Saturday 2nd April
I crawled out of the bunk, had a shower, to wake me up, climbed off the boat in the dark Chicho was there at the gate with the Customs man. As we drove out past the carwash, Miguel the Chimi man was still clearing up, the odd couple last to be turned out of the disco was walking down the street.

We drove along dry roads reasonably fast, with no traffic at all until we got near San Francisco SM then the farm workers were on the road either walking, with dark clothes on or motoconchos with no lights, one guy we nearly hit cos the sign post for San Francisco telling us all the services it has like gasoline, banks, food etc was so well reflected, that his miserable front head light wasn’t visible from behind at all. We threaded our way through SF with out getting lost this time.

We were well down the autopista before the dawn began to break, and it was before 0700 when we stopped outside SD to fill up with gasolina. We made it across to 27th Febrero no problem and were rolling into the aerporto at 0730. We went to the main terminal building and got some breakfast coffee and toast I think. Then we drove to the gate of the Freight terminal and after showing our ID were let in and a guy gabbled some Spanish and got in the jeep, this was our carer! Or clearance broker. We went over to building and up a flight of steps to an office with Air Carib on the door, that was looking good as this was supposed to be the airline. So I handed over the first 500 to Chicho who gave it to the guy, who gave it to the girl, who after ten minutes gave us a sheaf of papers and asked me to sign one as I was the Capitano. Then we all walked out and walked down to a small office with a lot of activity and for 300 he gave us a diskette(31/2" floppy) with this we walked around the building and into a shipping container with windows and this gorgeous straight haired Dominican girl typed out a letter El Capitano James Bremner etc, all for 100 peso.

Then we went to the Customs building and queued up in a hall way with a TV showing the Latino equivalent of Jerry Springer, I was told to go upstairs where I sat for ten minutes then told to come down again and we went into the back office and all shook hands. The Customs officer (I think) looked at the paper work, shook his head looked at me and then at our customs guy said something, then asked the clearance agent something he said no. His 6 year old daughter was sitting quietly in the corner, as this was a Saturday morning I guess it was his turn to look after the kids. So we all trooped out and around the building off to the same office we started from but underneath, we went into a warehouse around a corner and there was our transmission all virgin white on a pallet, with two heat exchanger’s shrink wrapped to it. The clearance agent checked some numbers on our papers and a tag on the pallet then we all trooped back to the customs office. It was now 0930 in one and a half hours we had at least seen the goods. It was also getting hot.

So now we troop back to the Customs office where the Jerry Springer is in full flight. After ten minutes we are ushered upstairs again, but this time into an office where a guy sitting behind his large desk is wearing a uniform smoking a cigar. This is the Customs head honcho. Rapid fire Spanish was issued by all parties except the Samaná Customs guy and I. He then looked at me I offered the ships papers, he waived them away, but demanded to see the papers for the Samaná Customs officer, curtly asked him several questions, almost as if he didn’t believe him. More discussion then I think he lifted a stamp and banged on a couple of our sheaf of papers that seemed to grow by the office we visited.

Now we all troop out down the stairs out side across the roadway this is alongside the aircraft apron just a low 3' high barrier between us and the tarmac. The sun is now beating down and we go into the diskette office, hand over the diskette and 100 peso and get it back. I’m not sure which is more unpleasant standing outside in the baking sun or the smelly hot interior of the diskette office with its one broken fan.

Back to the customs office and everyone but me disappears into another office which has lots of typists and fax machines and piles and piles of paper. Chicho comes out and asks for the rest of the money, so I hand him the remaining 6000. He tells me that they are considering sending two officers back with us to Samaná to verify that the transmission is put aboard the boat!!! He leaves me before I can react.

I called Fed Ex to establish when they closed, they say 1230, and they consider that it’s a hour from the airport to their office. It is now 1030. Another half hour goes by and nothing happens. So I call out Chicho and tell him we have been here 3 hours and we have to get to the Fed Ex place by 1230 otherwise it means returning here on Monday and the delays that that will incur. He repeats the custom officers trip back with us and I told him
“they can go by bus but we haven’t the room, let alone the inclination. So go back in there and tell them The gringo capitano is losing patience and has to be out of this aerporto in 30 minutes”

Its bad enough that we are having to pay all this extra money, but to be delayed by bullshit is too much. As every good British traveller knows when you are not getting your point across in a foreign language situation, shout louder and they will start to understand, by George, they did as well. We all walked round to the warehouse with our clearance agent ahead with papers flying.

A forklift driver was summoned to lift the pallet and move it towards the entrance. Alongside were about ten tables with customs agents shuffling papers back and forward, our guy goes up to one of these guys who walks over looks at the pallet and us then goes back to his desk and starts to pick his teeth. The tension is such I left and got into the jeep and reversed it to the entrance of the warehouse, opened up the back door and tried to remove the boom box out of the way. Then a guy tells me to move the jeep away from the door, they will bring the pallet to the jeep if it is over there behind a low wall separating the warehouse from the rest of the parking lot. So I do and at 1130 the pallet emerges from the warehouse with a bit of manoevering we get it into the back of the jeep. We pile in and drive to the entrance where our agent gets out and Chicho pays him off and asks for another 2000.
For what?
The other customs guys,
What guys?
The ones that are coming back with us,
You are joking!
No
F**k them, where are them going to sit?
Any way its 1140 we are going
They won’t let us out of the aerporto cos they have the papers
F**K
I see one of them standing talking to the gorgeous girl of the typed up letter
“Chicho get him in the jeep, cos we have to go if we want to make Fed Ex.”
He hurries over and gets in two in the front seat and three and the boom box in the back you can feel the springs creak.
Those of you who know me, know I can drive fast at times, well I had a double incentive one to get to the Fed Ex office before 1230 and the other was to scare our two unwanted passengers out of the car. So at 70mph we scorched down the autopista Las Américas highway (built by the dictator Trujillo so his son could race his sports cars). But just before the bridge over the Rio Ozama, guess what! a diversion off the autopista onto the city streets. Fortunately there was a large tanker truck in front that was in just as much as a hurry as I was he was weaving and ducking blasting his cacophony horn, we were easily doing up to 50 along this city street. At least the Customs guys were useful in that they knew the way and as we drew near to the bridge that I knew carried local traffic as well as the Avenue Las Americas, they diverted me off on a side street. At this stage one of the guys indicated he wanted out, so we obliged and went up an off ramp onto the bridge. Across a stream of on coming traffic Dominican style, and we were on 27th Febrero.

15 minutes later we pulled up in front of the Fed Ex office at 1220. We had achieved the impossible, an hour drive in 35 minutes. The second customs officer bade us farewell at this stage I thanked him for his directions and dashed into the office to pick up our package from Bay Shore Marine.(Even today a year later I haven’t worked out how to easily get a package to Samaná.) Now what I also haven’t established did the customs guys really want to go to Samaná and were scared off or just wanted a ride into town and an extra tip.

At this stage I relaxed and called Yoanna who was back on the b ig ez and then realised why no one could hear me before on the rented phone. This weak faint voice answered as if they were on the otherside of the world. So we left SD about 1300 collected some agua from the street boys and girls at one of the junctions on the way out. Later we stopped on the autopista at a rest stop and had a well deserved lunch. Nearly falling asleep we pulled into Samaná on a hot sunny afternoon at 1630. We had been gone 13 hours.
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