SIERRA DE BAHORUCO NATIONAL PARK.- “Hey, ugly!”

The words ring out like twin gunshots in the deep silence that envelopes the dirt road through the foothills of the Sierra de Bahoruco. The two motorcycle drivers my friend Elizabeth and I hired in Pedernales to take us through the national park are now crouched on the ground before one of the bikes, sweating under the noonday sun and having an equally heated debate about the bike’s engine.

The road dips down from here and then makes a sharp curve upward again into the dry forest around us. A motorcycle cruises into view, engine off, the man astride it looking like a mirage coughed up by the desert itself. His clothes are monochrome beige, caked with dust and red mud, his skin blue-black and shimmering with sweat. If he’s insulted by my driver’s unorthodox attempt to engage his assistance, he doesn’t show it. Instead, he guides his bike into the shade and saunters up to us, one hand on the machete sheathed at his belt.

The drivers explain the malfunction in a flurry of helpless hand gestures, and without a word, the dusty stranger produces a ratchet and wrench from somewhere within the ragged drapes of his clothes, a serene half-smile playing about his lips.

We’re on the road again within minutes, continuing the pattern that has characterized the last half hour of our journey – climbing past the trees to plateaus with stunning views of the mountains only to dive back down under cover of the forest on roads engraved with a hundred tiny tributaries by the daily rains.  We’re headed to the Hoyo del Pelempito; I have no picture of it in my mind, no idea what to expect or look for as a sign that our journey is coming to an end. It’s only as we progress deeper into the foothills, the mountains looming closer with every passing minute, that I realize we’re going all the way – over the mountains, into the secret heart of the Sierra, back through history to a time before time, when the earth reached for the heavens and invented an island.

The road ahead is paved as we leave the foothills. There’s nothing between us and the mountains now but a long straightaway past towering mesas created by decades of bauxite mining in this mineral-rich basin. The gate at the entrance to Sierra de Bahoruco National Park stands open; there is nobody in the booth, no prices posted for use of the park facilities, no one else on the road but Elizabeth and I and our two drivers.

It doesn’t take me long to notice that there’s no need to staff the gatehouse. Sierra de Bahoruco is like no national park I’ve ever visited. There are no campgrounds, no interpretive centers, no gift shops, no outhouses … no people. Yellow signs point the way to the Hoyo and the roads are well maintained, but development of the park as a visitor-friendly place clearly stopped soon after its designation as a protected area in 1983. An abandoned bauxite mine, grown over with vines and bushes, and a single sign explaining its history, written only in Spanish, are the only concessions to the idea that someone in the world might stumble across this place and find it intriguing.

The road rises continually now, and the landscape changes with it from arid desert to temperate mixed forest until suddenly, we round a corner and I find myself in Canada. The air smells of fir trees and soil after spring rain, conjuring up a thousand memories of camping beside lakes, huddling around a fire as the night descends with all its sounds, filling my lungs with clean-tasting, oxygen-rich air. I want to wrap myself around a tree trunk and linger for a while in this beautiful facsimile of my “home and native land,” but we carry on, still climbing, until we reach another gate, this one closed save for a pedestrian door standing slightly ajar.

A soldier in uniform appears, taking his time walking towards us as if slightly unsure we exist or grumpy at being disturbed. Apparently there is a fee to continue on to the Hoyo – not posted at the gate, and not common knowledge in Pedernales. Our drivers, who earlier claimed to be working for a “trustworthy” tourism agency in town, choose that moment to reveal they knew about the fee – after we’d already promised them the last of our cash funds for their services. Elizabeth is angry; making the national park a tourist attraction that would bring spinoff revenues to Pedernales would be as easy as establishing and publicizing fixed prices for entrance and transportation. Instead, the loveliness of our surroundings has been soured somewhat by a suspicion that we’re being ripped off.

Eventually, the guard agrees to lower the fee and we borrow back part of our down payment from the drivers to pay it, promising to reimburse them when we return to Pedernales. Both Elizabeth and I know this shouldn’t have happened, though. A visitor without our combined knowledge of Spanish and valid press credentials could have been relieved of a lot more of their spending money.

The paved road ends a short distance past the gate, and to my surprise, we are descending. The “road” – little more than a narrow dirt track – has been badly washed out by Tropical Storm Noel, and water swallows the motorcycles up to their exhaust pipes in some places. Elizabeth notes that her last visit to the Hoyo had been in a tour van, but that the road would now be impassible for any vehicle but a motorcycle. That too would have to be fixed if the park were to become a legitimate destination.

The path finally opens into a gravel parking lot, a sign that someone once dreamed of a day when it would be full. We have to hike a short trail down to the Hoyo, and I see the glint of sunlight on a tin roof through the trees, hear the clang of metal on metal. The tin roof belongs to an interpretive center containing a few laminated posters explaining the geographic features of the area in Spanish. Part of the roof has come loose, and the wind is bashing it against itself. The side of the structure facing the Hoyo has begun to collapse inward from the constant assault of the wind. There is no one else around; Elizabeth and the drivers are still far up the trail.

I follow a narrow boardwalk around the side of the interpretive center and a sudden wallop of vertigo causes me to press myself instinctively against the wall. The Hoyo is exactly what its name implies – a scar of unfathomable proportions gouged into the surface of the earth, long since grown over with a carpet of trees, mountains and valleys upon mountains and valleys stretching away to the vanishing point. My eyes can’t drink it in fast enough. The boardwalk has no railing and I feel the need to sit down or risk falling forever into that great, green expanse.

Elizabeth arrives and after a moment of quiet reflection on the scene asks me what I think.

“My God,” I reply, and there’s no need to say any more. We’re very close to heaven here, Elizabeth says, but I already know that. There is a presence in this place of unparalleled order and beauty. We walk a short way up a trail to a clearing on the edge of the cliff and sit cross-legged in the dirt, both of us suddenly inclined to pray.

For some reason my inner voice can’t express a single thought more sophisticated than Thank you, over and over again Thank you.

And as I sit there, eyes open, wind and sun playing across my face, I see the creator’s reply in every slope, every tree, every cloud and shadow: You’re welcome.