cabarete beach regeneration

the sand has arrived! and it is a shade of white! it's still wet in the picture above, so it may not look that white, but it is!

the beach is twice as wide now! not to mention that the color is fantastic! it is a much lighter shade than the previous brownish type sand we had. the result is not only nicer sand to look at on the beach but also the color of the water now looks more aqua-marine. this is due to the fact that the white sand underneath the water now makes the color shade of the water look different. it's a white sand, turquoise blue water beach now! amazing what $15 million can buy you.

the operation is of course fascinating to watch. a big tanker ship, which can be seen in the distance in the picture, sucks the sand out of a sand bank off of rio san juan and travels back to cabarete bay with it. here the tanker gets connected to a huge underwater pipe. on land, another pipe is connected to that. the sand comes gushing out of that. excavators then push the sand up into different places on the beach as well as into the water. they are probably adding a layer 3-4 feet of sand across the beach.

the operation is attracting quite a crowd of on-lookers:


they are doing the work on a 24 hour schedule. so it is fun to go out in the morning and see how far they have progressed down the beach. within the next day, they will be in front of the azzurro club, which is an area badly in need of more sand. it will be interesting to see how they handle the beach area in front of all the restaurants.

since they began pumping the sand, we have found some nice shells on the beach. of course those all came with the sand from the rio san juan sand bank. sometimes you run across some pieces of coral that were alive but stripped away as well - that is not to nice to see.