We got to the Dominican Republic Sunday morning (May 10th) around 11AM. Happy Mother's Day by the way!!! We spent that first day looking for members of the church who Dave had taught on his mission and those he was friends with. We talked to lots of people and we stopped by the missionaries' apartments.
Three hermanas are living there right now. They showed me around Dave's old house. It was crazy!! They even gave me some of a Dominican treat they had made earlier to try. It is called habichuelas con dulce, it is a sweet bean dessert. It tasted good but it was weird to eat sweet beans!! That night we went to a café on the main street in the Colonial Zone of the city for dinner. We had Platanos (they look like big bananas, but taste more like potatoes) and eggs... it was actually really good! We are staying in the capital, Santo Domingo, for the first 4 days we are here.
Monday morning I was so excited because our breakfast buffet had yuka! I have been hearing about yuka and platanos since I met Dave. I had to try it! It is a root like a potato… but much starchier and really white. It is very good! After breakfast we shopped around the city.
The street in front of our hotel used to be the main street; now you cannot even drive on it because it is all a shopping district.
We walked around for a while and then found the local shop area. It was much stinkier! Peehew!! But it was much less expensive too. It is amazing to see how these people really live.
After shopping we went to Tres Ojos. It is a place that has three underground lakes. It was so incredible and beautiful. To get to the lakes you have to walk down into a cave like area. It is super humid down in there, but the lakes are all crystal clear and the land around them is like a tropical rain forest. I guess that many Tarzan movies were filmed in there. The third lake is reached by taking a little boat across and then walking through another underground trail. It was very cool, not something to miss if you are ever in Santo Domingo.
On Tuesday, May 12th we went exploring around Dave's other 2 areas here in the capital. We had so much fun! Dave was so excited to see these people who he loves so much and has not been around for 5 years. One guy actually spotted him first and ran over to him and gave him a huge hug!! It was so sweet! We were looking for a guy named Jose when we headed toward a Colmado (A little shop; these shops are on just about every corner. They are where the locals shop and hang out all the time.) Randomly we ran into him there! They were both so happy!! I don’t know exactly what they said because I don’t speak Spanish! LOL! I can understand some thing they say but they go so fast that most of the time I can't even distinguish between different words. J We met so many people, but the last person we saw was Dave's maid in the area. She and her daughter were so sweet! They invited us over to dinner the last Sunday we are here. She is going to teach us how to make some Dominican meals! YAY!!!
Oh, that night we went to dinner at a restaurant called Adrian Tropical. Dave got fried Platanos with his meal. They sound so weird but they are good. They are kind of like fries but maybe even better! I have to mention 3 drinks we have had here as well that I forgot to write about. The first one I tried was a papaya juice. It was really not a juice though, more like a smoothie. It was made with juice and condensed milk and ice. The next one, which is now what I get every time we go to a Colmado, is called Merengue. Who knows what it is supposed to taste like… but it is delicious. The last drink… smoothie… was made at Adrian Tropical. It was mango and passion fruit. It was seriously wonderful. Best smoothie I have ever had.
Wednesday we went to the Botanical Garden in the capital. It was huge! It took us a couple hours to walk through it all. The plants there were so beautiful. There are so many birds; I think we saw a humming bird every 5 or 10 minutes. There were butterflies and turtles. It was great.
One area in the garden is a Japanese area. It was sweet!! I will put some pictures on…
After the Garden we went shopping in the city. It is so crazy. In the shopping area there are paintings stacked up everywhere. Everyone sells the same type of things, but the prices are all different. It is a good thing Dave lived here so one of us knows how to shop. All the stores tell you different prices for the same item. We got some great stuff though, and I think we did pretty well, or I should say Dave did pretty well bartering. It is funny how much they mark everything up. After a few hours of shopping we were both all shopped out, and I had a TOO MUCH shopping headache!!! Ha ha.
Thursday we drove out of the capital city and traveled about an hour to a little town called Yaguate. This was Dave's first area on the mission. When we got to the city we did some visiting. We saw the sweetest people! We visited with a couple families that were good friends of Dave's. One of the daughters, Miguelina, cooked lunch for us. She made tostones and salami. I love them! It's all fried though… so probably not the healthiest.
We also visited a lady and her two sons. The oldest son who is about 23 reminds me so much of my sister Lexie's first love, Eric Meldrum. It was so funny. He talked like him, and pulled expressions just like him! J Their family made boiled bananas with onions and salami. It is surprisingly really good. Boiled bananas did not sound good to me but it really changes the flavor. I am trying to learn how they make some of these things so I can try them when we get home!!
Between some of our visits we went to a couple beaches in town. The ocean is so beautiful here. The water is bright aqua. The sand is really dark, almost black. The water felt so great. We haven't been able to go the beach yet because the water in the capital is really dirty.
One highlight from the capital: On Sunday and Tuesday Dave accidentally left the lights on in our little rental car. We got to our car both times and found it totally dead! The first time a really nice lady jumped it for us in the grocery store parking lot. The second time we were in the middle of a really poor neighborhood. Some guys tried charging it on a little homemade charging machine… but it still wouldn't work. The power kept going out too, which wasn't helping at all! Finally they got our battery on and hooked up another battery to it and we were able to start the car. I can't believe we killed it twice in the first 3 days we were here. So dumb!
Friday began the next phase of our trip. We stayed in the capital last night, but today we left it for good. J We drove about an hour and a half down the coast to the city of Azua. And then the adventure began. Dave had gone to a beach once with some members and he really wanted to find it. Well about an hour after driving through the mountains on a rugged dirt road in our Chevy Spark, which looks almost like a Smart car, we made it to the end of the road. And…. At the end of the road was an incredible salt, um farm….? LOL! We laughed so hard. It was pretty cool, but only something you need to see once, if that!
