Another exciting adventure was upon me…a 5 day getaway in a secluded tree house village nestled in the jungle of the Dominican Republic?! Thank you Groupon! I couldn’t wait to get there and I was prepared to be a dirtbag for 5 days, embrace nature and enjoy every second of this glorified camping/once in a lifetime experience! I get on my flight at Newark airport, while Christina boards hers at JFK. Our flights were scheduled to arrive within 5 minutes of each other in Santo Domingo, DR and we decided we would just find each other at the airport, hop in our rental car, and head to the tree house together! Yeah, in a perfect world maybe…
I board my flight in Newark and get stuck waiting 2.5 hours at the gate because somehow our plane was too heavy and they needed people and luggage to volunteer to get off so we could lighten our load. At 11:30am (my original flight was supposed to leave at 8:50am) we FINALLY took off. I arrive at Santo Domingo airport with a plane full of Dominicans clapping, doing the sign of the cross and shouting WEPA that we landed safely (wtf was that all about anyway?) and cannot find a smidge of wifi signal anywhere. Where is Christina? Did she get here on time? Did she get my messages saying my flight was delayed or did she think to check the flight board? Did she pick up the rental car already? Is she currently deliberating with Dominican police officers and the US Embassy on my disappearance? I went outside and thank goodness I see her standing there in a sea of Dominicans frantically looking for me. We hug and run to the car, grateful to have found each other, but mostly ready and excited for our adventure! Thinking ahead, I printed out driving directions from Google maps before I left, so confidently, I took them out of my bag and we started driving in what we thought was the right direction…
We knew the trip would be about 2 hours and 40 minutes from the airport to our destination of Samana, DR. About 45 minutes into our trip, driving through a dilapidated city, we have a feeling we aren’t in Kansas anymore... There were too many forks in the road that weren’t on our directions and there were barely any signs on the side of the road to help guide us. Basically, the Google directions made zero sense and we needed to find our way in the right direction NOW. I’ve seen the movie Taken, and I love you dad, but you ain’t got the ‘jump off a bridge onto a moving truck’ moves like Liam Neeson. So we tried to find a place where two white American girls from New York, driving a new, bright red Kia Soul could stop to ask for directions without getting killed…not so easy to find around those parts. Our Kia did not blend in to the other junker clunker cars that were driving around, and neither did our skin. Finally we find a nice looking pharmacy and I figure it was okay to stop there. Thank God I speak Spanish or else we probably would have been decapitated and roasted on a spit for a family to feast on that night. The security guard at the pharmacy made no sense telling me where to go, because he never even heard of the highway we needed to get on. When he started hitting on me and asking me if I was married, it was time to make my swift escape and ask someone else for directions. Next stop was at a nice looking gas station. We wanted to find a woman to ask, as to avoid the whole flirting situation again, but as if we were on an African safari, the workers crowded around our cars like monkeys. I thought one might have even climbed on the hood (just kidding—but they did all pop out of nowhere!) They were much more helpful and one of them spoke a little English. They told us to just keep driving and stay to the right, but once we started driving that didn’t really make much sense, because one more right would have us eventually driving into the ocean. We decided our safest bet was to turn around and go back to the airport since someone there had to speak English and be able to give us better directions.
We went back to the rental car place and at this point, I was almost in tears because it was now after 5pm and it would be getting dark before we got to our destination. The rental car guy gave us really specific directions that kind of made sense, but we were afraid we wouldn’t see what he was describing once we left. I had to actually “be the car” and role play the driving scenario. “Okay if I’m the car, and this tree is the bus station…what do we do?” We decided to rent a GPS just to be extra safe. Problem was, we couldn’t enter “1 Jungle Treehouse Lane” and it would say oh okay no problem turn left here! There was no actual address so it took them an extra half hour to program us to the closest destination. At this point, I’m panicking and yelling at them because we were burning precious daylight while they fiddled around and took their sweet ass time.
Back in the Kia we go, determined to get it right this time. We saw what looked like might be the correct turn, but it didn’t look like a real road so we decided to try to go straight. NOPE! WRONG AGAIN DUMMY! We were back on what I call the “Santo Domingo 500”-- an endless highway with no on or off exits for about 10 miles. Woohoo! I’m pretty sure this is our third lap around this track and we’ve had to pay the toll 3 times.... going to a different toll booth person each time as to not look like the complete idiots that we were….
We make our last lap and FINALLY get on the correct road!!! Two hours driving (okay, frantically speeding) down one straight road made us feel really good that we finally were going in the right direction. However, the guys with machetes walking on the side of the road and the cars approaching us full speed head on did NOT make us feel the same comfort. I drove through some pretty shady towns as darkness fell upon us. People, stray dogs, children, chickens, motorcycles with no lights, cars, potholes and speed bumps seemed to pop out at us at every turn! It was impossible to see anything driving on such a dark road with all of these obstacles, and as if it wasn’t hard enough, it started pouring rain. Christina looks over at me and says “we must have gotten to the next level in this video game, because it just got more difficult!”
