Dominican Republic Adventures Part 1

On September 11th, I woke up at 2 AM and drove to the Philadelphia airport to catch a flight to Santo Domingo, Dominican Republic. Last summer, I spent three weeks on the island of Dominica, not to be confused with the Dominican Republic. This trip to the Dominican Republic was an incredible chance to see HOPEs work first hand and spend a couple days of vacation on the beach.

Our (Mike and I) flight left Philadelphia at 6 AM and we landed in the DR around 130 in the afternoon. We then took a taxi to downtown Santo Domingo and hopped on a "wa-wa" (small bus) to the Samana Peninsula. This was our first Dominican experience. Dominicans cram as many people as possible in buses or cars (in one of our vans we counted 21 people). Claire, Mike, and I went to the back row of the wa-wa. There were four seats, so we sat down and put our traveling backpacks in the 4th seat. Before we knew it there was a mom and two kids squeezing into the back row with us. For the next 5 hours to the North Coast, we had 6 people and 3 backpacks in a space that would have been uncomfrotable for 4 average sized passengers. I couldn't move my legs and it was probably the most uncomfortable bus ride I've ever been on. For some reason I couldn't stop laughing though and the only thing I could do was lean forward and fall asleep on my backpack.

It was a relief to arrive in Las Terrenas but I was exhausted by now and not in the mood for doing anything other than sleeping. Over the next few days we would spend time relaxing on the beautiful Caribbean beaches, walking around the village, eating some amazing fruit, and drinking fresh fruit juices. The best fruit juice was Chinola (passion fruit), but I also had mango, pineapple, melon, and strawberry. It was nice to not have a phone or watch because I woke up whenever I felt rested and went to bed whenever I felt tired. I spent the mornings reading The Kite Runner on the porch of the apartment we were staying in. We went to a market to get food and made our meals in the apartment. It was very simple living. One day we were sipping on jugos naturales on the beach and we saw some people pulling a 4 foot shark out of the water. After that we decided to not swim as far out into the ocean.
After we spent some time swimming and reading on the beach on Sunday, we went back to our apartment and checked out. We decided to take a bus 4 hours to a town called Puerto Plata so we could go to 27 waterfalls the next day. This night in Puerto Plata was full of adventure. We each paid $8 for a bed in this hostel. We were the only people staying there and it wasn't the nicest accommodations I've ever had. Since there obviously wasn't any air conditioning, we opened the windows to cool down the room. Soon we had bees flying around our room. In an attempt to escape an attack by one of the bees, Mike dove onto one of the beds. Good thing there was an extra bed in the room because Mike snapped the slats that held up the mattress. Now the only thing holding up the bed was a couple cinder blocks under the bed. Falling asleep was tough because when you laid in the bed, your body sunk into a mattress canyon. Was it worth the $8? Definitely.

The next morning we hopped on another bus and headed to 27 Charcos (waterfalls). I fell asleep on the bus ride out to the waterfalls and was awaken by a bus of Dominicans yelling that my friends got off the bus already. When I stepped off the bus I realized that the driver just dropped us off on the side of a dirt road. We walked down the dirt road for a while until we found the entrance to 27 waterfalls. This was the highlight of the first half of the trip. We paid about $15 dollars each and it was some of the best money I've ever spent. We had a guide for the three of us and he asked us if we wanted to hike or swim. We chose to swim, meaning we were swimming to the bottom of each of the waterfalls and then climbing up the waterfall. On some of the waterfalls, our rather large Dominican guide, Pablo, would just grab our arm and pull us up the waterfall. After we climbed up all 27 waterfalls, we swam a little bit and then began our descent. Now we got to jump off of each of the waterfalls. The highest was probably 30 feet and some of them were like natural water slides. I had a huge smile on my face for the three hours we spent climbing/jumping off of waterfalls. Swimming through canyons filled with clear blue water was incredible. This excursion surpassed my expectations immensely. We walked back up the dirt road until we came to the paved road where we stood on the side of the road until a bus stopped to pick us up.

We took the bus from 27 Charcos back to Puerto Plata where we hopped on Moto-cochos (motorcycle taxis) to take us back to our hostel to pick up our bags. Riding on these motorcycles was another one of my highlights. We were very trusting of the hostel we stayed at because we left our bags in an unlocked room. They could have stolen our passports, phones, hundreds of dollars, credit cards, cameras etc. We then got on the bus (still in our wet clothes from jumping off waterfalls) and drove 4 hours south to Santo Domingo. Once we arrived in Santo Domingo, the trip started to transition to focusing more on HOPE. Mike and I were staying at Claire's (a HOPE DR intern) apartment across the street from the Presidential Palace. We spent a day walking around the city and seeing common tourist sites. This wasn't interesting me too much because the cathedrals looked like any other old church and the castles just like any other castle.

A couple of my random observations of the DR: the food is too bland, plantains (maduras) are amazing, police, military, and random people carry shotguns, humidity is intense, it's hard to understand Dominican Spanish, the water is pretty warm, Dominican coffee is strong (and made in a Greka), traffic lights, signs, and rules don't mean anything, jugos naturales are incredible, and don't drink the water!

Part 2, the HOPE trip, coming soon...