We arrived in Luperon on May 11th, pretty exhausted from the passage from Turks. We had to deal with checking in at immigration which meant an immediate trip into town. The noise was disorientating after being up all night – motorcycles, music, chickens, dogs, and people speaking in Spanish. I had been using Duolingo to learn Spanish for about 5 years, but now all of a sudden I couldn’t understand two words. Thanks Doulingo! Why didn’t anyone want to talk about manzanas and the rey and reina?
For the first few days we felt lost and depended on the help of Guen and Chris, and other cruisers, including a group that got together every Thursday night at the marina. They were able to give us all the information we needed to find everything in town. I learned how to ask people to speak more slowly, which they generously did while listening extra carefully to my butchered Spanish. We also began weekly Spanish classes, and tried to get by only in Spanish as much as possible.
Once I started to feel more comfortable with the language, we began to fall in love with Luperon. The local people are absolutely lovely – friendly, helpful and treat cruisers much more like guests than like tourists. Several times we were appraoched by people picnicing at the beach who gave us food if we hadn’t brought any of our own! The town is a good size with everything you need without being too big, and there are several beaches nearby.
The prices in Luperon are very reasonable, especially for moorings ($75 a month) and food. There is a fantastic variety of fruits and vegetables available at a bunch of fruit stands, grocery stores, veggie trucks and random locals who have extras that they sell or give away. Any type of fruit or vegetable that you can imagine grows here! We have never before eaten so much fruit and veg and had such a low grocery spend per month. For a local food fanatic Luperon is heaven!
There are also many local restaurants and bars, some owned by Dominicans and some by expats. Altogether ithere is a great variety with local cuisine, as well as Austrian, Polish, Canadian and a pizza place owned by a French man who also makes pastry. The local restaurants have daily specials that always come with the best beans and rice you ever had and costs about $5. We certainly found our favorites and loved trying new places all the time.
We spent the summer learning about Dominican culture, making friends, doing a lot of yoga, and exploring different parts of the DR including the mountains around Jarabacoa. Every week there are repetitive events in Luperon, Sunday eggs benny at the North, followed by swimming and dinner at New Amsterdam restaurant, Wednesday Spanish class, Thursday marina group dinner, Friday Karaoke at Wendy’s bar, and so on.
We also did some extra special things including performing stand up (Alicia) and accordian (Douglas) in a talent show, hosting a dance party, and watching a lot of rugby world cup. I also had fun hosting a visit from one of my besties, Patricia.
As the time went by we became more a part of the community and started to feel very at home there. I could write for days about how much we loved it there and all the fun things we did and friends we made in Luperon. We liked it so much that I think we will be trying to spend winters here from now on.
