Home again, home again.... bah!

Here was my day: left the hotel at 7:30 am, flight left Santo Domingo at 11:00 am, arrived at JFK at 3:00 pm, took the airtrain to Jamaica Station, took another train to Penn Station, made the 5:10 train to Lancaster, took a cab home. Vacation was WAY more fun.

One last, lovely day

What a pleasant surprise today was. Sure, I expected to spend it on the beach but I also expected to spend it alone. Shows what I know.

My first surprise of the day came when I woke up and it was sunny. Based on the two previous days of grey and rainy (and let’s not forget HUUU-MID), I was prepared for the worst. I got to the beach, got settled in on my towel, got all slathered up in suntan lotion and dove into the ocean. Five minutes later a storm rolled in and the beach evacuated. Doh! In the beginning I refused to budge, planting myself firmly in the sand but when the rain starting pelting my eyeballs, I had to cave. I went to a cute little beachside hut and had some fresh fruit juice while reading and waiting it out. Amazingly, the clouds eventually parted and I got to head back out. Beach day saved!

I wasn’t there more than an hour before my little friend from yesterday, Bernardito, returned. We hung out some more, he took more pictures and we went swimming together. Eventually he said he had to “go to work as I’ve been here and hour and haven’t done anything yet” so he went off to shine some shoes. I was sitting there then, perfectly content to read my book and just sit and watch the ocean, when two women approached me saying they had noticed I was “solita”, alone, and asked if they could sit down and keep me company. One was a woman in her late twenties and the other was her aunt and they were at the beach with a group of family members to celebrate the birthday of one of the kids. The younger woman, Isaura, and I spent the afternoon together, talking about life in the Dominican Republic, the cultural pressures that woman feel here and all sorts of other things. We talked and swam, she introduced me to her family and I ended up picnicking with them. It was like I was a part of the family!

I love that stuff down here. How warm and welcoming people are. They saw a person alone on the beach so they included her, a complete stranger, in the family festivities so she wouldn’t have to be alone. I think that’s amazing. And it makes me love Latin culture even more. I had also noticed, despite the fact that she told me about 8 of them had come from her family, that their party seemed to keep getting bigger and bigger by the hour. By the end of it, I easily counted 20 people or so. I asked her who they were, maybe more family that had met them there, and she said that no, they were just people they’d met that day while swimming. I dig that.

They eventually had to head back to the city but by that time Bernardito had returned so he and I hung out some more, swimming and snorkeling. You get so used to people asking you for things down here, either a handout of some sort or trying to sell you something that you start to brace yourself for it. But after our second day of hanging out, it occurred to me that little Bernardito, who was obviously poor and had to spend his days shining the shoes of others, had never asked me for a thing. Not a penny. That endeared him to me even more, that he wasn’t trying to get anything from me, he just wanted to hang out. At the end of the day, I gave him all the remaining pesos I had, which weren’t many. He got so excited and asked if I would go with him to buy an ice cream. I don’t imagine he often has money for such frivolities, something so simple that we would take for granted. And that was where we parted ways, with a Dominican beso (kiss) and an American hug.

I wanted to get back to the hotel and shower before the hot water was turned off for the night. Funny to have to walk into your hotel and ask if there’s hot water or not. I also decided, mostly out of boredom and not wanting to have to spend the whole evening in my little hotel room, to break my own self-imposed granola bar diet to go out for dinner. Of course, as I had spent my last 300 pesos (20 for water, 40 for fruit juice on the beach, 240 for Bernardito), I had to find a place where I could use a credit card. I ended up at a lovely little Italian restaurant right on the beach, an open-air hut with a thatched roof and the smells and sounds of the waves crashing. A most excellent way to spend my last hours there. Oh, and of course they were out of the first thing I ordered. And mojitos. Gotta love la vida Dominicana!

Winding down... doh!

I am officially flying solo in the DR. Katie and BJ left crazy early this morning (and I'm not totally heartless, I lifted my head off my pillow and said goodbye). Apparently, I spoke too soon yesterday about the seemingly perfect timing of the weather thus far. I woke up this morning with plans to spend the morning/afternoon exploring Santo Domingo before leaving the city behind and heading off to the beach. By nine-thirty in the morning, it was POURING. Plans scrapped. By noon it had slowed down but was still grey and bleak. But the show must go on!

