands from saloons in Cambridge and Somerville to celebrate, the house becoming a benign gospel tent with birthday balloons hanging at the entrance.
Music from Fred-led Fandango and from Gail-led Natural Wonders is life affirming, get up and holler, dance in the aisle, groove in your seat music but that’s only the surface. Underneath, we attend their “church" for an aural salve that feeds our hungry souls, hungry for salvation and relief from an ever escalating parade of toxic media, senseless violence and politics gone awry. I walk into Toad or Sally O'Brien’s dragging the news of the day like lead shackles around my ankles. I leave in a state of euphoria that if it were alcohol would have me arrested for DUI.
“Music calls down the spirit,” Fred says. Oh, brother, does it ever.
“Everything we play is upbeat. There’s not a sad song in our catalogue, “ Gail says.
Can I have an Amen on that?
“So many people have told us over the years that listening to our music makes them feel like they’ve gone to church,” says Gail. Well, if the experience results in feeling uplifted, absolved, bonded together in a universal cloud of non-judgemental acceptance and the earth moving under our feet, what the heck else can you call it?
Forget the pulpit. Naturally wondrous sermons sing out from a bandstand that uplift and offer us the chance to go forth and be better selves, neighbors, partners…to start down the road again.
And every week Prez Susan Sullivan reminds us in an email blast the when and the where of Fandango and The Natural Wonders, when we can get right back on that road.
The location of Fred’s supposed 80th birthday party is not just a lovely home. How about a temple, a shrine to Fred and Gail's beliefs, travels, and lifetime together. When’s the last time you went to a house where they transformed a one-car garage into a “Spirit Room” filled with artifacts inspired by a trip to Cambodia where Gail and Fred found a temple acknowledging and giving equal value to Christianity, Buddhism, Judaism, Hinduism, and every religion in between. You know darn well why that rang a bell for them.
Just inside the entrance to "The Spirit Room,” right at eye level so you can’t miss it, is a photo Gail took at the temple.
“The truth is one. The paths are many.” Are you getting the idea here?
"Whatever you believe in, you can feel at home inside there,” Gail says. Does that not sound like what it feels like to be Toad or Sally O’Briens during their shows?
Perfect. Fred’s birthday party brings us right back to the source of the river, a metaphor for what’s so special about the music Gail and Fred intentionally create for us. It indeed calls down the spirit and the better natures in all of us.
And don’t think for a minute that these two are in it only as musical evangelists for our benefit.
Look at them on stage. If you can’t see that they’re deep into the spirit themselves, you ain’t paying attention.
Happy Birthday, Fred! I look forward to your next few 80th birthday parties!
June 04, 2018 in Commentaries | Permalink | Comments (2)