los caballos

(Yesterday: too hot to be bothered to change.)

There’s a beach here called Playa Rincon that is all the rage. Everyone seems to want to go there. It’s outside of town, so the locals operate a little water-taxi service (of fishing boats) for the tourists. You can’t walk down to the beach in town without getting hustled by one of these guys trying to sell you on a trip to Rincon. Because of this, we were set on giving it a pass. But, well, we ended up going today anyhow. (It’s a Saturday and I have a cold, ok?)

Anyhow, we arrived at Rincon and decided in less than an hour that we were done. A big beach, sure – pretty water, sure. But no snorkelling, no waves – all rather dull, actually. I hate to admit it, but the fact is, we’ve become beach snobs. My camera didn’t even come out of the case. We wandered back to the boat area and discovered that the next boat back wasn’t leaving for a couple of hours. We sat on a couple of empty beach chairs and a man came to collect payment. Beach chairs, umbrellas – all for ‘reasonable’ price... We looked around; nowhere to go except into one of the exclusive over-priced restaurants or the dull-oh, vendor-ridden beach. We had walked right into the ultimate tourist trap! Such a clever scheme: three or four hours in the hot sun - just enough time for tourists to get thirsty and hungry and desperate.

[I haven't blogged about the all-inclusive resort in Las Galeras yet. It deserves to be mentioned, because it's pretty obvious that the Rincon-trap is designed for the resort-folk, who come with lots of money, and expectations of being entertained with organised excursions and tropical adventures. We have to walk through the resort beach to get to town, and I always have the vague sense that I'm walking through a holodeck, or some kind of artificial, fabricated world. There's always some kind of music blasting out over the resort beach (pictured below: Morning Acqasize, to Caribbean Techno beats!), and prone, baking bodies lie in neat rows along the groomed sand. Photo staff wander around, encouraging people to pose with parrots in their bikinis, and activity staff lure people to the archery field or into yoga circles.... Anyways, I have to be careful not to be judgemental about all that. Let the people do what they want to do!]

Back to the story:

We hailed one of the boat captains and announced that we were going to walk back. It did not go over well. Soon we were surrounded by a half-dozen arguing Dominicans – all talking at once in Spanish, telling us it was impossible to walk back, that we would be robbed, that it was impossibly far, that men with machetes would attack us. Finally, one of them broke away and waved us over, swearing back at them. He led us over to a dude at the bar, and more rapid discussions in Spanish ensued. One of the boat captains reappeared and continued his harangue, incensed about losing our return fares. We were tempted to leave the scene, just walk away into the jungle, but the drama was too entertaining.... and, truth be told, I was not keen on walking a couple of hours back home in the mid-day heat, machetes or no machetes.

In the end, we rode back to Las Galeras on horseback. The dude at the bar happened to have a half dozen horses there at the beach. It was the end of the day for him (giving tours I guess) and time to take the horses back to town anyways. So, barefoot and semi-clad we went, casting a last gleeful look back at the scowling boat captains.

Incredible animals, horses are. The trail was spectacular but horrendous - climbing and plunging steeply through jungle, over beaches, and through deep, deep mud. (It’s true, it would have been unwalkable.) The Dominican cowboy who led us was kind and calm and gracious, and we paid him as much as we had on us – about $8 each for our 45 minute ride. what a stroke of luck to flee the trap, and step from artificial-paradise into the muddy, bumpy, earthy joy of riding on the back of a powerful animal.

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