The start of my two-year stint as a peace corps volunteer in the Dominican Republic consisted of three months of intensive language and agricultural training. This amounted to a good dose of culture shock concurrent with shovel-wielding bliss on a Caribbean island where every year has two growing seasons. For this formative phase of service, my six fellow trainees and I were sent to the village of La Peñita, located in fertile farmland on the Haitian border and surrounded by gently rolling mountains not entirely unlike the Greens.
The training was engaging, but I quickly came to the conclusion that our down time would be best applied to reaching one of the surrounding high points; a survey of my companions revealed a like interest in getting out for a good hike. The ridges to the West were appealing, but most of these were located in Haiti, and civil unrest – not to mention our lack of in-hand passports – precluded any designs we had for them.
We therefore set our ambition on the highest of an Eastward group of peaks, in the shadow of which sat the town of Montegrande. A few hours’ walk from La Peñita, it was the ideal jumping-off point, and we decided that one day would suffice for the whole trek provided we moved swiftly.
The opportunity presented itself on a mid-March Saturday when we had only an evening Spanish lesson scheduled, but our group began experiencing setbacks the night before departure. One trainee was on an emergency leave to visit her husband, another had contracted food poisoning, two were afflicted with unidentified rashes and – the greatest blow of all – our ablest rock climber was exhibiting the early symptoms of Dengue fever. This left myself and a trainee from South Carolina named Jason in sufficient health for the trek. So it was – having enlisted a local guide, Wilton, who neglected to inform us that Saturday was his fifteenth birthday – that our abbreviated party set out for Montegrande before dawn on the appointed morning.
The approach march went without a hitch, barring a minor directional dispute (in which – as would be expected – the gringos were dead wrong and fortunate to have a Dominican along), and so we arrived shortly after nine AM as the sun burned its way into the sky. Skirting the base of the mountain on a main road, we spied a likely route upon which to begin; crossing a pasture, we entered uninhabited territory and the battle began.
The next three hours were a blur of dense thickets, creek beds, burned-out ridges, elephant grass-encrusted saddles and illegal logging trails, punctuated by an eloquently-won argument on the comparative benefits of pants over shorts while bushwacking through thorns. We arrived finally at a spur at the base of what appeared to be the summit ridge, but we couldn’t know for sure – we could only stare upward into the thick tangle of trees and vines and curse ourselves for not bringing a machete or two. Our proximity, however, forced us to press on.
The very ground added to the difficulty; deadfall lay two feet deep in spots and produced an effect similar to climbing on new-fallen snow. This was augmented by the unfortunate tendency of the thorniest vines to attach themselves to arms and neck. Wilton and Jason – recognizing that the hour was growing late – took a break while I thrashed upward to scout ahead.
Frustration grew as the understory thickened and I crested several false summits, finally arriving at a small vantage from which I could see . . . The true summit a kilometer away via a gently curving, completely forested ridge.
So with the mantra “Fuck this!” now running cheerfully through my head, I crashed back down through the brush to rejoin my companions. Our retreat was uneventful, excepting such minor mishaps as our sudden arrival atop a thirty-foot cliff (“I don’t remember seeing that on the way up!”), and the fact that we had exhausted our water supply by noon. It was a bedraggled team that emerged from the woods and trudged back to La Peñita. We were only three hours late for Spanish class.
The training was engaging, but I quickly came to the conclusion that our down time would be best applied to reaching one of the surrounding high points; a survey of my companions revealed a like interest in getting out for a good hike. The ridges to the West were appealing, but most of these were located in Haiti, and civil unrest – not to mention our lack of in-hand passports – precluded any designs we had for them.
We therefore set our ambition on the highest of an Eastward group of peaks, in the shadow of which sat the town of Montegrande. A few hours’ walk from La Peñita, it was the ideal jumping-off point, and we decided that one day would suffice for the whole trek provided we moved swiftly.
The opportunity presented itself on a mid-March Saturday when we had only an evening Spanish lesson scheduled, but our group began experiencing setbacks the night before departure. One trainee was on an emergency leave to visit her husband, another had contracted food poisoning, two were afflicted with unidentified rashes and – the greatest blow of all – our ablest rock climber was exhibiting the early symptoms of Dengue fever. This left myself and a trainee from South Carolina named Jason in sufficient health for the trek. So it was – having enlisted a local guide, Wilton, who neglected to inform us that Saturday was his fifteenth birthday – that our abbreviated party set out for Montegrande before dawn on the appointed morning.
The approach march went without a hitch, barring a minor directional dispute (in which – as would be expected – the gringos were dead wrong and fortunate to have a Dominican along), and so we arrived shortly after nine AM as the sun burned its way into the sky. Skirting the base of the mountain on a main road, we spied a likely route upon which to begin; crossing a pasture, we entered uninhabited territory and the battle began.
The next three hours were a blur of dense thickets, creek beds, burned-out ridges, elephant grass-encrusted saddles and illegal logging trails, punctuated by an eloquently-won argument on the comparative benefits of pants over shorts while bushwacking through thorns. We arrived finally at a spur at the base of what appeared to be the summit ridge, but we couldn’t know for sure – we could only stare upward into the thick tangle of trees and vines and curse ourselves for not bringing a machete or two. Our proximity, however, forced us to press on.
The very ground added to the difficulty; deadfall lay two feet deep in spots and produced an effect similar to climbing on new-fallen snow. This was augmented by the unfortunate tendency of the thorniest vines to attach themselves to arms and neck. Wilton and Jason – recognizing that the hour was growing late – took a break while I thrashed upward to scout ahead.
Frustration grew as the understory thickened and I crested several false summits, finally arriving at a small vantage from which I could see . . . The true summit a kilometer away via a gently curving, completely forested ridge.
So with the mantra “Fuck this!” now running cheerfully through my head, I crashed back down through the brush to rejoin my companions. Our retreat was uneventful, excepting such minor mishaps as our sudden arrival atop a thirty-foot cliff (“I don’t remember seeing that on the way up!”), and the fact that we had exhausted our water supply by noon. It was a bedraggled team that emerged from the woods and trudged back to La Peñita. We were only three hours late for Spanish class.