Random sidenote: took a shower this morning in the smallest shower ever. With my shoulder pressed up against one wall, I had about 3" left on the other side before hitting the shower curtain. Good thing I didn't drop anything while in there.

Since we had just seen a little of the Zona Colonial last night, I decided to spend my time there today checking out the rest of it. I was going to do it on my own but in the end allowed myself to get roped into letting a guide show me around. Super cheap and totally worth it when all was said and done. Not only did I actually get to learn some things about the town, I also got to speak Spanish for an hour and a half solid. That’s more than I’ve spoken altogether since arriving here! The colonial area is super charming and full of lots of history dating back to the 1400s. Let me sum it up for you: they lay claim to pretty much the first of everything in the New World. But I have to admit, it was pretty cool to see the first church as well as the oldest fortress in the Americas.

I ate lunch at an outdoor table on the main plaza, soaked in the last of the old city charm, then had to pack it in. Went back to the hotel, collected my things, then caught a cab to the bus stop, where I had to find a bus going to beach I was wanting to go to. Apparently, that can sometimes be easier said than done. Not surprisingly, there are no schedules here. You just ask around until you find a bus going to where you want to go. That much I expected. What I didn’t expect came in the form of a tip from Katie’s colleague down here. She advised not to approach a bus and ask “Are you going to Juan Dolio Beach?” but rather “Where are you going?” and wait until you find the one who gives the name on their own. Apparently, sometimes if you give them the name of the place where you want to go, they’ll just agree and say they’re going there, even if they’re not. Good tip.

Sometimes it really does pay, literally, to speak the language in a place. Not only in being able to make sure I get the right bus to begin with, but in saving actual money. I had asked a cabbie what he would charge to bring me to the beach (the easiest option and probably the one I would do if I didn't speak Spanish) and the estimate was 1,500RD ($45US).... the bus cost me 100RD ($3). Score!

Either way, I found the right bus and I ended up sitting next to a 4-year-old little girl who was beyond cute. I’m not easily sucked in by little kids, but this one was irresistible. Me and little Nicol talked the whole time. More Spanish! And Spanish with a little kid, which is a whole other thing.

Ultimately, the bus driver did not steer me wrong and I found the hotel I was looking for, which is in a little beachtown outside of Santo Domingo, about a block off of the beach. It costs $15/night. Fifteen. On the beach. That’s my kind of hotel, baby! For that price, you get a private room, private bathroom, cable and internet. You give up a couple things, of course. No AC for one and also there is only hot water at certain times. When I got in from the beach tonight, the desk lady kindly advised me that it was on at the moment and I may want to take immediate advantage as it was 6:45 and it goes out after 7 pm or so. Oh, and you also get a teenie little pet iguana, which was hanging on the back of the door when I closed it. Bonus!

By the time I got here, it was still grey and still insanely humid (my hair didn’t fully dry all day but, as wisely stated by the guy that showed me around the Zona Colonial, “You’re in the Caribbean”). I decided to at least go for a walk and check the area out. I walked and walked and ended up pretty far up on the beach, just sitting and watching the waves. I wasn’t there much more than 5 minutes when a little boy came up to me and asked me if he could shine my shoes. Funny, since I was wearing flip flops. We ended up talking and he ended up sitting down by me and we spent a good hour or so together, me and Bernardito. Even more Spanish! I asked him if I could take a picture with him; I had no idea what that would open up. He was totally intrigued by the camera and we spent some time messing around with it, taking pictures of just about everything you can take pictures of on the beach. He even got some passersby to pose for him. At one point, he sat down all snuggled up next to me on the sand, looking out towards the ocean, and went through all of the pictures on my camera, asking about them all and who was who. It was cuteness.

Now I’m back at the hotel, praying for sun tomorrow. I have no plans other than the beach. So if there’s no sun, I’m in big trouble as there’s not really anything else to do around here. I’m also rationing my cash. Keeping out the cash I need to get to the airport Friday, I am down to almost exactly 300 pesos, which is right around $8.25US. For no good reason, I have decided that I am not withdrawing any more cash so now I’m also weighing out how far I can get on my remaining granola bars. Thirty-six hours on 7 granola bars sounds survivable, right? Here’s hoping!

