DARKSIDE
Monty in his natural habitat
But the more cave divers I chatted to , the more I fancied a go . I never did anything about it - that would have been absurd - but a tiny part of me wanted to have a crack at it , a bit like a tiny part of me wanted to tackle Jonah Lomu , or vigorously kick a passing tiger shark in the conkers and then flip it the bird when it looks round . You know , that bit of you that wants to dance with the devil .
58
So it was not altogether unexpected - although it was definitely mildly alarming - to find myself kitting up next to a cave entrance early in 2020 , with a biltong-thin French legend alongside me offering last bits of Gallic advice . Advice about diving given with a French accent is - by the way - officially twice as effective as advice given in any other language . Only those who grew up watching Cousteau will understand this comment , but I felt a frisson of pleasure course through my frame as Denis Bourret muttered , “ Zo , Monty , zis is a piss of cake . Ca va ? Enjoy ma frind , we weel dive zis cev togezzer ….”. I wasn ’ t Monty anymore actually , I was Falco , Didier , Bonnici ( see Cousteau reference above ) and was I going diving ? Was I hell . I was about to plongez with vigour . Magnifique !
Old is the new new
This unusual situation ( me , cave , French legend ) came about because I was travelling around the Dominican Republic shooting a film . It ’ s a nation full of surprises , this dive being one of the larger ones , but it ’ s a rare thing indeed to travel to a place that holds so many hidden gems , and what ’ s more to turn up without a preconceived idea of what it ’ ll be like . With that in mind , I ’ ll give you a ridiculously abbreviated summary of the Dominican
Republic , and why ( when all this madness is over , as it undoubtedly will be one fine day ) you should definitely go .
It ’ s got the oldest everything in the New World . The latter term is a contentious one – there were obviously people living very happily here before Christopher Columbus appeared in 1492 , but nonetheless it has the oldest University , cathedral , and hospital in the Americas . Walk the street of the old town within Santo Domingo , and history positively oozes out of the walls . As the gateway to the Americas , there ’ s been an unseemly amount of scrapping here for centuries , and the result is - among other things - wrecks littering the seabed , most of them un-dived .
An extremely large gentleman from a dive centre on the north coast showed me around artefacts he had personally salvaged with official permission ( and , judging by the size of his arms , absolutely no need for lifting bags ). It was a collection that would grace any maritime museum , anywhere in the world . Humpbacks migrate along the coast , the crackling emerald interior has the highest mountain in the Caribbean , and the beaches have won National Geographic ’ s best beaches on Earth award several times in a row . The surf is amazing , the people lovely , and you should go .