This is the first of two posts about our recent visit to the mountainous Caribbean island of Hispaniola. In this post, I introduce you to the Dominican Republic, and how we came to trek there. In the second post, I will provide my full trip report of the ascent.
A few years ago, after a year of frustration on the 8,000m peaks, I wrote a blog post called Creative peak bagging is the way forward to explain that I would be choosing my adventures differently in future. Instead of having the same old bucket list as everyone else, of difficult peaks that I really must climb before my legs tell me that they’ve had enough, I would aim to climb more obscure mountains that hardly anyone writes about.
But how to decide which unusual peaks to climb? Well, that was the easy bit. I would ‘go with the flow’. The decision was partly inspired by an adventure Edita and I had in 2014 while Edita was on mission in Zambia. We had the idea of climbing Zambia’s highest mountain but soon discovered there was no clear consensus on which mountain that was. We would have to identify the likely candidates, then climb and measure them. Zambia isn’t known for its mountains; most of the country is high plateau and there are few distinct mountain ranges. Locating the high point felt like a real adventure, and Zambia has other assets to tempt the traveller: the Victoria Falls and the wildlife of South Luangwa, to name but two. Across the border in Malawi is Mulanje, one of Africa’s great unsung mountains. We crammed all of this into two weeks and it ended up being one of the most interesting and enjoyable trips I’ve ever had. We would never have chosen it for a holiday had Edita not been working out there.
Fast forward 11 years and Edita was (and still is) once again working in an obscure location I would never think of visiting: Haiti, a small island nation in the Caribbean Sea. Once a French colony, Haiti is the only nation state established by a slave revolt (in 1804). Sadly its 200 years of existence have not been kind to it. International isolation, wars, invasions and a dictatorship have been followed more recently by a coup d’etat in 2004, a catastrophic earthquake followed by a cholera outbreak in 2010, and the assassination of its president in 2021. Haiti is now 7th out of 179 on the Fragile States Index, what used to be known as a ‘failed state’. Governance is extremely weak; large parts of the capital Port-au-Prince are gripped by gang warfare and kidnappings for ransom are common.
Some of the photos that Edita has sent to me suggest a tropical, mountainous, island paradise, but Haiti is a long way from being a good place for a holiday. The UK foreign office currently advises against all travel there, which means that it would be very difficult to get insurance.
Across the border, it’s a different story. Haiti shares the second largest Caribbean island of Hispaniola with its neighbour, the Dominican Republic (DR), a much more stable country whose luxury hotels in the east coast resort of Punta Cana have turned it into a go-to destination for packaged beach holidays.
I have as much interest in a two-week beach holiday as a two-week golfing holiday. Fortunately, the Dominican Republic has five major mountain ranges, the largest of which, the Cordillera Central, rises to over 3,000m and contains the highest peak in the whole of the Caribbean, 3,101m Pico Duarte. The climate is tropical. Regular storms sweep in from the Atlantic, and in the wet season there is rain most days. This means the island is covered in forest, chiefly palm at lower altitudes and turning to pine all the way up to the highest summits. Mountains and jungle is an unusual combination, making for a distinctive trek.
Our adventure in Zambia and Malawi happened thanks to the logistical expertise of an excellent local operator, Franciwell Phiri, owner of the outfitter Small Steps Adventure Tours of Malawi. Franciwell went to the government surveying department in Lilongwe to print out detailed maps of the Mafinga Hills, complete with accurate contours to help us identify the likeliest high points. He provided transport, travelling with us for much of the journey, and sorted our accommodation, including on the floor of a basic restaurant in Chisenga, where there was no other accommodation available. He even managed to obtain a visa for Edita at the border – no mean feat given that judging by the border officials’ knowledge of the rules, she appeared to be the first Lithuanian ever to cross from Zambia into Malawi. We ended the trip confident that whatever adventure we wanted in that part of Southern Africa, Franciwell would be able to arrange the logistics.