Back to Santo Domingo

Sad times, my friends. Today we had to say adios to our cool little beachtown, Las Terrenas. (This picture is the little cottage we stayed in) Katie and BJ both have to leave tomorrow morning so we needed to get back to Santo Domingo for them to catch their flights. We spent one last, lazy morning at our little French bakery then headed back to pack up, buying a few gifts along the way (Happy Birthday, Ali!). When BJ got back to the hotel first, all hot and sweaty and in need of a shower, there was no water. None. Ah, life in third-world countries. But it eventually came back and we got cleaned up… just in time to head out into the rain to walk to the bus.

The weather has been interesting. We’re here in the middle of the rainy season but, even expecting a lot of rain, it really hasn’t been as bad as I was anticipating. What’s been interesting has been how the timing has almost always been just perfect. We’ve noticed a rhythm of nice mornings and a big, bad, thunderous storm at some point in the late afternoon, which usually just lasts for an hour or two. But somehow they seem to have perfectly accommodated our schedule: when we’ve wanted to go to the beach, it’s been clear and sunny, when we were doing things inside anyway (read: massages), it was rainy and we didn’t mind a bit. Today, when all we were basically doing was traveling anyhow, it was grey and rainy ALL day, from morning on. Oh, and humid. Crazy humid. Some days haven’t been too bad but when it’s humid, it’s HU-MID. Like sweating non-stop humid. Like my hair normally takes about 20 minutes to air dry but now takes an hour and a half humid. Like everything, everything, is vaguely damp. That kind of humid.

Either way, we had some extra time so were able to go back to one of our beachside restaurants for lunch before leaving. We went there for the pizza. They didn’t have pizza. Another interesting aspect of life down here (and I’ve noticed it in every Latin country I’ve been to) is that they very regularly just don’t have things. They just don't have them, even things that they advertise as their specialty. No apologies, just “we don’t have that today”. Sometimes you can get down to the second or third or fourth try before hitting on something they do have. I’ve learned, instead of getting my heart set on something, to start off by asking what they do have. Saves everyone time. It’s also funny how that sort of thing might annoy me in the US but here when it happens, I can genuinely laugh it off and not be bothered at all by it. I just see it as another one of the oddly endearing quirks about life down here. I think it’s all a matter of expectation.

Today’s bus ride wasn’t nearly as interesting as mine on the way up to the beach, but it was a cultural experience nonetheless. If you want to truly experience the people in a country, ride on public transportation with them. Today’s bus was half as crowded but still managed to provide some entertainment in the form of a vague argument between the driver and a passenger over the size of her suitcase (in the end, he charged her an extra fare), an unscheduled stop for fresh fruit along the side of the road and a pooping cat. Yes, a pooping cat. On a bus. Don’t ask.

We’re staying in the colonial district of Santo Domingo and we did a brief walk-around before, you guessed it, finding a charming little place to have dinner. Anyone sensing a theme here? There’s just something about dining outside while overlooking an ancient plaza (Santo Domingo lays claim to the first cathedral, monastery, university, customs house and hospital in the "New World", all dating back to Columbus) that really can’t be beat.

Katie and BJ are leaving the hotel at 5 am in the morning (yeah, we said our goodbyes tonight) so, since I’m still burning off the espresso I had after dinner, I vacated the room to let them get some good sleep. So as I write this, I am sitting in a lovely little open-air alcove of our hotel, overlooking colonial Santo Domingo. It’s warm and lovely and I’m listening to the sounds of the city below. Seriously, how can I ever be expected to return to reality?

Day Three. Massage Two.

So, the dancing was kind of a bust. We went out for “Red Dress Night” (yes, despite the fact that I didn’t have a red dress) all ready to live it up… we even put makeup on and everything! Quite the feat in a place where you are pretty much guaranteed to sweat it all right back off within 5 minutes. But, after much optimistic walking around and finding nothing but empty place after empty place after empty place (and me falling in a huge puddle of mud along the way), we finally accepted our fate and settled in at a beachside restaurant where we were the only people there. We asked the waiter where everyone was and it turns out that apparently when it has rained in the afternoon and everyone goes home to get out of it, very few of them come back out. Add to that that it was Sunday night AND the off-season and, well, Red Dress Night pretty much consisted of the three of us and an equal number of mojitos. But, really, what else do you need? So, in the end, not a bust at all.

I’m not sure how it’s possible, but today was even MORE relaxing than yesterday. Seriously, I would have laid down cold, hard cash against the statistical probability of it being possible but we made it happen. Here was our day in a nutshell: beach, massage, dinner. And that was it in its divine entirety.

