Caribbean tourism...but not as you know it

Hijacking our 07-08 travel blog to share this article I really enjoyed writing. It wasn't ever published (I was paid tho) - feedback, good or bad, is welcome.

By Alistair Grant
AFTER a slack-jawed stare at the deserted white sand, azure sea and towering coconut trees, there seems only one thing to do.
Gathering driftwood, fallen tree palms and creepers, I piece together my first raft, trying desperately to remember those reef knots and clove hitches I once knew.
An hour later, with the help of a young Dominican boy, I launch into buoyant waves.
Admittedly, the raft wouldn’t have made the prop list for Castaway - it is borderline seaworthy.
Nevertheless, ignoring the ’Wilson’ jokes/taunts of my girlfriend Nati on the Playa Rincon shoreline, I make steady if unspectacular progress with my bark oars, fulfilling a boyish fantasy a million miles away from most travellers‘ experience of this country.
The Dominican Republic is an all-inclusive hotels goliath; attracting half-a-million Brits annually as well as an endless stream of American college students.
The done thing is to spend a week or two in a resort strip: generally Playa Dorada, Punta Cana or Playa Dominicus.
Customary practice is for guests to eat and drink as much as possible, taking occasional overpriced trips beyond the gate guarding the buffet restaurants and manicured lawns.
Our trip is not the done thing, and there is no customary practice.
There is no hotel wristbands-only buffet spread out on Playa Rincon, because this stunning place has no hotels.
We are on the north coast of this nation about twice the size of Wales, the safer neighbour of strife-hit Haiti on the island of Hispaniola. Our beach is accessible only by motorboat or hour-long bumpy jeep ride.
Instead of a buffet, a lady operating a food shack for the dribble of visitors throws some firewood onto her rough brick stove, somehow producing marvellous grilled red snapper with fried bananas.
Tired from the raft building and paddling, we sit on powdery white sand beneath a palm tree and wash the meal down with a tall Presidente beer.
Refreshed, it is time to find desert: coconuts.
Lacking the agility to copy the Dominicans’ harvesting tactics - monkey-like scrambles up near-vertical trunks - we use the English approach.
Hurling logs skyward, I make a mental note to tell my mother. Those skills honed in childhood autumns throwing sticks at chestnut trees have finally come in use.
This time, the targets are bigger and a lot tastier than conkers.
One miss, two misses….12 misses and a couple of hits later, we are chopping open two giant coconuts with a machete.
Behind us, a 750m forest-clad ridge forms the backbone of the Peninsula de Samana, sheltering the DR’s biggest claim to fame.
A boat ride and hour’s zig-zagging minibus ride later, we arrive at deepwater Bahia de Samana, once the haunt of pirates attacking Spanish galleons, and now only inhabited by several thousand humpback whales.
North Atlantic humpbacks breed here between January and March every year after migrating up to 7,000km.
As Nati suggested, they must be desperate.
Equally so are the gaggle of American tourists, who rock our charter boat racing from port to starboard the moment a spout of water - a whale’s giveaway locator - shoots into the air.
Only the size of our hull must have prevented a capsize.
We follow a graceful mother and two-month old calf dipping in and out of the waves, and find two ‘fellas’ (as our English-speaking guide calls them) trying to impress the girls.
The pair show off a few tricks for their observers, although on this occasion don’t produce the spectacular leaps which make the humpbacks and this place famous.
Still, what we see is beautiful and natural, unlike one of the DR’s most infamous attractions; dolphins trapped in sea cages moored off the shore of the Bavaro hotel strip, near Punta Cana.
Charging tourists US$85 for a swim, the horrendously mis-named ’Dolphin Island’ has long been a target for criticism of the negative effect of the country‘s tourism empire.
We avoid that visitor trap and spend a couple of hours in a gua-gua. It is a form of minibus transport which, strangely, we find to be half the attraction of travelling in this country.
These are not minibuses by British standards, oh no.
