Day 16. Been here for over two weeks and i must admit, i really don´t have that much to report. We start off the trip with much anguish and anxiousity for my mama, who was supposed to arrive two days before me. However, with invading ice stroms, she got to spend an eventful 7 hours on the tar mate the first day and on the 2nd she and ella novio (her boyfriend) spent much of the better half of standing outside on a cold winter day in Philly. Traveling to a tropical climate one thinks that they probably WON´T need there winter coat...but always expect the unexpected i suppose. I learned that one today...but I´ll get to that.
So after much pleading by mother to get to the island before ¨Her Dear Daughter Amy from Seattle...¨ ( i´m paraphasing) Only to once finally arriving we embrake on beautiful villa in the Coco Tal golf and country club community. Sounds Fancy huh? Well, i suppose it was in that cookie cutter totallly superficous kind of way...but the Kicker? No power. Like living in the cabin all over again! Except for the problem is not too cold, but too hot. The first days we were there were the hottest and not the comfort you would expect from your ¨Luxrious All Inclusive Tropical Vacation¨ The most prized possession of the first 4 days we were there, living without power or light, was my head lamp. The family was very impressed (and jealous) of my handy dandy hands free device.
Once the power FINALLY turned on we stopped having to go to the damn Supermarco EVERYDAY! WE wasted a lot of time doing that, and not to mention having to eat out for everymeal. Luckily my dear mama and steve helped me out a bunch, so I have managed to spend relatively nothing in comparison to how long I´ve been here. I can´t believe it been two weeks...I can´t believe I finally starting my part of the journey. Where I go and do whatever I want. Ah, freedom...has it ever smelled so sweet? The first week was spent in mass disarray as me and my coherts tried to get accustomed to cold spong baths in the tube...in the dark. Luckily we had candles....no matches, but we borrowed some from out slightly alcoholic neighbor Pasquale...who by the way sees it as divine intervention that I am doing volunteer work. YOu see, he was talking to god and asked him to send him a sign if he should get involved in volunteer. And guess who got to be his sign? I don´t think I´ve ever played that role before;)
So onto the rest of the week. Once the power got on people got a little more comfortable...minus the almost 9 hours we spent in the car traveling to Playa Limon...a beach that was supposed to be amazing, right next to a lagoon with mangroove forests that you can take a boat ride through!(LOL) So after traveling...and traveling on roads (sometimes lack there of, huge gaps engulfed some parts of the road as if it had been washed away...which it probably had) we finally reached a beach. NOt our destination, but it didn´t really matter b-c as we arrived it started pouring down rain. As we drove slowly, windshield wipers on low for some reason beknowst to me, but hey i wasn´t driving and by that point I wish I wasn´t driving or any where near the car at all. Steve, my mamas boyfriend, decided it was my fault that we had ended up in this predicament and I needed to be repermaned...after excepting the blame, eating drinking el Prisidents(best beer in the country, they say...) i felt altogether sick and tired. That expedition was supposed to be my day, out of my guide book and something I wanted to do, opposed to the rest of the week that i spent doing whatever the happy couple wanted...being the third wheel sure is rough sometimes! So the day turned rather disasterious, and we went on our merry way home, to power on my moms second to last day in Hispaniola.
The week with me and Steve was rather surprising. He dropped is cocky attitude and we got to know each other as people, rather then titles. Had conversations about my brother John and Religion, that turned into rather interesting exchange of morals, values and our general outlook on life.
Steve left on thursday...then came back...then left again on Friday. He missed his plane, so we spent a most enjoyable evening at the neighbors drinking rum and cokes and talking. When he finally left things got a lot better for me...even though i have been anxious about trying to make travel plans, buy a phone, getting around on local gua guas (buses)...But i´m getting better. Learning more and more to greet everything with a smile and the way it happens is exactly the way it suppose to be.
So after buying my phone saturday, calling mi familia to let them know I´m fine (as the parental units has flew into a franzy bounding over there uneasiness and fear of me being alone in a dangerous poor country). The email my mother sent had the topic of ¨Please do not take this trip...¨ with full offer to pay for my ticket home if i left right then. Wouldn´t that had been funny? ok, guys bye! See you in two in half months...u later see we a week and a half later hoping you don´t recognize me b-c I´d have to admitt of changing my travel plans b-c my mama said so! heehee,:)
So, i declined and said that my guide book says it a safe place to travel alone, even females. So i feel they would know, having traveled the whole country and written the book and all...