We turned around and found a beach a little way back that we hiked down to. It was beautiful, but not the beach we were looking for. It had a dead coral reef area that went straight into the ocean out as far as we could tell. It was about 10 feet across. We walked out that quiet a long way. So we still found a cool beach, just not the one we were looking for.
After the beach we found a lady, Inotilde, that Dave baptized. We hung out at here house for a while. She had a dance group that she taught and the dancers were there. The showed us some of there dances. It was pretty cool to see. We then left and drove a ways down the coast to Barahona. We found a great hotel called Playazul. It is right on the beach. It was a great place to stay. The restaurant there was good and we really liked the atmosphere.
Saturday we decided to head west and go to the San Rafael River. Where the river meets the ocean, the locals have created pools of the fresh water to bath in. It looks so gorgeous. By late morning there were lots of people there swimming in the pools. Dave and I hiked up the river as far as we could. It was beautiful. There were waterfall areas all over. Oh and we found a gigantic spider, I didn't love that part. It was really creepy looking.
After playing at that beach we headed to El Quemaito beach. It was a beautiful white pebble beach. We didn't think we would love a pebble beach but they were small and actually quite comfortable to lie out on. It also made swimming much cleaner because sand wasn't mixing into the water. I also loved the sound it made. The waves would crash on shore and then the rocks would roll down with the water. They clinked together softly. It was really a relaxing sound.
Sunday we went to church and found the ward Dave served in. It was fun to talk to the missionaries and see the ward. I couldn't understand anything during the meeting, of course because it was all in Spanish. After church we drove up into a town in the mountains that has a huge salt water lake. At the lake there were giant iguanas all over. We took tons of fun pictures of them. There was a family there feeding them so they were swarming around us.
About 2 hours west of Barahona there are supposedly great beaches. Monday we decided to see what they were like. We drove out to Pedernales and found a wonderful white sand beach. The sand was like flour and the water was crystal clear and smooth as far out as you could see. After the beach we decided to look in town at the hotels. We found a good one called D'Oleo Mendez. We ate lunch there. We had a typical Dominican meal, la bandera, which is white rice with a bean sauce mixture on top.
That night we drove back into Barahona, and on our way back it began to rain. We went and got some dinner, and by the time we left, it was a downpour. There were literally rivers of water coming down the streets. We thought it was going to wash our poor little Chevy Spark away! We wanted to use the internet, so we drove up the street to an internet place. Dave said it had never rained that hard in the two years he had been there, so it was kind of exciting. When we got into the internet shop, lightning struck so close it shook the building! It killed all of the computers and left us quite startled. We stayed a while longer, and after another bolt of lightning, we decided to head back to the hotel. On the way back a Toyota Camry was driving in front of us and the water was up to the top of its tires! It was quite an adventure, but we made it safely back to our hotel, and Dave even put on his swimsuit and played in the rain and the pool that night.
Tuesday was a huge adventure. We left Barhona and Playazul and began the next phase of our trip. We drove out to Pedernales to stay for a few days. We stopped a couple places along the way and took pictures there are some great views along the way. When we got to a town called Oveido, we decided to stop at Laguna Oveido. There are supposed to be tons of bird and turtles there. It had rained so much that it you couldn't drive around and they wanted us to pay for a guide to take us around in our car… we decided we didn't want to pay. So we found a place to hike in down the road. We hiked for so long!! Finally we got to the Lagoon. There were birds but it was so wet that we could barely walk through it.
The real highlight was getting back to our car. We were in the middle of nowhere and I had no idea how we were going to find the trail we had taken. But somehow Dave found our way back. We had gone through 3 fences and followed 2 real trails… not to mention lots of not real trails. Ha ha. But Dave found some poles sticking out of the ground that he remembered. I still thought maybe we were going in the wrong direction. Then the next thing I know Dave has taken us to the exact spot we had gone through one of the fences. I could not believe it! I had wrapped some wire around a post there.
Wednesday was a pretty day. It was a little overcast but the clouds were thin and the sun was still shining through. We went to the same beach we found Monday and spent about 6 hours there. We snorkeled and found tons of big conk shells.
They were everywhere along one stretch of the beach. It was a really nice relaxing day. We love that beach. We only saw 2 other people the entire day!! It's crazy that such a beautiful beach is so empty.
The beach out there was amazing. It cost 1500 pesos; the lowest price we could get at either place, but it was well worth it!! We snorkeled, swam, lied out, and explored the long beach area. There was a big pavilion there with picnic tables and a little pier. There were also bathrooms and a tall look out building too. It was pretty nice. The beach had great sand and we found tons more huge shells. I can't believe how many shells there are out on this side of the island.
Well we are to our last leg of the trip. bahaha… But we got to our hotel today in Juan Dolio, which is east of the capital, and it is SWEET! We thought we might be ready to relax by the end of our trip and this is just the place. It is an all inclusive resort called Barcelo something or other. There are pools and restaurants all over. They have mini-golf, tennis, sand volleyball, basketball, dance lessons, shows every night, and a gym. Oh my, it is heaven. We are here for 4 days.
This morning as we were driving along the coastal road to Juan Dolio I couldn't help but think of all the things I am thankful for as a United States citizen. This land is so impoverished and most of the people live in conditions that I could not have imagined living in as a poor newlywed. So here is my list of things I am thankful that we have in the U.S.
1. Great Builders
2. Construction workers/road construction
3. Engineers
4. Water treatment plants
5. Garbage cans everywhere, which people actually use
6. Garbage collectors
7. Environmentalists
8. Technology
9. Medical… everything
10. Local, State and Federal Government
There of course are many more things I could list but those are the ones that stand out the most after spending time here in the D.R. This is a great place to visit, but I am very glad to have the opportunities and luxuries I have in the states.
