Whale watching in Samana Bay

We piled in the car and took a little road trip to the tiny north cost peninsula called Samana for some Humpback whale watching. The drive was long considering we were only going 110 miles away, but the average speed you drive here is about 25 miles an hour. There are potholes, motoconchos (motorcycle taxis carrying everything from bread to washing machines to entire families), Guaguas (minivans with 27 people inside! I’m serious, I’ve been in them), tractors, garbage trucks, tiny pick-ups loaded down with scrap metal. The list goes on and on. It’s definitely not as crazy as India or other parts of Southeast Asia, but it keeps you on your toes the whole time. No cruise control and a good podcast here! We stopped for lunch at a roadside cafe. In most parts of the world I’ve found roadside cafe’s have excellent food. It would be like our Truckstops in the US only there are real people cooking up fresh local food from scratch! I had a whole fried fish with roasted eggplant and tomato. Amazing! We walked across the “highway” for a look at the beach before getting back in the car and this is what we saw. Plastic, plastic, plastic... It really brings home the fact that the oceans are the worlds dumping ground. There is no clean water anymore. The only pristine beaches are the ones someone manicures.

So, did we see whales you ask! Yes we did. We weren’t lucky enough to see one breach, or wave at us with a 15ft long flipper, but we saw them come up for air and flick their tales before going back down. I dont have great photos but Andy managed to get some video that I’ll try to post on YouTube. It was so fun being on a boat, out at sea, in decent swell waiting for whales! Almost everyone on the boat took Dramamine (I decided not to) and a few did get seasick. Fortunately I had no problem. I keep thinking someday I will get seasick, but it hasn’t happened yet (knock on wood).

The highlight of the ride home was an impromptu stop for chicharone! They heat a cauldron full of lard over charcoal and throw things in. Delicious!!! You select from a buffet style table in the photo on the left. On offer (from the top of the photo down) you have:
Chicharone, a strip of pork that includes meat, fat, and skin fried whole and then chopped up with a machete and doused in lime.
Patatas, chunks of a white sweet potato-like tuber, fried.
Banana, fried whole and also diced with a machete.
Pollo, pieces of fried chicken.
Fish Croquettes, diced fish made into a ball, breaded and fried, also served with lime.
​Longanitza, last but certainly not least, a homemade dry sausage, fried in strips and diced with a machete.
The jug on the table contains a sauce made with bitter orange and pickled vegetables. An aphrodisiac they say, but I feel like they say that about everything in the Caribbean... The photo on the right is homemade local cheese. Dairy hanging in a plastic bag in the tropical heat! What could possibly go wrong? Nothing actually, it was good. Salty, probably made with citrus like a paneer. They eat it with the little wafers of bread hanging in a bag behind the cheese.