Welcome To Luperon

More descriptive prose as I slowly gather together the fragments of the stories that circulate around here like the trade winds. Stay tuned. I’ve heard some whoppers.

Salvatore Dali designed our dinghy dock. Worm-riddled wood spiked with rusty nails jut out into the tepid water. The end lost its support long ago and hangs perilously close to the moldy plastic litter that clusters around its deteriorating supports. There are no cleats. Ropes are charily tied around water soaked 2x4’s that are haphazardly lashed to the sides. One big blow and the whole thing would disappear forever into the ashen green abyss.

Upon disembarking, swaying along its shaky planks like a drunken sailor confuses the senses. Ahead, the oxidized skeleton of an old barge sits like a sculptured sentinel guarding the entrance. Across the pot-holed road, I watch a portly woman wearing ruby shorts and a bright yellow top absentmindedly brushing the hair of her infant daughter. Beside her a man dozes; a half-empty beer rests between his legs warming itself in the tropical sun. Only the infant stirs as I pass by on my trek into town.
The overhanging street lights, none of which work, broadcast their welcome as I trudge over the crumbling asphalt, the oppressive heat my constant companion. The guard at the harbor access slowly rises from his domino game to raise the gateway to the campo like the portal into Haities.
All manners of metal from the machine shop, plus wobbly wooden tables sprinkled with fish scales, block the sidewalk. Going is slow as I maneuver around puddles slick with mold that pocket the earthen street.

“Bienvenidos. Coldest Beer in  Luperon. Gringos Welcome” proclaims itself on the side of the first of many bars I pass as I journey deeper into the bowels of this time-worn outpost lying at the terminus of an often-ignored road that coils like a serpent between the outlying low hills, awaiting its next victim.