21-Jan-2002 -- My wife and I were in the Dominican Republic for three months, doing volunteer construction work. And since we had done some confluence points in the Utah area, where we are living we really wanted to do at least one in the Dominican Republic.

We had three choices, one approximately in the middle of the island (19 N 70 W), which I believe is already done now, then there is one close to Pico Duarte at 8000 ft, (19 N 71 W) which definitely be the hardest one to do. But the third on is very close to the beach (19 N 69 W), which is the one we decided to do.

But it still wasn’t exactly easy. We spent a good part of our three months close to the capitol, Santo Domingo, and we started our travel Saturday, January 19nth. We traveled using what the Dominicans call gua guas, which are small buses. And in the cities we traveled on moto conchos which are basically motor cycle taxis, which are fun, but interesting with luggage.

Anyway, the confluence point is not more than 80 miles from Santo Domingo, but it is quite a trip to get there.

Our first afternoon we travel about 50 miles east to La Romana, were we spend the night. The next morning we see some of the sights and start a series of long gua gua rides to Miches, the closest city to the confluence point, but we have to take a round about way through the city of Higuey. We get there around dark. It is an old fishing village with a large overwhelming resort on a hill nearby.

We spent the night in a little hotel about 2 blocks from the beach, which is full of old wooden fishing boats. Our GPS showed that we are about 3.5 miles from the confluence point, so we decided we could walk there in the morning, and head to Samana in the afternoon which is about a 5 hour journey from Miches.

The morning, January 21st, did not start out as well as we planned. I was sick to my stomach, but my wife was feeling good and I decided I could hack the hike. On the map the confluence point appeared to be very close to the beach, about 3.5 miles north east of Miches, so we went to the beach and started walking up the beach.

Some how, we missed the large river we had to cross, so we had to do a bit of backtracking and took a motoconcho part up the otherside, then continued on foot. We walked about two hours on the beach, all beautiful scenery, perfect beaches, a few shallow rivers to wade and a bit of rain. Fortunately my wife brought our umbrella.

We got within a half of mile of the confluence points on the beach. The last half mile went considerably slower, considering we had to walk through jungle and swamp with thousand of spiders and I was feeling worse. But we took off, using our umbrella to rid of the cobwebs and spiders as we wandered through the thick jungle looking for the confluence point.

After about 45 minutes of wandering we got as close as we could get, with the thick growth, the GPS said we were within 6 metes, I took a picture of the GPS but it was blurred. It had been a beautiful hike, but in the picture I looked a bit green.

So we made it! I was very happy to have accomplished our goal but dreaded the walk back. Fortunately we met some very nice Dominicans who gave us ride back to the hotel the last mile and half.