Let’s call them Dominibuses - clapped-out vans usually with no doors but including any combination of the following: a buttock-clenching five passengers per bench seat; blaring merengue music, and; standard luggage plus live chickens and sacks of fruit and vegetables.
Despite requiring flexibility worthy of a contortionist and the patience of a saint, we realise we enjoy this peculiar mode of transport, offering unusual views of brightly-coloured wooden houses, beaches and forests at the roadside.
Unfolding ourselves after a serious squeeze, we arrive in the town of La Vega unprepared for a physical test of a different kind.
Today is a Sunday in February, and that means Carnival.
La Vega, we had heard, held the wildest celebration in the country.
And, true enough, what we are about to experience makes Notting Hill seem like a vicarage tea party.
Hundreds of men dressed in giant devil outfits race through the streets, swinging whips tipped with a thick rubber ball against unfortunate bystanders’ backsides.
And boy, do these diablos love a white ass to smack.
Feeling a little, ahem, raw, we choose a safer vantage point at the Carnival season’s climax in Santo Domingo, the DR’s historic capital.
Bottoms safely pressed against a fence, we admire the best troupes from towns across the country, able to make poor attempts at merengue and batacha steps without the threat of an imminent thwack and yelp of pain.
Next morning, free of fiestas and not worried about whips, we explore this city which doubles as a world heritage site.
Christopher Columbus landed on the north coast of Hispaniola in 1492, making the first significant landfall of his world-altering expedition.
After two attempts at settlement in the north had failed (due largely to fighting with the indigenous Taino population, soon to be wiped out by the colonists), Columbus’ brother Bartholomew moved the capital to its current location on the south coast.
Because of its key role in European settlement of the Americas, Santo Domingo boasts more firsts than Michael Schumacher.
It was the first city in the New World and had the first fortress, first university, first paved road and, arguably, the first cathedral - which is where we are now.
Pausing to brush up on our history, we discover Sir Francis Drake was once resident for a month in the building in which we stand.
It was 1586 and the famous English privateer (or pirate, if you are Spanish and hold the alternative view) had invaded and was looting the city for ransom.
Having seen where the Spaniards’ bad guy lived, we thought it only right to see where the good guy was.
Columbus’ tomb, the Faro a Colon, is a mammoth cross-shaped monument on a hillside.
Impressive, it certainly is.
There’s only one problem; no-one’s sure if he’s buried inside the casket here or in Seville.
Anyway, enough of the history lesson - we came here to see beaches and that’s where we’re going.
Next stop Playa Limon in the east, near Samana, via a four-hour gua-gua chug sharing a seat with school kids, oversize women and a sack of bananas.
The final 4km of this amusing journey, down a rutted dirt track, are on the back of a youth’s motoconcho (moped). A little precarious while juggling a 70-litre rucksack.
Our guest house, the most expensive of our trip, costs US$25 for an ensuite double and rents horses for a bargain US$10 an afternoon.
We pay up and procure the equine equivalent of the hare and the tortoise.
Nati’s horse, Ricardo, trots sensibly as we cross a slightly wild deserted beach and approach the breaking waves.
My mount, Pedro, suddenly acts as if he has had stimulants rather than straw in his nose-bag.
Our guides are disinterested so I opt to go for it, resisting the urge to yank the reins. We hit canter, then gallop and then whatever is faster than gallop.
My knees aching, the sand, surf and coconut trees flash past as the sea water flicks up from Pedro’s hooves. A truly exhilarating feeling.
As sunset nears, we pause for more conker-style stick throwing at coconuts, eventually hitting the target and gulping juice before scraping out crunchy white chunks.
We return to our accommodation, via a similarly hair-rising ride: why is it that horses don’t consider the height of their riders when charging past low-hanging trees?
As we arrive, Dominican workmen in trucks pull up and begin taking measurements in the forest.
Incredibly, they tell us developers have ordered a feasibility study for a possible resort.
Gobsmacked, we look through the coconut forest to the deep golden sand and aquamarine sea, listening to the thump of big, breaking waves.
We feel instantly fortunate; lucky that we were able to experience Playa Limon - and this remarkable country - like this.