There is no way that either of the previous two guagua trips could have prepared me for what we would experience on the way to La Ciénaga. After sitting on our backpacks for the better part of an hour, a tall, thin man with dreadlocks and a wide smile approached us indicating that we should bring our backpacks over to the back of the pickup truck, “Llévense los bultos. Ya nos vamos.”
I stood watching as the driver threw first my, then John’s backpack into the back of the truck. “No way that’s gonna stay,” John whispered and I nodded, waiting to see what plans he had to secure our belongings.
Next to us an older man with deep lines etched into his tanned face, argued emphatically with a middle aged woman in a bright pink top and tight, white Capri pants, a pink portable CD player in her hands. “You, your just a young girl. A tiny little thing. Me, well. Now that’s a different story,” he pleaded, his words slurred together cutting off all s’s, “I am an old, old man.” She moved a sack of rice to the other side of the pick up truck ignoring his pleas and the driver moved it back, placing it atop the two enormous cans of Crisco oil.
“¡Ya! ¡Vámanos!” he cried and the throng of people hanging around the pick up began to pile into the cab. One, two, three, four in front. One, two, three, four, in back leaving six more, including John and I to contend with a spot in the back. The woman in pink, having lost the fight with the elderly Dominican, settled atop the burlap rice bag, her CD player in her lap. A younger Haitian man hopped up onto John’s backpack and John wedged himself in to his left, his right hand securing himself on his backpack, his left on my thigh. I sat perched on the edge of the back door, both hands gripping the lip, surrounded on both sides by young men in their late teens who laughed as I looked wide eyed around us thinking, “My father would kill me if he saw me right now.”
Now fourteen of us in the pick up, a container of propane, the two backpacks, two 3-gallon cans of cooking oil, 50 pounds of rice, various plastic and burlap bags, a strange metal object that looked like a vice grip, a number of large plastic gas cans, a strangely shaped rock that initially I thought was quartz, but later realized to be rock salt, set out down the road. My heart was in my throat. Thump, thump, thump in went in rhythm with the truck’s engine. And just like that, three blocks later, we stopped.
“More passengers?” I joked aloud, surveying the already over packed truck bed, limbs and packages in every conceivable crevice.
“There’s always room in the guagua,” laughed the boy to my right as he nodded at two tall, Haitian brothers appeared. One squeezed miraculously into the back of the cab as the other one, leaped effortlessly onto the side of the pickup and perched himself on the edge of my backpack. We lurched forward and once again headed out of Jarbacoa to begin the 23 kilometer trip to La Ciénaga.
We drove slowly along a two-lane, paved road out of town, stopping briefly at a store where a few of the riders from inside the cab got out and went inside, leaving those of us in the pick up to die of sunstroke.
“What do you think? We’re waiting in the shade out here? Get a move on!” The woman in pink cried.
The young Dominican man in his cub’s jersey jumped down off the pick up, shaking his head, and sat down on a chair outside of the store, tipping it back till the top edge of the chair touched the wall, his toes the only part of his feet touching the ground, “Aquí, hay sombra.” The woman in pink glared at his shady spot, fanning her face furiously with her sweaty, upturned hand.
“¡Ya, venga, vamos, ya!” the driver cried getting back into the pick up and beginning to blare a horn that sounded like the Duke’s of Hazard. The old man inside the colmado, nodded, wished the cashier a good day and sauntered out to squeeze into his place inside the cab, tipping his hat at the woman in pink.
We jolted forward and with the weight of sixteen people and easily as much cargo, it seemed improbable that we would go anywhere fast. Up, up, up and around, swerving to avoid potholes, ruts and sections of the road where the grass had grown over the lane, we began our ascent into the mountains, the load slowing us to almost a slow stroll as we hit the steeper sections of the mountain.
Banana trees, grape vines, coffee plants, avocado and a local, light green fruit we later found out was called toyata lined both sides of the street as we left city life behind us. Make shift shacks dotted the fields and the sides of the road, the occasional rooster, goat or cow making its way across the street, causing the driver to once again swerve, his horn a constant song in our ears.
I felt and then saw the road change from paved to rocky dirt, as the pickup bounced from side to side, my grip tightening on the back of the truck door, my quick prayers to save me from impending doom running through my mind.
One by one, players and items on our strange drip dropped out. A block of salt here, some printer papers there, the young Dominicans, first one to the a house on the right, the other jumping off and waving his good byes as the truck continued through town. The woman in pink, her mother from inside the truck’s cab then departed, and with her the strange metal vice grip, the empty gallon bottle and the pink portable CD player. Then both Haitian men, until finally we stopped in front of a small shack by the side of the road, another wooden structure visible behind the first. I looked around at eh remaining passengers, wondering who would get off here. The driver got down out of the truck and began to untie my backpack, “Aquí, niña. Esta es la casa de Chano.”
“Oh? Nosotros?” I asked surprised pointing to my chest. I searched for a sign of this so called Chano, but saw only a woman in her late 30s, her strong arms dark around the basket she carried.
“Está es la mujer de Chano.” He indicated to the woman standing there and the woman nodded her head, extending her hand and introducing her self as Maria, Chano’s wife.
And just like that, the ride was over. Safely on the ground again, we donned our packs and followed Maria and a herd of children all under the age of ten to a porch with two plastic chairs on it. A young man took out a third wooden chair and motioned for us to sit down.
“Chano won’t be back for a few days,” Abelito, the young man explained. I’m his cousin, Abelito and I too can take you to el Pico.”
Of course he was his cousin. And even though Amado had recommended Luis before a member of Chano’s family, we couldn’t really see getting up and excusing ourselves at this point. So we began negotiations and ended up with a reasonable price, the obligatory park mule and a plan to shop at 4 that afternoon.
Chano’s wife offered a bed at their house and for the low price of $5 for the two of us, would even cook us dinner and make us coffee in the morning. So we stayed, and for the next few hours were entertained by the seemingly never-ending quantity of children belonging to Chano and his wife and some of the neighbors.
A few hours later, exhausted from the school books and Barbie show and tell, John and I decided to take a walk through La Ciénaga. If Jarbacoa is a small mountain town, then La Ciénaga can best be described as a mountain community, sprung up along the unpaved river at the base of el Pico Duarte and along the River Yanque. We walked through the “center” of town where two small stores advertised to travelers in Spanish and English all their Pico Duarte necessities. Crossing the river that barely fit under a bridge flush with pavement, we stood watching 5 bare chested boys float in inner tubes, navigating around rocks down the rushing river. We passed three cows lying on the side of the road and a various tiny houses with strings of colorful clothing hung out to dry. A toothless man in a rocking chair picked up his hand in greeting, a bemused look on his wizened face. And all around us, sweeping views of the mountains jutting up into the afternoon sky, dotted with thunderheads, green valleys stretching out for miles and miles below us.
That night after homework by candlelight, a visit to the very pregnant pig and a necessary trip to the outhouse, we retired into the only double bed in the house, what could only have been Maria and Chano’s. The bed barely fit inside the tin room, a curtained door giving the semblance of privacy for the room’s inhabitants.
It was that night, before beginning our climb up Pico Duarte that I learned that roosters do not only crow at dawn. Take it from me, they crow all night long.
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