After what seemed like days of driving, we reached Samana! It was a visibly nicer town and definitely looked super touristy with the people looking significantly less shady. Wait…our directions said nothing about these roundabouts! Which way do we go?! Not sure if we should continue to go even further into more darkness, we stop to ask for directions. A guy who claimed to be a tour guide and spoke terrible English offered to hop in our car and show us the way! Umm THANKS BUT NO THANKS AMIGO!
He told us to just keep going straight so we did and YAY! WE EVENTUALLY SEE THE SIGN! (Cue Ace of Base). We make a left and oh boy…it’s another long, dark, bumpy road. I was afraid the little Kia was going to bottom out or pop a tire on all the potholes and giant rocks and we would be stuck in the middle of this dark road that looked like the surface of the moon, with no way of getting help. More tiny cinder block huts lined the side of the road with people curiously peering at us, and as if we couldn’t get any more scared….a guy on a motorcycle shows up behind our car! ‘Please pass me, please pass me, just keep going, go around me and please disappear’ were the only thoughts in my head. BAM Level 3. No such luck (but at least it had stopped raining.) He held his position riding next to the car and I was too scared to look in his direction. Hold on…is that the sign for the tree house village!?! OMG we finally made it! We are here! We are safe! We are alive! But wait…the guy on the motorcycle just pulled up next to us. SHIT! Okay there is obviously no escaping him so let me ask him if he works here *rolls down the window a crack* Obviously he doesn’t speak English so I’m conversing with him in Spanish. He tells us that the tree house is about a 10 minute walk through the dark jungle path, but that if we just hop on the back of his motorcycle, he will give us a ride there! Oh thanks buddy, real convenient way to get killed. We politely thank him but turn down his oh-so-very-kind offer. But he is quite the persistent bandito! He takes Christina’s duffel bag from her and insists that he carries it for her. She lets him take it just to try to get him out of our hair (it was only full of clothes anyway), but he cuts in front of us with his bike and waves us to walk behind him. Oh. Okay. Sure. We will follow you through the dark path because I mean, at this point, what other choices do we have? Get back in the car and lock the doors and wait there like sitting ducks for him to pull out his machete or his gun and bust the doors open? Or get on the back of his bike and have him drive us to our doom? I rather go out with dignity at least giving myself a fighting (or running) chance. So, at this point I think we both wet our pants a little, but we reluctantly follow him along the path. He makes a left down a little hill and says “come this way, it’s much faster and easier to walk here.” Hmm, famous last words. Umm I don’t know, I think we prefer the way with the lights and the little signs with arrows that say “tree house” rather than the dark and sketchy path down the hill that leads to God knows where. But, since he has Christina’s bag and we didn’t want to piss him off, we followed him. We were following the same direction and could see the path lights above to our right, but when he sped ahead of us, cut the engine and the light on his bike, and we were left with only darkness around us, we had an intense moment of panic. Okay, I can’t see his light and can’t hear his motor anymore, which means he could be on foot. For all we know, he could be running back toward us, wielding his machete, ready to drag us to his hut. Completely panic-stricken and ready to cry and face our demise, Christina grabs my hand and we run like the wind back to the path. The adrenaline we had pumping through our veins turned the “10-minute walk” into a 30 second Usain Bolt Olympic sprint. We heard music, people laughing and we knew that we had finally arrived at the tree house. Sweating and out of breath, we almost collapsed onto the deck, kissed the ground and cried happy tears for arriving safely.
Frantically, I started talking a mile a minute telling the first person in a staff shirt, “my-flight-was-delayed-and-then-we-got-lost-for-2-hours-and-we-were-followed-by-a-guy-on-a-motorcycle-in-the-dark-and-holy-shit-do-you-know-what-we-have-just-been-through?! Also, do you have some water?” I think I was speaking too quickly for the guy to understand, but he sat me down at the bar and then Rafael came to the rescue. He was the nicest, most welcoming guy (and manager) and he made us feel so calm and welcome and comfortable. He offered us a complimentary welcome rum drink, gave us water, and told us not to cry and that we were home and everything was going to be amazing from this moment forward. Our motorcycle bandito showed up right behind us carrying Christina’s duffel bag. He shook hands with one of the employees and handed her the bag with a look like “what the hell crazy lady, I was just trying to help!” Oops, sorry bandito, you were a good guy after all, but you didn’t have to be so freakin sketchy in the dark jungle at 9:30pm. Thanks for the bag tho, good lookin out! Someone joked later on… “damn, your trip to the tree house seemed like an episode of naked and afraid or something” and Christina said, “yeah. And we were almost actually naked, and afraid!” LOL
Leo the chef came over with two plates of food and I wanted to jump up and hug him. We were starving and this food tasted like heaven. This was the very crazy, very frightening, very dark start to our amazing time at the tree house village. The rest of our time there was spent on amazing adventures: ziplining, bike riding, hiking, horseback riding, exploring caves, swimming in waterfalls, cliff jumping, tanning on pristine private beaches, snorkeling, swimming, eating local food, and most of all laughing with our awesome new friends and tree house family!
Even with the very rough start, I wouldn’t trade this experience for anything, and I think the scary beginning made us appreciate everything else that much more. As I said many times during this trip, “the risk is worth the reward.” And it totally was.
