#44-Dominican Republic

Once again and as usual I'm behind in blogland.  But then so are all of you too.  A lot of you have been slacking lately on blogging, so I guess I don't need to apologize to anyone.  


Apparently I say "I'm sorry" a lot.  My book club friends recently pointed this out to me.  They told me that I shouldn't say "I'm sorry" so much because most of the time I really don't have anything I need to be sorry about.  They're right, but saying "I'm sorry" must be so subconscious for me because just minutes after that conversation about apologizing too much I said, without thinking, "Well, I'm sorry but I am NOT apologizing!"  I guess I need to work on not saying I'm sorry a bit more. 


So, I'm not sorry that I'm just getting to blogging my Dominican Republic pictures because at least I'm doing it for me, for my blog readers, blog leeches, and my non-existent posterity.  So there. 

My friend and past roommate, Yvette, invited me and the rest of our book club to spend the week at her parents' time share in the Dominican Republic in January.  Hmm, a free place to stay on a tropical island during a dark, long, bleak winter week?...well, that's a no brainer.  I think I bought my ticket within hours of her invitation.


Only 5 of the 7 of our book club were able to come, which may have actually been a good thing since we were sneaking 5 into a room meant for no more than 3 people.  Seven might have been a bit of a stretch even for my superb sneaking-extra-people-into-hotel-rooms skills.  


Anyway, we had a super awesome trip and here are some pictures to prove it.  Oh, and lots of people have asked me if things in the DR were affected because of the earthquake in Haiti three days before our trip to the DR.  As far as I could tell nothing was really unusual in the parts of the DR where we were except that the aquifer where we were staying in Puerto Plata got messed up with the earthquake and the water level dropped a bunch and we only had running water in our hotel for certain hours during the day, but it didn't end up being too big of a deal.  


Other than that things seemed pretty normal.  It was a little weird relaxing on vacation when on the other side of the island people were suffering so much.  We tried to volunteer to help package or take aid to Haiti but, at least in the part of DR where we were, they weren't really organized for volunteers just yet.  And we looked into crossing over the border but the border control was really tight to prevent all the Haitians from fleeing to the DR so it was a pretty big mess and we would have probably just been more in the way than help, so we just vacationed instead of saving people and stuff.  At least we did try to find a way to help before we ordered virgin Pina Coladas and sat on the beach. 

A pretty view of Samana where we went whale watching

Bacardi Island...gorgeous!

A view of Mount Isabel, I think...

Our little group of five...Yvette, Hailey, me, Brooke, and Marissa.  I met all these girls this summer in Africa.  We make a good travel team since we've all traveled quite a bit and know what it takes to be a good traveler.  It was a really fun group and we (or at least I) had a great time.  

Here we are at church.  It is always fun to go to church in other countries and meet the members.  Plus, you get bonus points for going to church while on vacation that you can store up for later.  

We saw these cute little girls downtown on Sunday afternoon.  I think they had just attended Mass or something.  We just loved how they were strutting around in their heels. 

Just a super awesome picture Hailey took in the plaza

In the plaza with Lonny, our friend we met at church, who showed us around the town for the rest of the day. 

Yvette's birthday dinner at Cabarate after a day at the beach.  

Sosua, our favorite beach

Sosua Beach

A picture of Isabella where Columbus had a permanent settlement where he and a bunch of other Europeans lived until Malaria struck and killed a bunch of them to revenge the Indians, or something like that. 

We found, after the first day in the Puerto Plata, that we could either take ridiculously overpriced taxis (since we were in a touristy area) or we could pay like 25 cents each and hitch a ride in these local transport vans.  We saved a lot of money taking local transport and had way more fun too.  There's just nothing like having 24 sweaty people (yes, we counted) crammed into a van meant for 10.  

A few times when we flagged down a van we'd look inside and think that there wasn't room for the 5 of us and that we should wait for the next van to pass...but then all the other passengers would start scrunching and would encourage us to get in.  Everyone was so nice an friendly.  At one point Marissa and I were sitting in the area behind one of the rows of seats right over the engine and Yvette was sitting on some lady's lap.  It was a great adventure.   


One of the times we went to Sosua we had the van to ourselves and I think we  payed the driver maybe 10 bucks or something to take the five of us to a beach about 30 minutes away.  We overheard him bragging to his buddy about how much he was charging us...I think he thought he was ripping us off.  Haaaaaaaa we didn't even care.  Two bucks each to get to a beach 30 minutes away?...steal of a deal as far as we were concerned.  I'm glad that "ripping us off" made his day though.  

Another picture of Sosua Beach


Anyway, we had a great trip.  We spent all day at the beach and nights crammed in our hotel room watching movies and talking.  Our week in the DR was the best book club activity ever!  


Oh, and somehow I came out of our week of beach bumming with a sunburn on my upper lip, and only my upper lip.  I don't know how I managed to do that, but it looked more like a nair disaster than a sunburn since it was just in that one spot.  I kept having to apply face lotion to my stache to keep it from peeling all over the place. 

I don't know why I post pictures like this of myself, but on the way home I painted on a moisturizer mustache to soothe my burning lip (and to be funny of course).  Yvette was nice enough to throw in the bunny ears to really make this picture special.  And the greasy face and flat hair was brought to you by the Dominican Republic's tropical climate.  


So, one post down, many more to go...


Oh, and does anyone else feel like punching someone in the face every time they do a blog post and blogger double spaces everything and you can't fix it unless you mess with the HTML code?  I do.