Pico Duarte

User Review:

• Pico Duarte looms in the Caribbean imagination like a tropical magic mountain. In the heart of the Cordillera Central region of the Dominican Republic, it is the tallest point in the Antilles, taller, in fact, than any mountain east of the Mississippi on the North American continent. The magic begins almost immediately. We set out on foot through the rain forest. Lush giant fronds and waving palms grow side by side with bamboo and banyon trees that seem to have their root systems above ground. Sometimes, we skirt small settlements just outside the park borders. Villagers everywhere stop what they are doing - washing clothes, driving a team of oxen, pounding coffee beans - to look at us. We keep fording the same serpentine river, which seems not to want to get out of our way as though it, too, is curious as to what we might be up to.
• The description was provided by Pedro Vega