An Embarrassment of Mangoes

by Ann Vanderhoof

  Luperón’s harbor is a stubby ragged Y cut into the coast 14 miles west of the tourist town of Puerto Plata and 46 miles east of the Haitian border. The entrance is a narrow slit of navigable water at the base of the Y, with hull-crunching coral teeth set just below the surface on either side. “When you’re just off the entrance, call another boat in the harbor,” we’d been told in George Town, “and ask them to come out in their dinghy and lead you in.” There’s no margin for error here, and the trickiness quotient was upped recently: The red buoy marking the hard-to-see reef edge on one side went missing several weeks ago, and no one’s got around to replacing it yet. A few green stakes, though, are apparently still there. “Do not trust the stakes,” our guidebook says.

  Carl and Kathleen motor out in their dinghy to be our guides, and we follow close behind them: through the narrow slit in the reef, through a sharp dogleg to the right, all the way past the green stakes. As soon as we are safely beyond the stem of the Y, I see why Luperón is called a “hurricane hole,” a place to hide from hurricane-force winds. Dense mangroves enclose the harbor, their roots poking out of the dark water like gnarled witches’ brooms, with the mountains rising up close behind them. Together, they create a protected, cushioned pond, where two-dozen boats float this morning, hanging lazily on their anchors. Very little breeze penetrates, and the air is close and still, not merely warm but boiling stinking baking roasting unbelievably hot—even for people who’ve had several months of acclimatization in the Bahamas. The wind generator on Receta’s stern, which provided all the power we needed to keep the boat’s batteries fully charged there, scarcely turns here. And gone is the crystalline Bahamian water. The bottom of Luperón harbor is covered in thick, dark, gooey mangrove mud, and the water itself is a slurry of silt mixed with considerable sewage runoff from the town; you can’t see more than a couple of inches—well, maybe an inch—below the surface. This is not the place to consider popping in for a cooling swim—though the local kids have no such reservations and even eat the oysters (raw) that they pry from rocks and pilings. I quickly learn to carry a package of antibacterial wet wipes to use on our hands after we tie Snack’s soggy painter to the sagging dinghy dock at the edge of town.

  In the Bahamas, where 80 percent of the food is imported, we were happy we had thoroughly stocked Receta’s food lockers before we left Florida. In proper frugal-cruiser mode, we had loaded up not just on beer but also on canned stuff we would never buy at home: soft gray canned asparagus and waterlogged canned green beans; canned flaked white-meat chicken (the poultry version of canned tuna) and—worst of all—disgusting-looking cans of whole chicken. “About 15 servings,” the label chirrups unbelievably, showing a badly photographed, pasty-looking miniature bird perched on a blue background that does nothing to improve its looks. “Home-style goodness.”

  The Dominican Republic makes a mockery of our Florida supermarket sweeps. We barely open a Florida can—except for the Old Milwaukee—the whole time we’re here.

  We tie Snack to the dinghy dock, disinfect our hands, and walk down the gravel jetty toward the small village that starts at the far end. Like the island as a whole, Luperón is a combination of third and first worlds. Chickens scratch along the dusty roadside and the occasional donkey or pig strolls by, but reliable e-mail and fax service is available at the phone-company-cum-souvenir-store on the main street—as long as the power doesn’t go out, which it frequently does. There are places that will do our laundry—but it’s then spread out to dry on curbside bushes, roofs, and barbed-wire fences, where it will be leisurely coated by thick dust stirred up by the motorconchos that blast along the main street. Salsas and merengues blare from open doorways, and mangy dogs slink through the shade at the edges of the concrete buildings—painted soft pastels mostly, though the headquarters of the Dominican Liberation Party is a startling combo of bright purple and canary yellow. (In fact, it’s called the Purple Party, and displayed as such on ballots, the rainbow of political parties a nod to the high illiteracy rate.)

  When substantial supplies are needed, we can go to Santiago, the island’s second largest city, about 38 miles away, where the supermarkets are said to be just like the Florida big boxes. Except that the parking lots have guard towers, and security guards with sawed-off shotguns roam inside and out, protecting these pockets of affluence in the midst of an impoverished country. The class divide in the Dominican Republic is blatantly huge.

