#534 Los Haitises National Park

We left Cayo Levantado twice to go on excursions. Our first excursion was to Los Haitises National Park. The trip involved a boat ride to the park, viewing some caves, swimming in an underground river, seeing mangrove swamps, then lunch. It would be an all-day event.

We started out at 9 AM, which was pretty early for T, so he was a little grumpy. It didn't help that we were in a boat. He doesn't love boats. I gave him some sea-bands to wear that prevent sea-sickness. He put them on and slept most of the way. It caused people to ask if he was ok. I explained that he was a teenager and that he was awake earlier than normal. Everyone understood.

Speaking of understanding, there was a little language barrier going on. Our guide didn't speak English. I don't speak much Spanish. Fortunately, I can understand some Spanish, so what ended up happening was that the guide would tell me some information in Spanish and I would do my best to translate to MT what was said. This type of communication happened throughout our trip. Glad I've been learning a bit of the language!

On our excursion, there were three couples from Spain, a couple from Puerto Rico, a couple from Portugal and us. The people from Portugal spoke some English, but we didn't talk to them very much.

The guide told us that we might have a chance to see the dolphins in the brown water (the water was brown because it came from the second largest river in the DR and fed right into the bay), but we didn't. It wasn't for lack of trying to find some, though! I kept my eyes on the water all the time. And it was brown.

As we got closer to land, though, the water became less brown and the place was tropical and green and beautiful!

We stopped at a little beach where there was a long explanation that I didn't much understand. I do know that he talked about spiders and bats (murcielago) in the cave we were about to enter. I also know that he talked about the Taino Indians living in the caves before Columbus came to this part of the world. I was excited about the Indian art, less so about the spiders and bats.

Fortunately, the first thing we saw was the art:

We went into the cave. The guide pointed his flashlight high up above us. Hanging there, upside down, sure enough was a bat. I didn't take a picture. I didn't want to make eye contact with it! Just knowing it was up there, hanging around, creeped me out mightily! As we continued into the cave, there was an opening out to the water and all these little birds were flying around. I thought they were bats, but thankfully they weren't. It was still a little creepy.

Then, tucked back into a dark corner, the guide became terribly excited because he saw a spider. I didn't crowd around to see it. I understood him to say that this particular spider was poisonous and not to be messed with. MT took the camera and tried to get a picture of it.

In the second picture, MT focused the camera on the rock right in front, but toward the back, behind the bright rock face, you can see a large spider. EWWW! MT still talks about that spider being the biggest one he's ever seen. He puts both of his palms together and says with the legs, it would be as big as both of his hands. The body was small, but the legs were very long. Nasty! The guide poked it with a stick to assure us it was real, not plastic, that "they" hadn't put it ther for the tourists. hahahaha

We continuted on through the cave for a little bit more time, then back past the spider and the bats and out to the boat.

We saw a little another Taino petroglyph, this time on the side of a rock wall.

Can you see it there? It's in the middle of the picture on a little grey rock face. I wonder how the Indians got up there. It looks like it would be easy to reach, but let me tell you that the carving was at least twenty feet above the water.

We also went through a mangrove swamp. Mangrove trees are interesting because they live in salt water, half in the water and half on land and support a tremendous amount of life. I think they are very interesting. And they look cool. I like how their roots show above the waterline.

We got to another cave area. At this area, we pulled up to a little platform and walked up some stone steps into the cave.

Inside the cave we spent quite a bit of time at a rock formation that looked a little like the Madonna holding a child. The pictures we have don't really do it justice. You can't really make out the shape in the photo as well as I could standing in front of it. MT had the camera so I'll just blame his photography skills ;)

As we went further in, we saw this cute little Taino monkey face carving:

As I turned away from the little face, I saw an opening above the cave through which what seemed like green light was coming in. Because it was so dark, I had to hold perfectly still to capture what I was seeing. The rock seemed to be bathed in this green light.

The guide told us that a scene from the first "Pirates of the Caribbean" movie was filmed in this cave, in this spot and at another spot we'd see soon. At least I think that's what he said. He kept mentioning Captain Jack Sparrow. I need to watch the movie again and we'll see if we can recognize the spot.

The second spot was very dark and there was no way for me to capture the image. Of course, T said he totally recognized it from the movie. He has seen the movie a bunch of times.

After the cave, we boated through some inlets and past some beaches and rocky islands that were the nesting areas of pelicans and frigate birds.

We went to the area of the underground river, but the tide was out and the water was too shallow to allow us to go closer to the beach so the swimming could happen. MT was very disappointed. I didn't really care because I wouldn't have swum anyway. And by that time, everyone was getting pretty hungry, so we headed back across the bay to an area near the town of Sanchez for lunch.

On the way back, just about everyone partook in some "Vitamin R" and coke. That's rum to you and me!

I wish I had taken a picture of the beach where we pulled up. It was covered with debris. Remember earlier I mentioned that the water in the bay was brown because the river emptied right into the bay? Well, along with silt (dirt), the river also carried tree branches and whatever else was in the it to the bay. That debris washes up on the beaches in the area. Most places clean up their beaches regularly. The particular beach we landed at hadn't quite gotten around to cleaning up. There was a lot of big sticks and garbage washed up there. It was kind of sad. The boat couldn't pull right up to the beach and there was no dock, so we had to get off our boat and get into these little fishing boats. Then some local men pulled the boats about five steps to the beach where they brought the fishing boat right up on the sticks and garbage. MT wondered why he couldn't just wade from our boat to the shore. I said he probably shouldn't want to get into that dirty water. No one was swimming or getting in the water except for the men who pulled our little boats in.

There was a little restaurant tucked up away from the beach a bit. It was a beautiful view:

The food was delicious. To start we had croquetas de yuca. The yuca had been made into a paste-type substance, then coated in breading and fried. When splashed with some spicy hot sauce, they were quite tasty. T had about six! Then we had a little salad and bread, and the main course was paella. It was delicious! It was full of chicken and shrimp and other fish. To drink there was water (which no one had), coke or sprite and beer mixed with sprite. That's one of my new favorite drinks. (I had some yesterday!) It cuts the bitterness of the beer and little and sweetens it. It's not too different from the shandy which is beer with lemonade. One of the Spanish men told me that in Spain they drink beer with Fanta de limon. So there you go.

After lunch we sailed back to Samana and then back to Cayo Levantado. It was a fun day. Los Haitises is a big park, and we only saw a very small part of the coast. The interior of the park has some magnificent waterfalls I've heard. Maybe we'll have to check those out next time. :)