Sometimes you’ve just got to go with the flow and see where it leads. For Edita it led to Haiti in the Caribbean, where she has been carrying out humanitarian work for the last year.
Haiti isn’t a very sensible place to go climbing mountains, but as luck would have it, it shares the island of Hispaniola with the Dominican Republic, a much safer country that happens to be home to the highest three mountains in the Caribbean: Pico Duarte (3,101m), La Pelona (3,095m) and La Rusilla (3,044m).
Until last year, the Dominican Republic had never featured on my list of holiday destinations, but this seemed an opportunity not to be missed. So last August, I crossed the Atlantic and met Edita in Santo Domingo, the Dominican Republic’s historic capital city, a few hours’ drive from Edita’s place of work.
With the help of a local trekking agency Guias de Alturas, we embarked on a fabulous three-day hike through jungles and pine forest to bag the three summits.
Now that’s our reason for climbing the peak, and I hope it sounds reasonable enough. But what of the dog that features prominently in nearly every frame of this video of our ascent?
If you lived a comfy life at the park entrance, why would you follow a pair of strangers for three days in searing, humid heat, up 2,000m of mountain and back down again?
I know what you’re thinking: food. It hoped we would take pity on it and give it some tasty snacks.
More fool the dog. I had to climb the mountain myself, over 2,000m on the first day, and I needed all the energy I could get. Think me heartless if you will, but I was damned if I was going to share my packed lunch. Not with Edita; not with anyone I hadn’t invited (well, maybe with Edita).
At what point was the dog going to realise that it was following a skinflint? When would it turn around and head home? As you will see, it didn’t. It followed us for every waking hour, night and day, to the highest ends of the island and back down again.
So if it wasn’t following us hoping to be fed, why did it come? Did it just enjoy the hike? Perhaps it was a peak bagger, ticking off another ascent, aiming to climb the mountain more times than any dog on earth.
We named the dog Karim, after the first Dominican to climb Everest. Here’s Karim the dog’s ascent video. If you look closely enough, you may just catch glimpses of Edita and myself in some of it too.
There is 20 minutes of footage, but if you prefer reading or looking at pictures, you can read my blog post about it or look at my Flickr album.
Ascent of Pico Duarte, Dominican Republic
At 3,101m, Pico Duarte is not only the highest mountain in the Dominican Republic, but the highest in the whole of the Caribbean. The ascent involves a strenuous three-day trek through the jungles and pine forests of Armando Bermúdez and José del Carmen Ramírez National Parks.
We climbed the peak via the standard route from the village of La Cienaga on the eastern side. This involved a 1,700m ascent on the first day, from the national park headquarters at 1,100m, over the Descanso Alto de la Vela and down to high camp at La Comparticion (2,480m).
Our intention to climb 3,044m La Rusilla on the way was abandoned when we realised there was no trail and it would involve 400m of bushwhacking.
On the second day we climbed Pico Duarte and La Pelona (3,095m) from La Comparticion. The former is a marvellous viewpoint across miles of forest and jungle. The latter is broad and forested but well worth a visit. We were joined on both summits by a stray dog that had followed us all the way from the park headquarters. We named it Karim after the first Dominican to climb Everest.
On the third day we had an enjoyable run back the way we had come to La Cienaga.