And yet, it was so much more than that. After yet another relaxed start to the day at the French bakery (okay, that was just Katie and BJ), we headed the other direction on the beach, again in search of the superbly shady areas. Success. We found a lovely little cove full of palm trees and camped out on what turned out to be a perfectly lovely, sunny-yet-not-too-hot-or-humid day. It was the quintessential beach day. Katie and BJ headed back to the hotel a bit before me but I just couldn’t tear myself away. Went for another swim, struck up a conversation with a Dominican and, at the end of it, got a cool motorcycle ride back to the hotel from my new friend Jesus. Gotta dig kind Dominicans. Doesn't hurt when they're good-looking, either.

But, alas, we had to tear ourselves away at some point for….. another massage! It was just SOO good yesterday, we couldn’t not go back. It IS vacation after all. More showers, more Turkish baths, more massages, more fresh fruit while sitting outside on their cushy couches. More bliss. Best money I’ve spent in a very long time. And, again, a torrential rain storm at just the time we were getting massages which, with the open windows, provided such a wonderful, relaxing sound in the background. Couldn’t have been more perfectly planned. Plus, as a bonus, super good looking spa guy. Nice.

We meandered back to the hotel to shower and then go to dinner. Not too shabby when you're biggest stress of the day is making your 4 o'clock massage appointment and your biggest decision of the day is where to eat. I have to say, we have had some amazing food in this country (to be perfectly frank, much better than I had expected). It started with the pumpkin ravioli we had at the restaurant by the spa after our first massage and continued right on into tonight. We were SO relaxed from the massages that we didn’t want to go too far and actually ended up at the Italian place right by our hotel. Odd how it was so close to us the whole time yet we didn’t discover it until our last night here. The ambience in and of itself was amazing. Enclosed, yet with a large open-air section with palm trees in the middle so no matter where you sat you still had the sense of being outside. In addition to the ambience and a gregarious Italian owner, the food also just happened to be de-lish. I am still drooling over the warm goat cheese salad. Seriously, drooling right now as I write this. Throw in some pasta, some mahi mahi, some a-MA-zing desserts, some mojitos and some complimentary “chupitas de la casa” and it equaled a most enjoyable 4-hour dining experience. Most enjoyable. Indeed.

Day Two. Mojitos. More Success.

I’m not actually sure that vacation days come any more perfect than this one. There’s actually not even that much to tell as we didn’t really DO anything. But, come on, isn’t that the whole point of vacation?

It started out at a French bakery (okay, Katie and BJ started out there a LOT earlier than I did) enjoying a long, leisurely cup of coffee. Another long, leisurely stroll back to the hotel and then a long, leisurely stroll to the beach. And, yeah, that was pretty much our morning.

We were told by a colleague of Katie’s that lives down here that when we got to the beach, we should keep walking way out past the cove as it was less crowded and more shady there. It took us about half an hour and I was burnt by the time we got there. Ah, the life of the pale-skinned. But it turns out there was a fringe benefit that made it oh-so-worth it. Right at about the point when we had settled on a spot to plunk down, we noticed a sign for a spa across the street. What we had to do became obvious. We detoured, made massage appointments for later in the afternoon, then continued on our way to the beach. Which, I might add, was completely delightful. Sunny, warm but not hot, clear blue water at a bath-like temp, palm trees…. aaah.

But finally we had to tear ourselves away…. for massages. It was rough. The thing about this place was that not only were you paying for a massage, you were paying for an experience. You start out outside sitting in the fresh warm air on cushioned benches full of pillows.... then come in and shower.... and then are taken to a Turkish bath to “sweat it out”.... and THEN you have an hour of massage bliss, at the end of which you are praying for it to never end. But it does and it sucks that it does but then they serve you tea and fresh fruit to help you get over it. Katie and I came out at the same time and I’m pretty sure it took us about a full half hour to be able to be conversational. And another half hour of just lounging around on the pillows outside and watching the storm before we could move on. Our only consolation is that we're going back tomorrow. I'm not kidding.

