Dear friends,
Motorsailing (with the main sail up and the engines) we managed to reach Barahona still during daylight. The only note worthy excitement was that a couple of miles before the entrance of the city/harbor a lot of small fishing boats. They were trying to catch fish in increadible depts, so I wasn’t expecting that, but was able to dodge them.
The anchorage in Barahona is rather funky, as it is actually in front of where the major cargo vessel take in cargo (in this case a swiss flagged cargo vessel loading sugar). We still had to do the official paper work clearing in red tape. Not to worry, they came to us… 5 in total, black boots and all. Now, we were on alert that they would ask for extra money. The official looking custom agent asked us the correct amount for checking in (Us$ 64), but then the Agricultural guy (?), the Marine guy, the anti drug guy and whatever other guy, they all demanded either Us$ 10 or US$20. We managed to not pay a few, but still were stuck with paying US$ 130 in total. It is so sad that this is happening in otherwise such a nice country. We were told that at official check out, an other Us$ 50 was going to be charged….
It was carnival in Barahona, and basically everything was closed. We managed to have a great lunch with wifi connection so that was fantastic.
The next day we set sail for Salinas, and Boca Chica.
Approaching Barahona
Be happy
Pieter
O, o, o, these guys are mad. We had the same experience and ended up to visit the 'tourist police' who were really helpful and went with us to the coastguard and managed that we got our zarpe to sail further without paying all the extra's (we were busy organizing this for 2 days!!).
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