Part IV - The Caribbean

For thirteen months Ladd sailed up through the multi-cultural Antilles, pulling up on gleaming beaches by night. Heavy seas and sudden storms made for gruesome sailing, but there was time to snorkel the turquoise reefs, find love, and carouse with some of the funniest characters in the Caribbean. He was arrested upon arrival in Haiti and Cuba, but both subsequently allowed him to cruise their waters. In May, 1993, he landed in Miami, and got home for his fortieth birthday.

From "Three Years in a 12-Foot Boat":

I'd read much about Hispaniola's preeminence in the initial phase of the Spanish Conquest, but knew nothing about the modern-day Dominican Republic. Because the less I know about a place, the more it intrigues me, I burbled with excitement as I approached the shallow, coral-studded bay separating Isla Saona fro the southeast tip of Hispaniola.

A rowboat or two tended fish pots, but there was no sign of man on the lush lowlands to my left nor in the mangrove swamps to my right. I came into the lee of reefs and flew through the flat water of the bay. Flecks of foam streamed fromSqueak's stern. I stood tall on the seat deck and looked through the pale water as if through glass. Brown manta rays darted away like giant moths at my approach.

I exited the bay's western opening and continued northwest along a pristine shore. A whale spouted and thrashed his tail. A sea turtle lifted his head to eye me. I expected a native village, and soon saw one, but it was actually a resort complex in disguise. Thatched, onion-shaped roofs blended into palm trees. Windsurfers flitted along the beach like brilliant butterflies. Finally, I entered a quiet cove and anchored among a fleet of sail-powered fishing smacks, to stretch out and enjoy a full night's sleep.

The next day I landed at a military dock in La Romana, at the mouth of a small river. Armed men in T-shirts and fatigues excitedly conducted me to a dim room in which a little old man sat at a desk. His fingers rattled a manual typewriter. I sat facing him on a wooden bench and didn't move for two hours, reverent before the god of paperwork. Perhaps my piety touched the old man, because while he typed my customs papers he occasionally glanced up over his bifocals and smiled at me, as if to say, "Ah, youth!"

When the ceremony came to a close I walked cautiously up to town. It brought home to me how sanitized Puerto Rico had become under U.S. administration. This was the Latin America I knew: dirty, noisy, high-spirited, glorious. The chaotic public market and the central park full of stuffy homages to "heroes of the revolution" seemed straight from Panama or Colombia. The same dust choked me, the same panoply of smells persuaded me to breathe through my mouth. Black, white, and Indian blood intermingled; few people were full-blooded anything. Two dollars bought me a heaping plate of rice and greasy chicken. I returned to the docks and rowed up the river a piece, admiring the shanties that scrambled up the steep, garbage-strewn slopes. I gave the gleeful slum kids a ride for a while, then sailed out the mouth of the river to spend the night on a nearby islet.

The islet was a limestone slab, barely above sea level. Its edge was vertical, undercut by wave action. Freestanding remnants were mushroom-shaped, with gnarly caps. I arrived on its lee side just as a cruise ship was departing, and landed on a freshly evacuated beach. Minutes before, hundreds of tourists had been paying big money to be there, but the only people I shared the island with were a quartet of ragtag soldiers, garrisoned there to make sure nobody stole the island. They questioned me suspiciously for a few minutes, then shifted their focus to knocking coconuts out of the trees with rocks. Meanwhile, I stretched out on a cushy beach chair and opened a can of beans. "Ah, yes!" I exulted, and spread my arms to embrace Heaven. Then the sun went down, Hell opened, and a million mosquitoes attacked me. The tourists had left just in time.

Back to Part 3: South American Rivers