This brings us to the day of my departure. The man who rescued my from my negative anxiousity (about having to find a way back to town to buy a phone card b-c i had used up all my minutes talking about nothing to my parents!)simply picked me up for free, took me around to the store which was closed then managed to find a card for me down a very dominican dirt road full of dust, pot holes and mucho moto cochos y personas. We aggreed he would pick me up the next day (today) at 630 am to get to the bus station( that again, the same story as the long travels to buy the phone, went all the way around, instead of taking the back entrence that literally take 3 minutes to get to town instead of 20! So he doesn´t show (of course) and the next taxi i order arrives a few minutes late, charging my too much to go down the street...but when you don´t speak the language well, and don´t know where things are, i always end up with the pleasant surprise of finding out that i could have gotten there SO much quicker!) any how, get to the bus station, the bus is full...so that is how you LUCKY readers get to hear the FULL scoop on my trip. I have four ahoras to kill until the next bus. (i knew i should have bought a ticket before, but the man who i meant at Pasquales, who is from Bonow, my next stop, said i wouldn´t need to) Next time I´´m going to follow my instinct and plan and organize like comes naturally to me. Talking on the phone is always a challenege( as is in person, but i usually luck out and if i can´t understand someone, there is someone else who can and tells me whats going on).
So I sit in a cold internet office,(much relief from the hot sunny sweaty day that is made worse by the black asphalt not to mention my 40 lb pack that i lug arround with the surprised and usually confused stares from the community. I must look so stupid to them! Little girl with this hug pack, leaning forward under the weight trying to smile and breath and think of how lucky i am to get to gain strength from my walk with my heavy bad as well as let all my caring and wonderful friends and family EXACTLY how i´ve been doing! I hope you aren´t bored to tears by my account. But I hardly ever seem to find time to sit down and write but i have more then enough excess tiempo today:)
Ok, so off to the capital, then another bus to bonao in the mountains. I week there at an ecotourist place volunteering. Spanish classes in the morning, volunteer during the day and hopefully so adventure somewhere thrown in between. THe talled peak in the carribean is in the DR, 10,000 ft. I doubt I´ll hike all the way up, but theres alot of different hikes and horse rides to various mountain towns, waterfalls, and stuff of that nature. Can´t wait.
Then a stop in santiago(2nd largest city) to check out the best muesum in the country, do some yoga,(the only yoga instruction I have been able to find in the whole country! there must be more...)and see some music, and play or something of that nature.
Then off to do more volunteer work in Puerta Plata (suncampdr.com) at this rustic hotel. <More spanish, surfing, kite boarding...and god knows what else! about 3 and half weeks there and then back to the capital to take a formal spanish program. 1 week with a familia, 4 50 minute spanish lessons a day(perhaps i´ll actually be able to retain some of this when i get home...i plan on doing volunteer work with spanish kids to keep it fresh in at the forfront...i don´t want to look it, the goal is fluency!)
After that(probably) up to the penisula, supposedly the most beautiful, serene, quite, remote part of the island. I´ll about 2 weeks left at that point and I´m going to try to do some volunteer work at this sustainable ecotourist spot that works with locals and the ecosystem to help rebuild after much deteration from over use. (i won´t even go into the story of my first scuba dive, to a barren coral reef, another among various other disappoints from the beginning of the trip) but i am now in high spirits, even after the minor set back of leaving 7 hours after the time i was trying to. Going to bed late, after cooking a ton of the left over food for various poor workers that are in the resort, cleaning bc steve is trying to rent the place tomorrow, and packing. a late nite that my mind and body had a hard time relaxing from. Pretty much no sleep, running on fumes...but i´m ok, happy and excited to see and do something new!
alright, so thats my life in words. I hope you all are doing well. email me, leave me a comment, i´d love to hear from you all and see how you are doing!
much love and positive vibrations form south of the border!
Love
Amalie
