I close my eyes, but it doesn’t do much for the panic. I am standing on asmall metal platform 50 feet above Cabarete, the water-sports capital of the Dominican Republic’s golden coast. The afternoon’s weather forecast favored sun worshippers over wave riders, so rather than grab a board, I made my way to the Kaiceitos Circus School, where I donned a harness and chalked my hands and am now holding a trapeze bar. Tightly.
Henry, the instructor, shouts “hep,” and I leap from safety, my fear of heights instantly overwhelmed by the unexpected rush of flying. Henry yells “hep” again, but I’m caught in the joy of the moment, laughing too much to remember what his staccato yelp is prompting me to do.
Moments later, I crawl from net to ground, where I watch the instructors glide effortlessly from position to position, flipping and sailing. Their grace reveals similarities between trapeze and Cabarete’s holy trinity of kiting, windsurfing and surfing, all sports which satisfy some inner yearning to fly, to game the laws of physics, to live just outside what seems possible. It’s a feeling that resonates with me on this day, when the wind is still and the waves are flat. I climb back up, ready for round two.
I toe the edge of the platform, collecting focus, and jump. My rational side had momentarily resisted flying, plying my mind with a river of reasons I shouldn’t be up here. And yet once I’m airborne, the trapeze feels somehow right, natural.
Maybe that’s because I’m tuning out my naysaying thoughts, instead easing into the swing of this thing. I listen for each bellowed “hep” as the swing reaches the apex of its arc – the instant I slip out of gravity’s grasp. Suddenly, the view has flipped, a sparkling blue sea resting on a patchwork of pulled-sugar clouds.
Coolest Caribbean Beach Towns...
Eze Bar overlooks Cabarete’s sprawl of caramel sand and its overachieving coconut palms. The open-air restaurant’s minimalist white chairs and weathered tables keep the focus on the sea view, a stage for kiters and windsurfers when gusts blow at 10 knots or more. As if to nudge the curious, one side of the restaurant opens to a lineup of windsurfing and stand-up paddle boards belonging to Carib Wind Center. Inside, athletes with sandy feet and wet trunks pop in for mango-topped salads or veggie-and-hummus wraps from the health-conscious menu. Some come just to refuel, but others while away an afternoon with wine and conversation.
I’m seated with two American expats: kiting-school owner Laurel Eastman and recent transplant Molly O’Meara, who has just finished guiding us through a midmorning ashtanga yoga session. Surrounding us is a mix of style and conversation that would seem appropriate in Paris’ Charles de Gaulle Airport. Next to us, a pair of Germans in boxy eyewear peer at Berlitz Spanish – translation books. Two tables over, several Italians draped in flimsy scarves clink glasses of red wine, while at the bar, a fan in a Manchester United jersey hoists a shot glass to toast his mates.
As we wait for a round of Milagros – a cleansing juice blend of pineapple, carrot and ginger – O’Meara relates her past life as a service-industry worker in another paradise: Aspen, Colorado. She and her husband, Kevin Connolly, had managed to save and invest well enough to enable them to winter in Thailand since 2002. They’d assumed it would be their expat nirvana until chance conversations introduced Cabarete. Eight months ago, they relocated here, sight unseen.
“We didn’t want a resort town,” she explains. “We wanted a town. And we didn’t want it to be too American.” They boarded a plane, with only two checked bags of possessions spared a Goodwill fate – one of them mostly kiting gear. Reimagined as a yoga instructor, she now leaps out of bed armed with a long daily list of to-dos, including language lessons.
“We never had a hope of learning Thai,” she admits. Thanks to the Cabarete Language Institute, she now speaks conversational Spanish with the beaches’ bracelet peddlers and her condo development’s security guards, who take an older-brother pride in her rapidly increasing skills.
Later, when she mentions that Cabarete abounds with “a generosity of human spirit,” I know exactly what she means. At night, balladeers play four songs despite having been paid for one. The drivers of the motoconchos – the zippy motorbikes that ferry tourists for as little as 50 cents a ride – smile patiently as you struggle to word a question in Spanish. On the beach, sunbathers jump up to help catch kites as they come sailing downward, ready to be parked for the day. The sense of community here is palpable, even for those just visiting.
It’s 9 p.m. at Front Loop Café. Lamps suspended from palm trees glow red against the black sky. The moon casts a web of glittering light on the waves washing ashore. In the distance, the oont-oont of techno music pulses faintly, tempting an early crowd to sand-strewn dance floors.
Farther down the beach, Cabarete’s revelers have moved the action inland by mere yards, from the lounge chairs at the water’s edge to a series of rattan sofas, oversize pillows and low-lying coffee tables nestled in the sand. Tiki torches and twinkle lights loosely define a string of lounges and help patrons sort enough pesos to order rounds of sweating Presidentes and shisha for the hookah water pipes.
With me is the gang from Swell Surf Camp, the hotel slash hostel where I’m staying. Here too the guests hail from a cocktail of countries, including the U.K., Germany, the United States and Austria. Only a few knew each other before checking in – two girls met at a surf camp in Costa Rica and planned this trip after reconnecting on Facebook. Most met at Swell, where the vibe is beyond welcoming – I hadn’t set my bags down before guests extended a dinner invitation.
And now here we are on the beach, toasting paradise.
“It’s safe here, you know,” says Barbie Keith, gesturing with her glass of cabernet toward a pack of barefoot boys, blond save for two, running in our direction. None older than 12, they elbow one another, veering sharply toward a trampoline resting at beach height thanks to clever digging. Together, they jump until one reaches the ski rope strung between two bordering palms. Soon he’s airborne, flipping and spinning.
When I protest the late hour, now almost 9 – unheard of as a stateside curfew – Keith tells me that it’s better for the kids to be in the group looking out for one another than walking home alone. As the group pads down the beach, I wonder if this beach town might be the new suburbia, an expat enclave where a parent-free night is not a concern but the norm.
Keith, a former Canadian, tells me she had been raising a daughter and son in Cabarete until her husband’s work transferred the family to Punta Cana, a more developed area on the southwest coast. She’s visiting for the week, staying at Swell, started by her friends Clare Barnaby and Jim Mutsaars as a guesthouse for gap-year students. But word of Cabarete and Swell spread, and now it’s booked months in advance. Most guests are 20- and 30-somethings, although they’ve been joined by a surfer as old as 64.
As we polish off the last of grilled chicken and sausages, Dominican rice and beans and Asian-fusion coleslaw, the music grows louder. The clubs are calling – places like Bambu or Lax, whose couches on the sand court those keen on stiff drinks and conversation spilling into the dawn.
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