  But Luperón’s small, un-air-conditioned, dark (to keep them cool), and disorderly stores turn out to be surprisingly well stocked. “Go to Ana’s on the main street for chicken,” Kathleen had told us. “It’s the best spot—she takes off the head and most of the feathers.” “And she’s got beer and rum,” Carl jumps in, “very cheap.” “But watch out for the cat at the supermercado across the road. She bites.”

  Our noses lead us down a side street to the panadería, where squat loaves of bread are cooling on racks lining the sidewalk. We buy a bag of warm rolls and dive into them the minute we’re back on the street. Steve is a bit put out to discover the seeds sprinkled on the one he is about to bite into are moving. Ants. Inside the bag. Yummy rolls, though.

  At Ana’s, besides cheap chicken, Presidente, and the Dominican Republic’s three Bs—Brugal, Bermudez, and Barceló rums—we discover the creamy thick Dominican drinking yogurt, sold in cuartillo bottles and gallon jugs, which tastes like a rich delicious milkshake. At the supermercado, the cat is as crotchety as advertised. (“Don’t worry, she didn’t break the skin,” Steve assures me after his friendly overtures are soundly rebuffed.) She prowls the aisles for four-legged intruders in search of peanuts and beans that have spilled out of bins onto the wood floor. Cases of Presidente and gallon cans of cooking oil teeter at the ends of the aisles. The supermercado accepts Visa just like the supermarkets in Florida, but when I slide into the front seat of the pickup the store’s owner commandeers to take us and our groceries back to the dock, the driver carefully removes the pistol stuck into the waistband of his trousers and lays it on the seat between his legs.

  Tengo hambre”—I’m hungry—the shoeshine kid says to me softly. You don’t have to look very hard to see poverty, and when someone tells you he’s hungry here, you don’t doubt him. I learned this our first night in Luperón, when a very pretty, very young woman started to braid my very short hair in a restaurant. Before I could muster the Spanish to refuse, she had one braid finished, with two beads and a piece of foil from a cigarette pack hanging on the end. “Basta,” I tell her, enough. “But I have four children,” she replies. It seems impossible given her young age, but the restaurant owner quietly confirms her story—adding that she supports the children herself. We pay her lavishly for the single braid, and later spot her in a corner, wolfing down a plate of food that she’s bought with the money.

  Now I dig out some change for the shoeshine kid. He knows we’re both wearing sandals, realizes he can’t work for the money, but he sees I’m holding a map. “Where do you want to go?” he asks in Spanish.

  “El Museo del Jamón,” I tell him. The Ham Museum. He picks up his shoeshine stool, motions for us to follow, and leads the way.

  We had taken the public bus—actually, a couple of buses—kitty-corner across the country to visit Santo Domingo, 120 miles away on the south coast, leaving Receta at anchor in Luperón. A young Israeli man was looking after her; partway through a solo sail around the world, he was happy to make a little money to replenish his cruising kitty. After living on a boat for months, our small, basic Santo Domingo hotel seems like five-star luxury. King-sized bed! Air-conditioning! Full-size shower with hot water! Cable TV! In between watching the NBA playoffs (and the Three Stooges) in Spanish, we’ve been walking our feet off exploring the historic capital, which was founded by Bartolomé Columbus, Chris’s brother, in 1496.

  The shoeshine kid ushers us importantly through the door of El Museo del Jamón and exchanges a few words in rapid Spanish with the man inside. “Is it true? Did he
bring you here?” the man asks. “Sí, sí.” He goes to the cash register and gives the kid some change—a finder’s fee, for bringing us in, his lucky day. I don’t bother mentioning that we’d already rewarded him, or that we would have found El Museo ourselves without much trouble, as we were just steps from its door when he intervened.

  El Museo del Jamón is a small tapas-style bar, where the Presidente is served so cold it’s almost frozen and the ceiling is festooned with whole serrano hams dangling side by side, dozens of them, marching from one end of the room to the other. On its bottom, each ham wears a small, pointed white paper cup—the kind you’d find at a water cooler—to catch any greasy drips before they land on the patrons who are sitting at the bar or tables underneath, tucking into plates of the ham (sliced paper thin), spicy chorizo sausage, and other porcine offerings. Steve, to put it mildly, is in heaven.

