Off to the Lime Coast

The surf was easy on the day I came to stay
On this quiet island in the bay
I remember a line of women all in white
The laughter and the steel bands at night

My shades fog instantly as I exit the cabin, and those pinging steel drums take me by surprise. Gets me every time. Live music at jetway’s end. A quaint and civil touch. It conjures a scene from ’60s suburban-vacation slideshows, uncles in brogues and high-waisted slacks chain-crushing Winstons. “Remember that bartender with his Cuban breezes, baby?” These old conchs kicking out the merengue for the deplaning passengers are aged enough to have actually been present in those Fotomat-processed Kodachrome slide trays.

Gal in front of me wants to know what my favorite steel-band song is. I think and, with effort, cite three: “Jane Says.” “Bananas and Blow.” Harry Belafonte’s “Scratch Scratch.” She thinks she knows the last one.

A line of slack-jawed American Touristers hazard my foot path. Inflatable neck pillows. Polyester leggings. Bose headphones. Absolute marks. Shuddering at our shared ancestry, I hold the laminated seatback airline-equipment card I’ve stolen over my head. I issue clipped Spanish: “Warning! With permission. Pardon me.” They part before me like waves of grain. Some Dominican skycaps grin at my Mexican accent, but I’m first off the rank at immigration. Hate the game.

A civil servant pages through my passport, sees my past stamps, and issues a bloodless “Welcome back.”

Jorge Mijares, a solidly built Cuban, is waiting for me in the loading zone. He has one of those stout little Japanese diesel 4×4 utes that gets 30 mpg and lasts a million miles. Outlawed where I come from. Something about the climate.

“¿Qué lo que?” he asks, the official “What’s up?” of the DR.

He’s looking for my bags. I’m used to that. I travel tight—an old aluminum carry-on and a leather satchel. Someone could jack them and I’d be fine. I just need my eSIM’ed phone, some folding local green, my passport, and my rat poison/blood thinners. I keep all of that jammed in my pockets despite it ruining my silhouette. Surf-wise, I have a swim fin in my bag, and Chris Klopf keeps a Yater Spoon on the island for blow-ins.

The DR is a favored winter way station and can make your neck crane with longing toward Florida. Seven-dollar grouper sandwiches, no state income tax, and you’re in the Carib in 120 minutes? Californians goof on the Sunshine State until we do the math.

Herr Klopf had urged my return. I needed urging. I’d had a recent invite to explore a pregnant little stretch east of Caracas, but Venezuela was turning nastier by the season and visas are a comic opera, requiring weeks haunting the embassy in Mexico City. Doable in a calculated way, but even with private security one could easily get check-raised by the junta. Middle-aged, gray-haired, and with Old Glory eyes (red, white, and blue), I’d make a sorry trophy but an okay bargaining chip. They’d instantly pierce my writerly cover and see me for what I was: some oppositional plant or Big Oil stooge. Klopf had just the bait to swing me away from that suss call.

“Big red snapper, Cap,” he messaged. “Sandbars. Shorebreak. A town full of Euros, so bouillabaisse and cioppino. It’s out east, bro. Way east.”

He knows I know when someone is merely buttering my muffin. Everything he said checked out—without me having to check. Honor among thieves. Few are more trustworthy than a scam-hardened ’70s surfer. Oh, they can grease their way through 10,000 checkpoints, feign allegiance to saints both current and latter day, and leave coppers scratching their asses with one hand and staring at a forged license in the other as they watch the taillights fade from view. But word is born, an ace road dog never wastes your time.

“Come on down, Cap,” he continued. “I have it all handled. Just jump in the truck. 

I have Gato Son and Patrick Conklin already here. Seven-hour drive. Jorge has everything arranged.”

All the Americans are gone except for two
The embassy’s been hard to reach
There’s been talk and lately?
a bit of action after dark
Behind the big casino on the beach

*

As frothy a 75-year-old as you’ll find, Klopf’s likely the oldest surf photographer still dropping the plunger. To be honest, he might be entering record territory. Was LeRoy Grannis publishing new work in his seventies? Tom Keck? Maybe.

And Klopf has an eye for talent. There’s no money in it for him or the surfers he shoots. Nor for me, really. He gets an excuse to break up his months in-country, satisfying his creative side and leveraging time served at the tripod. The surfers—carefully selected for innovative style—go beyond that “progression” one hears chirped about whenever the surf world dons their salesmen’s hats. Klopf says they join him because there’s a shot of getting into this book. But hanging together on the road, it’s clear: They shoot with him because he’s keen, raw, and absolutely hilarious in his mannerisms and habits. And yeah, he’s taken all of their best shots.

