Hello,
everyone,
A Monday
morning in late July 2019, my wife, one of my brothers-in-law and I did not
drive to a desert, as it may seem, but to Dunas de Las Calderas (Las Calderas Dunes). They are a natural monument located in Las
Calderas Peninsula in Baní, Provincia Peravia (Peravia Province) in the
Dominican Republic. After seeing the pictures and reading the texts, do not hesitate and write a comment telling us about your impressions on this place. Have you visited any other dunes? If your answer is affirmative, do they share any similarity to these?
This is the beginning of a great adventure.
As we entered
the Félix Servio Ducoudray Scientific Reserve, as it is named officially, and
walked some meters on the sand, we felt as if we were in the middle of a big
desert.
Once in
what Dominican people call Las Dunas de Baní (Baní Dunes), located to the East
of Las Calderas Bay, we headed for a mountain of sand we had seen. We were
astonished to see the beautiful Caribbean Sea. Its blue caught our attention
very deeply.
Among the
many wonders the flora shows in this desert-like place, there were these natural
twisted-by-nature roots of a tree, which belongs in the dry subtropical flora.
The traces
of an unknown creature made us realize we were not alone. They signaled that
something we did not know at that moment walks along the 15 km of Dunes.
Here is a
definite sign of life. A butterfly once flew across this three-km- wide area,
which has been protected since 1996.
The leg of a
crab that once enjoyed life walking along the place showed us the biodiversity
of these dunes.
At last! We
found the possible owner of the first traces we found on the sand. We learned
this Iguana and others inhabited the dunes, too.
This is not
a picture of the Sahara Desert. Those human traces we see were photographed in
a deserted place located in the Southern part of the Dominican Republic.
On the
sandy horizon, far and to the right, there is an almost imperceptible sign of a
human being ready to enjoy all the beauty of sand, sky, sun…
There they
are. People showing us that Las Calderas Dunes are a great sandboarding spot.
Thanks to
the constant speed and direction of winds, clean energy is produced by the
windmills of Matafongo Eolico Park located near Caldera.
The
Dominican flag waves near the guard house, from which the security of the dunes
is managed. Its farewell also meant La Calderas Dunes would wait for our
comeback for more adventure.
Santo Domingo 2019