  “Serrano” means from the mountains, and these hams are dry-cured in the cool mountain air of the island’s interior by Dominicans who have been trained in Spain, in traditional methods. Steve is a porkophile who’s been severely deprived since he started living with me: With my Jewish background, I never ate pork at all while I was growing up, I don’t cook it, and I still avoid eating it in its most obvious forms, such as ham and bacon. He pronounces El Museo’s ham the best he’s ever had: delicate, almost sweet. “I read a story years ago,” I tell him as I soak a hunk of crusty bread in the garlicky red oil that’s pooled around my chorizo (which I do eat, with barely a pang of guilt). “It was about a young Spanish bullfighter, who carried a serrano ham with him as he traveled from town to town, and bullring to bullring. He’d hang it from the ceiling of each hotel room, so he could carve off a slice whenever he wanted. This was the ultimate luxury for someone who grew up poor without enough to eat and now was tasting success for the first time.”

  That image had long stuck in my brain, but sharing it with Steve is a big mistake. Now he desperately wants to buy a whole ham from El Museo, carry it back to Luperón on his lap on the crowded bus, and hang it from one of the handrails in Receta’s main cabin. He can picture himself on future night passages, ducking below to remove a delicate slice or two whenever he feels the urge for a snack. The ultimate luxury, he quotes back at me. I draw the line: A mezuzah at the entrance to the cabin, and a whole jamón swinging over the settee? I think not.

  The whole ham would have been troublesome in any case on the packed sardine can of a minivan that is the second half of our trip back to Luperón two days later. A packed guagua, as the public minivans are called here, makes a crowded bus in Grenada look positively spacious. This one is so jammed that its conductor kid hangs outside the open door as the guagua rips along, with just his feet inside, his body dancing in the air to the salsa blasting from the van’s speakers and his hands beating out the rhythm on the roof. There is no room for a spare chorizo in this picture, let alone a whole ham. At one stop, an ancient, not terribly clean, and mostly toothless lady climbs onto the guagua with a live chicken tucked under her arm. She somehow squeezes in next to Steve and settles the chicken on her lap. It rides contentedly back to Luperón with its head and beak on Steve’s thigh, while the woman rides contentedly with her arm around his shoulders. I ride with visions of chicken mites and body lice dancing in my head.

  I always meet skippers kicking themselves all the way down island because they didn’t make room to buy in the Dominican Republic,” says our gospel cruising guide for this part of the world (the same one whose author sings the praises of night passages, and the perils of green stakes). Presidente aside—there’s still too much Old Milwaukee in the bilge—we make no such mistake. We squirrel away twenty pounds of vacuum-packed Santo Domingo coffee and a full case of MasMas bars—locally made chocolate bars stuffed with raisins and nuts. The only other time I’ve bought a case of chocolate bars was at Halloween, and then I had no intention of eating them myself; but Steve has convinced me that in the absence of a swinging ham, these will be the second-most perfect snack during future night passages. We content ourselves with only a half-dozen jars of tiny green olives—packed in brine with giant caper berries, themselves the size of olives—and as addictive as peanuts with drinks. (We would have bought a case of those too—if only the jars didn’t leak.) And several large globes of wax-covered Gouda-like cheese are tucked into the very bottom of the fridge.

  The local cheesemaker plies his craft on the outskirts of Luperón, near the cockfighting ring, selling what he makes from an open-fronted wooden building identifiable from the road by its hanging scale. Behind the selling area, the floor is wet with whey. Wearing rubber boots and a garbage bag as an apron, a man paddles curds in a big plastic bucket, while balls of nascent cheese bob in other buckets nearby. From a distance, a long wooden table at the far end looks like it’s piled with monster ripe tomatoes, but on closer inspection, the tomatoes turn out to be cheese—coated in red wax but not yet labeled. They’ll keep for months, we’ve been told. While the cheesemaker weighs a couple for us, I ask him about the long, white rectangular blocks resting on the counter. He cuts off a piece for us to try: a salty, fresh, unaged farmer’s cheese still oozing whey. “Queso de freir,” he says. Frying cheese. What a splendid idea: a cheese specifically designed to be made more gloriously, fat-oozingly delicious by frying it. Of course we buy some of it, too—though not nearly enough to suit Steve. “It’s a fresh cheese,” I argue. “It won’t keep like the wax-coated ones.”

