The Road That Runs Out of Room

Polly flies in with mountains on her left and the sea on her right. There is not much room between them. This is the southwest corner of the Dominican Republic. Most visitors never come here. The big hotels are far away on the other coast. Here the mountains come down to the water, and the road has to squeeze through the gap.

She follows the road south from Barahona. Every few kilometres a river comes down from the mountains and crosses the road on its way to the sea. The river water is cold, because it has come down from cloud forest. Where a river meets the sea there is a pool, cool at the bottom and warm at the top.

The beaches here are not like other Caribbean beaches. There is almost no sand. The shore is made of pebbles: grey, white and brown, all smooth and round. The waves pull them back with a loud rattle.

Polly lands on the stones and walks along, turning them over with one foot. Then she stops. One pebble is blue. It is blue all the way through, pale and cloudy, like a piece of shallow water that went hard.