Klopf’s plan was based on his exploratory runs to the eastern portion of the country, far from the traditional surf scene of Puerto Plata and Encuentro. This would require a two-car motor pool, and that’s where Jorge came in. A fixer in the classic Latin definition, Jorge shook out a vehicle liveried in the colors and accouterments of the island’s undercover police force. That meant a strictly murdered Suburban with official badging, a siren, and cop lights buried in the grille. Even so tactically marked, Jorge snapped at me when I had my window down.

“That Rolex on your arm is worth more than a family makes here in a year,” he sputtered. I said it was a Seiko automatic, which a modder built for me in Paris, that it just looked kinda like an ’80s Explorer, but the point was taken. A momentary lapse attributable to jet lag. And proof positive that our fixer had our back. 

Reading our minds, Klopf chewed up the time with a data drop: “The spots are not close together like the north coast. There’s a difference in terrain—it’s more mountainous. There are valleys that funnel the wind sometimes to go offshore. The winds are always better on the east side, but it doesn’t pick up the north swell quite as large as the north coast. But what you sacrifice in size, you get back in quality, and if you get a really big, rare north swell—very rare, I might add—you can really score over there. Sandbar dependent, of course. There are rivermouths, there are islands, there are jetties. Jorge takes me to different spots every time, and I’ve been over there with the local guys and seen big, jungle-ringed horseshoe bays with rights on one side, lefts on the other side, no one around. It’s much more country than the north coast, and a far lower population. People are spread out. Towns are smaller. It’s kind of the real Dominican Republic, as opposed to the touristy type. Every trip I’ve taken over there, we’ve been pretty much the only surfers at every spot. Incredible waves, but rare. Very, very rare. But I’ve been lucky enough over the 12 years I’ve been going down there. Sometimes you nail it. Windguru is key. We’re looking for a south wind, or any variation on that south wind, to be offshore. So we’re mostly talking mornings, but the island and the jetties, we hit in the afternoon.”

We rolled east and Jorge pointed out Michael Jordan’s house, some walled privadas with heliports, and then the pueblo of Nagua.

“The place name means ‘woman’s underwear,’” says Jorge. “We have a saying: If you stop your car here, you will never leave.”

We slide up the outskirts of town and are immediately rewarded. A cream-dream of a driver’s lunch. Fresh, piping-hot country pork boiled in the animal’s own fat in steel cauldrons. Roadside confit. Chicharrón. Holding the paper bags soaked with pig love, we devour the succulent fat, chasing it with fresh and indeterminate juices. Two ingredients total, including beverage, not counting salt. Given the service and price, it seems unsavory to tip anything less than 100 percent.

By dusk, we’re shacked up in a ridiculous eight-bedroom mansion overlooking a Hanalei Bay knockoff. Three swimming pools cascade into one another. A private beach and paddle-out spot serve the reef-pocked little rights. The crew is on it instantly, stuffing their leashless tankers into the hollow bits.

Après, we adjourn to a nearby town. Conklin, the young man from Florida, (a) rips, (b) travels everywhere with a surf-casting outfit, and (c) chuffs crutched hand-rolls while he reads at the table, eschewing any phone ops. Andy Nieblas, a music hound, checks the MTV caption for a band credit. A bachata banger. Gonna be an early night.

Last night I dreamed of an old lover dressed
in gray
I’ve had this fever now since yesterday
Wake up darling they’re knocking, the Colonel’s 
standing in the sun
With his stupid face the glasses and the gun

*

For the rest of the week, we sample a handful of creek mouths and reef plays. The WX is absurd: clear skies, off-humid perfection, puffing and predictable trades. The fawn-colored sand is cool to the touch even at noon.

On the weekend, locals gather surfside, offering a glimpse into how to do it best. Some umbrellas, sacks of chicharrón, fine cigars eviscerated by jeweled fingernails for blunts, Friday salon weaves on absolute fleek, two bottles of warm rum, and a beatbox with Tokischa spitting her make-Cardi-blush vulgarities. Dancing ensues. Breakfast of champions. Eskimo, Caucasian, or Turk, Dominicans have us all looking like dour Scandos in the face of their flow.

Jorge says he needs to return the staff wagon. He runs a place back west called Carambola Surf House. The surfer-owner scouts for the big leagues, and he has some prospects who need attention. We got waves, to be sure, but Klopf avers that he’s coming back every couple of weeks until he can support this piece. Tommy Witt and Justin Quintal are en route.

There’s no steel band at the departure lounge, but MIA has that pearl of great price: a Juan Valdez Café with Paisa cortados. I’ll pour a few over ice for the flight home.

I know what happens
I read the book
I believe I just got the goodbye look

Won’t you pour me a Cuban breeze Gretchen

—Donald Fagen, “The Goodbye Look,” 1982

[Feature image: Andy Nieblas]