The week began with a trip to the local Del Oro Chocolate Factory. As with most things in the Dominican, a simple trip to the chocolate factory is never quite as simple as it should be. First, I had to locate their website to determine if they were doing tours during The Stupid. Easy enough plan but the website did not have any of the usual opening/closing, times, etc on it. I finally located the Contact Us page which consisted of an email and a Whatsapp contact number. For those of you not familiar with Whatsapp, it is an app by Facebook that allows you to text and make phone calls (quite handy given the sketchy phone service here). The Dominicans live on Whatsapp and it also works well for us because it is easy to translate from one language to another. So, I contacted Jennifer from the Chocolate Factory on Whatsapp and she quickly responded that the tours were open. She wanted to know when we would like to come and I responded that I needed to work out some transportation before I could sign up for a tour time. Also in true Dominican style, her next text was a contact for a friend of hers that could give us a ride. Not only could he take us to the chocolate factory but he could taxi us anywhere we needed to go. So now, we have our own personal taxi guy named Victor with much less than taxi prices! Our day with Victor included six stops in 6 hours which totaled about $30.00 for the day.
Victor picked us up right on time and it did not take us long to figure out that Victor’s English was actually worse than our Spanish (and that is saying a lot!). However, between using Whatsapp to translate and a lot of gestures, we all managed to get our point across. First, we wanted to go the rum factory but when we arrived, they were not doing tours. So, off we went to do our regular chores such as the paint store and the boat shop. Bonus of having a personal driver is that Victor generally would come into the store with us to speak to the clerk. Exceptionally helpful when you are looking for industrial paint and have no idea how to say that in Spanish! One thing that we have noticed is that in the Dominican, if you are white, that means you must like country music. Since arriving in the larger cities and being in several taxis, it has been quite entertaining to find that as soon as we get in the car, the driver turns off the Dominican music and turns on American country music. Every time! That is fine with me, of course, because I love country but I chuckle at the other Gringos who must be suffering through all of their taxi rides! We arrived at Del Oro and were treated to a private tour. Their factory is small but they manufacture every item for their chocolate including all of the wrapping. The most shocking part was that they still hand wrap each and every candy bar as well as the little sample coins! I can not imagine the patience and time that must take. At the end of the tour was a glorious shop filled with chocolate bars, hot cocoa mix, cocoa beauty products….anything that you could possibly make out of cocoa. The fact that Bill did not have to drag me out of the store is pretty impressive if I do say so myself! Now for the not so fun part of the week….rain! We have been very spoiled since we have been here because we have only had a few days of rain and the showers usually only last a few minutes and then we are back to sunshine. Not so this week. In the infamous words of Winnie the Pooh….the rain, rain, rain came down, down, down. When I was fifteen years old, I bought two goldfish and I named them Rhett and Scarlett. Like most things when you are fifteen, Rhett and Scarlett were soon forgotten except to toss them some fish flakes every so often. My sister and her boyfriend affectionately nicknamed the fish Mold and Mildew…and that was their name until the day they died. Well, this week, Bill and I felt like Mold and Mildew. I am sure you envision being on a boat in the rain as a romantic, comfy, cozy place. Hmmm. Take that vision, remove the romantic, comfy and cozy and add in water leaking from every crevice and there you have it! You never know where a leak is on a boat until it rains. And the leaks constantly change. Once a rainstorm comes, you find the leaks and fix them. Excellent. Until the next storm when new leaks have arisen. This week, the main issue was that several of our rubber gaskets on the hatch window had rotted in the sun. The hatch window is over our bed. So, neither comfy nor cozy…..just wet! Bill compared this particular leak to Chinese water torture….drip, drip, drip and never on the same body part twice! After several attempts at avoiding the drips, I shifted up to the settee and slept. Poor Bill just tortured on through the drips. The mast also decided to spring a leak. We had run some wires for the solar panels down the mast and I had taped them thoroughly with duct tape and a mast boot. Or I thought it was thorough. By the third day of rain, we no longer had any dry towels so I would pick the least wet one to place under the mast. Each time there was a break in the rain, we would run and try to solve one of the leaks before it started raining again. Happy to report that we think we are all dry now….at least until it rains again! We are now watching weather closely to determine when we can begin our move down to Samana, DR. We were hoping for tomorrow but the wind and waves are not cooperating so we will be hanging out until conditions improve. At least it is not raining anymore! I am sure that Mold and Mildew are watching over us from their big toilet in the sky enjoying their revenge on me….let’s just hope that we don’t hear a flush! Have a wonderful week and here’s hoping your last minute Christmas shopping goes well!
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AuthorSally Miller Archives
May 2024
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