  It doesn’t have to: We polish off most of what we buy that night. Sliced and fried in a little oil and butter, the cheese stays firm and develops a golden crust. But when you cut into it, the interior is molten, delicious smeared on bread. “Or,” Steve adds, “with a delicate slice or two of serrano ham.” No whole ham swings on Receta, but there’s no way Steve was leaving Luperón without a few fridge-friendly packages of the stuff.

  It’s now almost the end of May and time for us to get a move on. Hurricane season officially starts on June 1, though everyone we talk to scoffs at the idea of a hurricane in the Caribbean in June, or even July. “The months of June, July and October only produce about one hurricane every three years for the whole western Atlantic,” one of our books tells us, and that includes the Gulf of Mexico as well as the Caribbean Sea. Still, our boat insurance sets July 1 as the deadline for being outside “the box”—the area through which hurricanes are statistically most likely to track. In the box after that, and Receta isn’t covered by insurance if she’s damaged by a hurricane or other “named storm.” And if the insurance company thinks there are any odds of a hurricane in July, that’s good enough for me.

  A few cruisers, like Carl and Kathleen, have decided they love Luperón so much they will trust its reputation as a hurricane hole and spend all of hurricane season here. But most of the cruisers who ventured beyond Chicken Harbor have already left. Only a couple of stragglers—like us—are still here. We need to start hustling south.

  The top edge of the hurricane box is at 35° north, between Cape Hatteras and Cape Lookout, North Carolina; the bottom edge is at 12°40', in the Tobago Cays, part of the Caribbean nation of St. Vincent and the Grenadines. Luperón is squarely in the middle of the box, 865 nautical miles from statistical safety by the island-hopping route: east from the Dominican Republic to the south coast of Puerto Rico; east along the south coast of Puerto Rico to the U.S. Virgin Islands and the British Virgin Islands; east through the Virgin Islands to St. Martin, at the top of the Leeward Island chain; east and southeast through the Leewards and the Windwards till we’re finally beyond the box. East, into the prevailing trade winds; east right down the middle of the Thorny Path.

  The first thorn is the Mona Passage, the 60-mile gap between the eastern tip of the Dominican Republic and the western edge of Puerto Rico, and our gospel guidebook is full of optimistic advice. “Unpredictable currents everywhere,” it warns. “Rough shoals.” “Steep seas.” The ocean bottom here is to blame: It drops from a comparatively shallow 150 feet to the
second-deepest hole in the world, the 16,000-foot-deep Puerto Rican Trench. As massive volumes of water tumble across the uneven bottom in an underwater waterfall, the surface churns, setting up wild and conflicting currents. Even in benign weather, crossing this stretch from west to east is like booking passage inside a washing machine.

  Add to that the long lines of thunderstorms that religiously roll off the coast of Puerto Rico each evening, when the heat that has risen off the land meets the cooler offshore air. “The fiercest I’ve seen in my life,” says the guidebook’s ever-reassuring author. “Sometimes they . . . charge like bulls.” A crossing of the Mona is not to be taken lightly. The guidebook spends seven pages discussing strategy and timing. Obviously, it would be foolhardy to leave on anything less than a perfect forecast.

  Once again, I start checking in daily with Herb, waiting for him to give our passage his blessing. Working on acquiring martyr points, I even send Steve to a potluck on shore one night—with the big dish of tortilla lasagna I’ve made (cruiser’s trick: stale tortillas make a fine substitute for lasagna noodles)—and stay behind, hunched by the radio, hoping to hear the good news. Wait, Herb says.

  The next night I cheat: I check in at the start of the Herb Show, go off to shore with Steve for a happy hour beer, and am back onboard the boat just before the time Herb has been calling me the last few days. But there’s no pulling a fast one on Herb. “I tried to call you earlier,” he says, “but you didn’t respond.” It’s as if he can see what I’ve been up to; I feel like a teenager caught sneaking in after curfew from a date. But I get my punishment: The wind is still too strong for us to leave. As the days tick by, I get more and more antsy: We have a lot of miles to cover in a steadily decreasing amount of time.