Wednesday, May 10, 2017

Dominican Republic - Villa Barrancola to Pedernales

It was a relief to leave Villa Barancola behind and head on to Pedernales, via a stop at some drying ponds near an old bauxite export terminal (on the best quality road in DR built by the mining company to take the ore down the mountain to the dock).

The wetlands itself were quite dry:


While mooching around looking for new species we disturbed some White Ibis:


And in the mangroves we saw the residential Yellow Warbler or Mangrove Warbler as it is also known:


We got to the hotel to find we weren't expected for a few more days.  At this point the guide conceded the whole tour was a mess and he didn't know any more than we did.   So be warned steer well clear of Tody Tours of the Dominican Republic!

We'd also been promised this hotel would have wifi, so we could check hotel availability back in the capital as we'd also established we didn't actually have a reservation anywhere for our last night.   But no, no funciona.

Anyway the following day we made an executive decision to head up to the local hills to see the two target species we were here for and then to be taken back to the hotel in Santo Domingo to try a walk-in reservation.  With that in mind we set off early packed and ready to go.

Along the road we did some good species including Antillean Mango:


Greater Antillean Pewee:


Narrow-billed Tody:


We also saw the two targets, namely Palm Crow and the Antillean Piculet:


We stopped a couple of times to admire the landscape on the way back to Santo Domingo:






I had to ask the driver to slow down a few times and was close to taking over but he finally got the message.  We were lucky the hotel was able to accommodate us for the remaining three nights, so we got a clean room, hot water, wifi and red wine.   We relaxed.

We'd seen some good species and sort of enjoyed our visit to the Dominican Republic but we were also looking forward to going home in a few days time.

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