Haitian Farewell

Writing in Outside magazine, Patrick Symmes tells of a long journey in a small boat from Haiti to Miami:

In a test, the Sipriz zipped fleetly around the little anchorage at Kay Kakok, one of the last places in the Caribbean where men build wooden workboats with their bare hands, the way it's been done for centuries. The village sits on an island of 12,000 people, Île-à-Vache, six miles off the southern coast of Haiti, an obscurity off an obscurity. It has no electricity or running water, no sewers or hospitals, no jobs and few shoes, zero roads, and a single moped. But there are turquoise Caribbean currents, waving turtle grass, boys playing soccer, donkeys and horses for transport, hardworking fishermen, lots of alcohol, a hilarious transgendered American artist, and endless groves of palm trees. These shed coconuts, the only cool drink on the island.