As soon as we knew that Edita would be in Haiti for some time, I had it in the back of mind to identify a Dominican equivalent of Franciwell. I found it in Joel Roman, owner of Guias de Alturas. Joel ran a regular 4-day group excursion called “The Three Highest”, which involved climbing the three highest mountains in the Caribbean (3,098m La Pelona and 3,044m La Rusilla being the other two), which included guide, accommodation, food and transport. We wanted a private trip and decided to extend it by including a visit to nearby Valle Nuevo National Park. Joel sorted everything for us, picking us up from our hotel in the Dominican capital of Santo Domingo and depositing us at our hotel in the mountain resort of Jarabacoa after the trek. We were well looked after. He even accompanied us for the first couple of days, and we parted concluding that whatever trek we wanted to do in DR, he was the man to arrange it.
We also concluded that the Dominican Republic is an interesting alternative destination for shorter multi-day treks. While many smaller country high points are located sufficiently close to a road to make them little more than a tick in the box, this is not the case with Pico Duarte. The mountain rises in the middle of a national park, Parque Nacional Armando Bermúdez, surrounded by pristine forest. Its ascent by the easiest route is a strenuous 3-day trek involving over 2,000m of ascent and two nights in a mountain hut. Definitely a good hike.
For such a small country, Dominican Republic also has a remarkable history which is hard to ignore if you start your journey in the capital, Santo Domingo. The story of conquest and adversity makes its emergence as a safe tourist destination all the more impressive. Christopher Columbus explored the north coast of Hispaniola during his first voyage in 1492 and established a colony on the south coast during his second voyage in 1495. By 1498, this colony had moved to the west bank of the Rio Ozama and what is now the Zona Colonial in Santo Domingo. Santo Domingo is therefore the oldest colonial city in the whole of the Americas, surpassing even Las Vegas.
The expansion of a French colony on the western side of Hispaniola led to the island being officially partitioned in 1697. After the slave revolt of 1804 which established an independent Haiti, the Haitians invaded the Spanish colony in 1822 and occupied it for 22 years. The occupation was ended in 1844 when the independent Dominican Republic was founded by Juan Pablo Duarte, regarded as the father of modern DR, and after whom its highest mountain Pico Duarte is named.
Dominicans are an ethnically diverse people, descended from native Taino, Spanish colonisers and African slaves brought over by the Spanish to work the land. Many Dominicans are a mix of all three. Independence has not been constant, however. DR was again annexed by Spain between 1861 and 1863 and by the USA from 1906 to 1924. From 1930 to 1961 it was a dictatorship, ruled over by the tyrannical Rafael Trujillo and his family. After Trujillo’s assassination in 1961, the country endured a military coup in 1963 and US occupation for a second time in 1965.
The path to democracy has been slow, but it seemed to us that the modern Dominican Republic can definitely be considered a success story, a secure, peaceful, middle-income country. As I flew to Santo Domingo from London via New York, Edita had a 5-hour bus drive from the border at Dajabon on a comfortable air-conditioned bus. I met her in our grand old hotel in Zona Colonial at 9pm on Friday, thinking that I’d be lucky to get something to eat at that time. She took me to an upmarket Italian restaurant in a secluded courtyard around the corner, where we enjoyed steak, red wine and live merengue music.
But boy was it humid. The first thing that greeted me as I emerged from the plane was a blast of warm, moist air. It was like stepping into a sauna fully clad. We had a relaxing day touring the historic streets of Zona Colonial. But even ambling slowly, I found myself sweating like a pig that has just completed the 100m dash. Had I wrung my T-shirt into the Caribbean Sea then I would have raised sea levels enough to wipe Barbados off the map. Towards the end of the holiday, I found myself showering three times a day.
Santo Domingo is a nice city to explore, but I was happy when Joel drove us up into the mountains the following day. We spent the night acclimatising at 2,150m among the pine forests of Parque Nacional Valle Nuevo. We stayed in a cosy lodge on the edge of the forest, a log cabin with two bedrooms, sitting room and kitchen. It was much cooler up there; there were several rain showers in the evening, which Edita said was normal on Hispaniola. The following morning, I sat on a comfortable covered veranda that was enclosed by shrubs, enjoying eggs and coffee as I read the section of my guidebook that described the Cordillera Central and the trek that we could expect in the coming days.
The story continues in my next post, when I will describe our trek and ascent of Pico Duarte.
You can see all photos from the trip in my Dominican Republic Flickr album.
