Another yola on the beach

We woke up Sunday morning to the racket of a helicopter hovering just outside our window. Actually it was over the field next to us but it sounded like it was right outside our window. Obviously a police helicopter, it hovered and circled the field and flew up and down the beach for more than an hour searching for something. Or someone.

A yola (a small boat) had landed on our beach during the night and the police and Border Patrol were looking for Dominican refugees. By the time I walked down to the beach any refugees were long gone. Only a few Border Patrol agents and the helicopter remained.


The boat apparently came ashore at high tide because there it sat, high and dry on the rocks. Unlike many of these boats, this one was in good shape. No holes in the hull meant it came over rather than through the reef.

This was a pretty small boat compared to some of the others we've seen. We haven't heard any numbers of people that might have been on board but it couldn't have been too many. Judging by the amount of gasoline left in plastic cans on the boat it must have been a pretty fast crossing.

There also wasn't the usual debris - clothes, water containers, toothbrushes, shoes, children's toys, backpacks - we saw when other boats landed. That said, a friend who owns property by the cliff said he found clothes left behind as the boat people ran up the hill away from the beach.

Monday evening the tide came in and lifted to boat free of the rocks. At Ola Lola's we heard the boat was drifting west with the wind and current past VillaTropical. We don't know if a fisherman managed to snag it and haul it away or if it drifted out to sea past Villa Montaña. Whatever happened to it, by Monday morning it was gone.

No yola to burn on the beach. No yola left to break up on the beach and rocks and reef. No pieces of fiberglass stuck in the reef. The yola and all the people it vanished.

It was like yola had never been there at all.