D.R. and Green Waves

Well, it has been a long time since I have posted and, suffice it to say, a lot has happened. We left for the Christmas/New Year’s school vacation and went to the Dominican Republic. This is where Oli, Russell and Henry learned to surf, and so I was hoping for a big breakthrough in the gentle waves of our very own Playa Bonita on the Samana Peninsula. Also, I was hoping to have cracked the Spanish code so that new worlds of conversation might open up between me and the Dominicans I have known, but yet never really known, all of these years.

I probably should’ve remembered how ineffective my Dominican Spanish was on my first visit to  Costa Rica. Guess what? The same is true in reverse (duh…). But I am delighted to report that despite the differences between our two adopted hometowns, we deeply love both of them.

So with the caveat that I am only comparing two small areas of each country, I will simply note some of our observations in comparison of the two places.

The silence at night in the D.R. was almost jarring after becoming so accustomed to Nosara’s jungle noises. Not a gecko, monkey, or singing bug could be heard inside or outside our concrete walls. Yet there are more mosquitos in Playa Bonita even though they spray incessantly and have no jungle. I heard once that the spray kills not just the mosquitos, but also the bugs that eat them ironically resulting in a net gain of mosquitos.

Many people in Nosara are chatty and smiling right away, most Dominicans are more reserved at first. They are devout in their replies to “Como esta?” thanking God for their condition any time you ask. And in our tiny spot in the D.R., the waves are gentler and easier to surf. Thanks to the influence of many French expats in the Samana Peninsula, we are able to gorge ourselves on glorious cheeses and delicious wines, both sadly absent in Nosara. But you can drink water right from the tap in Costa Rica, a fact that still fills me with joy as I think of it. The fruits are mostly better in Costa Rica with the exception of the avocado which is so massive, creamy and strangely sweet in the D.R. that I venture to say it has no equal.

The gentler waves afforded me a confidence I have not yet had in surfing, and I set my sights on trying to catch the waves before they break–the elusive (for me) Green Wave. But paddling out and making a few unsuccessful runs at approaching waves left me exhausted and ready to go home. “No, Mom, you can’t paddle in,” Russell explained to me in exasperation. I found myself thinking of the mother cheetah, surviving on the razor’s edge between survival and death as she zeroes in on the baby impala with only one chance to kill or to die from exhaustion. My cheetah cubs would have died many times over in their den waiting for me to bring them fresh meat.

Analogous to these struggles is my progress in learning Spanish. I have loads of vocabulary, yes, and my love of grammar has buoyed me easily through all of my classes to the point where I am told there is nowhere further to go. I can write a flawless essay, but can I shoot the breeze in the line at the bank? Nope.

We made one brief appearance in New York to visit family, and it was enough to get that Dorothy-returned-to-Kansas feeling of sepia tones and scratched film reels. And there was the cold. We don’t miss it at all.