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!