Bavaro Runners Jeep Safari in Punta Cana – Part One
It’s 8 in the morning and I’m waiting in the lobby of the Meliá Caribe Tropical resort in Punta Cana to be picked up for the Bavaro Runners Safari excursion. This is a full day excursion that departs every day from all Punta Cana resorts. The company behind the excursion is called Luna Tours and it is one of the largest in the country with offices and excursions in Puerto Plata, Samaná and La Roman.
The Bavaro Runners Safari is a full day excursion. The safari truck arrives shortly after 8 o’clock. It is an open safari truck where you have to climb a metal ladder to get on board. It is big enough to accommodate 25 people seated on padded benches. The tour guide jumps out of the truck with his notepad and yells “Bavaro Runners.”
He begins checking the tickets of the people who almost immediately line up to get on the bus. Everyone has shown up, tickets in hand, and after just a few minutes, we’re ready to go. We set off on our Dominican adventure, but not before stopping at several other resorts to pick up more people. Almost an hour passes before the safari truck is filled with excited tourists from all over the world. Finally, we can get out of Punta Cana and Bávaro and out into the countryside.
The Bavaro Runners Safari is an all-inclusive excursion like most resorts in Punta Cana. In the safari truck there is an open bar, that is, a large cooler stocked with bottled water, soft drinks, local beer and local rum. Our tour guide makes sure that everyone is happily looked after throughout the day, as you drive down the Dominican highways and take in the stunning scenery.
It’s all incredibly lush once you get a bit out of the city. There are almost endless fields of grass; some with grazing cows and coconut plantations. Our tour guide tells us that the national palm tree in the Dominican Republic is called Palma Real. That’s the one we see, which has a long spike rising from its center, usually with a small bird perched on top. The leaves are typically used to build roofs (the kind of palm roofs that can be seen almost everywhere in the Dominican Republic), and the trunk is used to build houses. As we drive through the countryside, we see many small wooden houses, each carefully painted in bright colors of blue, green and pink.
We stop at one of these houses, which belongs to Maria; a warm and welcoming woman who receives us dressed in a typical Dominican folklore dress in red, white and blue.
“Welcome! Welcome,” Maria exclaims, holding out her arms as we gather around the front door. She immediately starts laughing out loud. Our first cultural experience of the day is a visit to this typical Dominican house in the countryside. We go through the small rooms of this small house while we observe and take pictures of its contents.
The tour feels very strange, almost inappropriate. Here we are, a group of tourists walking through someone’s house, home and life while taking pictures with our cameras that cost what someone living here could earn in a month. The house is very dark and sparsely decorated with furniture and things that seem to fit together almost haphazardly.
The traditional family structure in the Dominican Republic is completely different than in most Western countries. Here, the family usually sticks together and helps each other through several generations. Therefore, it is not uncommon for three or even four generations to live together in the same house.
María has 7 children, our tour guide tells us. Some have moved to live and work in the city (eg, Santo Domingo), while others are helping with the family business, a small cacao plantation that surrounds the house. Everything is grown organically, and we are given a tour of the grounds, which makes up for our second cultural experience of the day.
Our tour guide shows us a wide variety of plants and trees that are native to the Dominican Republic and include banana, mango, vanilla, pineapple, coffee, aloe, and of course, the cacao trees.
Maria also has a special area where a concrete square has been made especially for drying her cacao beans in the sun. She shows us how the beans are placed in the sun and how she uses a rake to turn them. She even has a special song that she sings for us while she does it. It is all very educational and entertaining.
After walking through part of the terrain, we ended up in a small hut with a thatched roof and lined benches. The ‘show and tell’ part of our visit begins as we sit at a long table where a selection of local produce is carefully displayed.
We get to taste a variety of fruits, as well as coffee, rum, hot chocolate, etc., and say “ooh,” “aah,” and “mmm” as if none of us had ever eaten pineapple or tasted a cup of really good food. coffee before. Our tour guide explains to us that these products are ORGANIC and that these are absolutely the best products that we can buy in the Dominican Republic. There is nothing wrong with your sales techniques.
The underlying message is that now is the time to take out our wallets and buy some of Maria’s products, which many of us do. Most of these products are things that people would normally want to take home after their holidays, and it seems ideal to be able to support a local farmer.
We said goodbye to Maria and left her with her house and her cocoa plantation. Everyone climbs aboard the Bavaro Runners safari truck and off we go in search of our next adventure.
To be continue…
Leave a Reply