Ok, so… let me bring you into my first fishing experience.  It was sometime in 2003, we stayed at the Jamaca Resort by Marriott in Boca Chica, Dominican Republic and as one of our “fun” adventures was to book a small private deep sea fishing excursion for 6 people at the most.  And, I booked it, it was very expensive, cost us approximately $300 per person for about 7 hours out in the deep waters to catch some exotic fish from the Caribbean Ocean, everything included.

The day was cloudy, we were told the water was bit turbulent, but, the scheduled trip was still happening.  The guide picked us up around 10am, walked us through the private beach onto to the public neighboring beaches, a 10 minute walk till we got to the private yacht that would navigate us through rough Caribbean waters. When we boarded, it was us two, plus 3 other strangers from our hotel.   As the guide is loading us, I grab the yacht handle bar and noticed it was loose, in fact off the screws.  I asked my fellow Dominican, in Spanish, if that was safe, he  said yes, perfectly fine.   That should have been clue No.1.  And, you already know, it was not a good start.

We all sit and begin to travel through the beautiful crystal clear waters, most amazing views of the hotel from the Ocean, a good 60 minutes of travel.  The day was hot, waves a bit strong at some points, our captain and shipping guide decides to take us out further, something to me, seemed very off and soon I began to see the island of Puerto Rico, at that point, I told all of us, that being out that far was not normal.  I began chatting in Spanish with the aka captain and guide, asking him about where he was taking us and why were we so far out and going out of International lines.   Something inside me, my intuition was telling me to get out of this dangerous situation.  I was the only Spanish speaking guest in the  yacht and felt we were heading into a very unsafe situation.  After almost 3 hours out and no fishing. I began to ask the guide, where is our fishing destination, and enquiring about the owner of the yacht. He seemed both clueless and unable to manage the match properly.  He had told us, during our beach walk, he owned the yacht, but I had noticed the name of the yacht was in Italian.  I asked him about the meaning of his yacht and why in Italian.  He then admits, the yacht belongs to his friends boss, who is Italian and he was borrowing the yacht.  

Soon after, my body got very tingly, I got very ocean sick and anxious.  I alerted the rest of our group, telling them how dangerously far out we were and how our guide was a lier and that we could be facing a scam and dangerous situation at sea, most of all, we all knew how that match was falling apart, one more screwed popped of and we would have nowhere to hold on to.  

I requested to go back, the guide did not want to.  The other people got sick as well and wanted back to land, the guide refused.  I began vomiting so he can how serious I was, I asked the others that if we want to see land again, we needed to force the guide to take us back immediately.  We were almost 2 hours away from any Dominican land.  I had to convince the guide to take us back because the other guest were planing to take over the navigation and that we were all going to vomit all over the yacht if the did not take us back immediacy. I had to make something up, which we all agreed to in order to get back safe.  

The guide decided to throw down the lines and with limited materials for proper fishing, we understood that guy had no intention of deep sea fishing.   With no land in sight, I knew which direction we came from and was stying focused on which direction to go back.  Tides were stronger and we all were fighting to stay alert, we were very sick.  I began vomiting and getting dehydrated super fast, I began yelling at the “captain” that I needed medical assistance immediately and that we all wanted to go back.  I told him I was dying.  I told him to turn around, he began asking me my name, I gave him my first and last name and he looked at me and asked if I came from the Trujillo family, I said yes, the president was my great uncle, he quickly apologized, in shock, turned the yacht around and headed back to shore. After over 70 minutes of silence on the yacht, the guys was speaking and we were all holding onto our lives, also holding on to each other, just incase.  I had fallen asleep for about 10 minutes and when woke up from the harsh wave splashes minutes later I began to see the hotel from miles aways at a distance.  A little over 2 hours later we get into calmer waters and  then arriving on shore, exactly where we had navigated from.

We arrived at our hotel, we all run to front desk, I asked the manager,  went to our room to clean up.  Hotel manager knocked on our door, apologized a lot, asked me if he could give us a tour of the hotel while spoke.  He told me that my great uncle owned that property during his 32 years of Presidency and that the property was one of his private homes and now a hotel.  He continued to apologyzed about our unfortunately deep sea fishing experience, that they had no idea who the guide or fisherman was, because our original guide had cancelled to fishing trip due to dangerous waters at se that day, he took it off our bill and also took off an entire week off of 2 weeks stay.  He was very sincere.  But the entire experience was a nightmare.    I also requested he take off the excursion from the other guests.