The weather was totally on our side today, as well. All morning and afternoon while we were at the beach, it was sunny and lovely and not too hot (as opposed to yesterday when I did not stop sweating all day, literally). When we were in having our massages, a torrential downpour started, but at that point the sounds of it only added to the relaxation experience. It kept up for a couple of hours so, since we clearly had NO choice, we went to have drinks and an early dinner to avoid making the long walk back in the rain. Divine intervention as the food was fabulous and, more importantly, we finally found the as-yet-elusive mojitos! (And, yes, I realize that saying that we “finally” found them sounds a tad absurd since we’ve been in this town less than 24 hours but, you know, we’re on vacation time. Twenty-four hours without a mojito while in the DR is kind of like a month in the real world. It works sort of like dog years.)

We tore ourselves away and headed back to our room to refresh after our clearly grueling day where we are, as I speak, storing up energy to head out around 10 tonight for dancing and, yes, more mojitos. Vacation is hard.

Dominican Republic. Day One. Success!

God bless vacation. Especially ones that start off as wonderfully as this one. Sometimes everything lines up just so and things just fall into place and it’s so lovely when it happens. This was one of those times. Turns out my family from Kansas was coming to NYC this week to visit my cousin who lives there so I was able to hop a ride up to the City with my parents on Friday. Bonus One: free transportation to the airport. Bonus two: direct flight from JFK. Bonus three: spending a fabulous, sunny, leisurely day in lower Manhattan with my parents and some of my family that I don’t get to see that often! Oh, and eating fab Asian food and Groms gelato. Mmmmm.

My parents graciously drove me to the airport (I said I was willing to take the subway!). Gotta love when 16 miles takes you and hour and a half. Since it was a) direct and b) the cheapest flight available, I flew Jet Blue Airways for the first time ever. Gotta say, I would recommend it. Decent seats, personal in-flight entertainment from the moment you board, drink/snack service. The only thing they apparently don’t have is a ban on screeching, wailing children. They should. I was surrounded by not one, not two, but three of them. And they seem to have worked out some sort of diabolical plan ahead of time to take shifts so that at least one of them was screeching at any given time. Good times.

Made it to my hotel in Santo Domingo by 2:30 am, then got up this morning to figure out my transportation to Las Terrenas, the town where I was meeting up with my friends (and no, of course I hadn’t figured any of it out beforehand). I ended up taking a bus for the three-hour trip which turned out to be all sorts of interesting. For starters, it was a mini-bus designed to hold 22 passengers max. There were at least 40 on it. People were sitting in the aisles, standing in the aisles, piled 3 to a seat, packed in next to the driver and anywhere else they might even remotely possibly fit. I tried to take a picture but it came out dark and all of the effect was lost. It’s just one of those things you have to experience in person. And then there were the random items people carried on: one guy hauled on a huge, old style television set and another a rusty old muffler with a 5-foot long huge tailpipe attached. But it is always interesting to watch the interactions between people in Latin American countries. Bearing in mind that these people were largely all strangers, everyone was immediately talking, laughing, sharing food and singing the whole time. At one point, a very heated political debate broke out that consumed the whole bus (minus me, the only gringa). Imagine you’re on a charter bus in the US and suddenly every person (again, keeping in mind you’re all strangers) on board is embroiled in a heated, passionate argument about politics, arms flailing all over the place. I just sat there watching, smiling. And when it was over, everyone just went back to talking and laughing as if nothing had happened. And then, at the end, there is no station, no point where everyone gets off. People just start calling out where they want to go and the bus makes stops and lets them off there. I got dropped off right at the door of my hotel! And all for the low-low bargain price of 250RD$, or about 8 bucks.

Oddly, even though we were traveling from totally different parts of the country, my friends and I arrived at our darling little beach hotel within 10 minutes of each other. I’m here with Katie, a friend from Lancaster who has reason to work in the DR regularly, and her friend BJ from Dallas. Our little hacienda is right across the street from the ocean. To die for.

None of us were feeling too compelled to accomplish much today so the grand total of our excursions was to buy fruit and then to go to dinner. We sat outside at a cute little hut-like restaurant and, in true Latin American style, they were out of the first three things we ordered (in the past, I have learned to just ask what they have as opposed to getting my heart set on anything on the menu). We ended up with some fabulous chicken skewers, platanos and some sort of mojito-like drink (of course they were out of mojitos). At the end of the meal, it started raining torrentially. Gotta love the sound of thunderous rain all around you. And also that it provided a great reason to sit and have another drink while waiting it out.

Tomorrow we’re thinking we’ll try to accomplish just a tad more. Which pretty much means we’re going to the beach.