Back to La Isabela

If you remember this post a while back, then this one should look a little familiar...

There was a "co-pay" (meaning CIEE arranges transportation and we pay for food and any entrance fees) trip to La Isabela and Playa el Castillo (for us gappers, a return trip). The day was like a shot-for-shot remake of the first time just us gap year students went - the same story about Columbus and the other early settlers, the ruins of La Isabela being bullzoed into the ocean on multiple occasions, and a walk through the little museum in the park. A group shot of the (remaining) gap year and liberal arts students:

Hopefully you can still recognize me. 

Just like our first visit, we headed to Playa el Castillo after el Parque Nacional La Isabela, and this time I actually have photos to prove it! (I also opted for the fish for lunch - which was amazing and one of the best decisions I've ever made. I really cannot get enough of the food here; it's always incredible!) 

Crystal clear waters here. I didn't think places like this really existed either.

I was actually there!

And, of course, just like the first time, we headed to another beach - Playa Grande - for only an hour or so afterwards and walked around on rocks:

Me, Cricket, and Anna - one of the liberal arts students - trying to find the best place to step without crushing too many hermit crabs.

And, as expected, we all felt the same way me, Cricket, and Avy felt after our initial trip to La Isabela and the beaches - exhausted. Spending the entire day at the beach is hard work. 

Cricket and I rested up, though, and went out the following night with two other liberal arts kids, Jaime and Emery, both of whom are hilariously entertaining (and, unbeknownst to us, both of them live literally down the street). We walked down to the monument where everybody else hangs out - families, friends, couples - and walked around for a while before the boys had to get their first round of food. There are dozens of pop-up restaurants and food carts in the parking lots around the monument, so we headed there. Good and fed, we walked a few blocks away to a pool hall to meet up with a girl from another study abroad program who was friends with Jaime and afterwards headed to a bar to hang out with the manager, José, another friend of Jaime and Emery and also a student at PUCMM. Somehow several hours had passed, so another feeding was in order. Headed back to the monument and got to have my first taste of yaroa - possibly the most magnificent street food in the world. Basically, it's just plantains (or FRENCH FRIES) topped with ground beef and tomato sauce, and cheese all over the top. It's amazing. 

The following weekend we got to go on another beach trip (I'm actually learning things here too) to one of the more isolated beaches on the island, Playa Ensenada. Like all the other beaches here, Playa Ensenada was beautiful, but what was really awesome about it was that you could take a half hour boat ride out to this tiny island and snorkel in the coral reefs around it for about $10 USD. 

 On our way to snorkel!

The tiny island. I told you it was tiny.

Lynne brought her waterproof camera so she got some really cool underwater shots:

...so you get an idea of what we got to see. You can't tell from these pictures but the current and the waves that day were strong. It was actually slightly terrifying trying to swim and also snorkel for the first time. But also awesome! Happy to pay the ten bucks to do it.

Unfortunately, after feeling completely fine and healthy during my day at the beach, the rest of my Halloween weekend did not go so smoothly...got to enjoy a bout of food poisoning/stomach flu/something equally horrible Saturday and Sunday - which I'm not pretty sure I caught from one of the kids at the guardaría...but I felt completely fine by Monday. Glad the first time I was sick here only lasted for a day or so! It's no fun being sick when it's warm out.

You can expect a slew of posts over the next few days - I've got to catch before I leave for my rural week in La Piedra on Saturday! More details to come...

Charcos!

Let's start with this: www.27charcos.com

The Friday after our weekend in Constanza, we headed north for a day trip to the 27 Charcos near Puerto Plata. "Charco" translates to "puddle" or "pool" - as in the pool beneath a waterfall. So the 27 Charcos is basically a connecting group of 27 waterfalls and the "charcos" beneath them - all of which are a part of the Río Damajagua that runs through Puerto Plata.

Anyway, we brought our river shoes, got our life jackets and helmets and started our hike to the first waterfall. There are no pictures from this excursion, unfortunately - we had to do a lot of swimming along the way and no one's camera would've survived. But the pictures on their website give you a good idea. It's also hard to capture the terror you feel when standing almost thirty feet above a pool you're about to jump into to in a picture. Yes, thirty feet. (Well, I think it was more like twenty-six.) That was the highest jump we made of the day and it was pretty terrifying. And awesome. It's a weird feeling, that moment before you jump, because it feels so against your human nature to just wildly jump off of something when you know you're already safe where you are! But it was still very, very fun.

We also got to slide down some of the smaller waterfalls, which was also amazing. (Even though I hit my head on the last one...) Afterwards we headed back to the visitor's center for a fabulous buffet lunch (all the food here is incredible, all the time in case I haven't made that clear) just as it started to rain. All in all a pretty amazing day. The first of many more awesome excursions.

Unfortunately, the next week's excursion I wasn't able to go on because I was sick...This one was to another waterfall/charco, actually - Charco de los Indios.

Stolen from Cricket.

Cricket went and said it was pretty sweet - and it looks like it. There's a big reddish colored rock in the center of the photo that archaeologists believe is was remains of a face sculpted by the Taínos, the native people of Hispaniola. I wish I had more to say about this place but I just don´t know much else about it unfortunately - I missed the lecture everyone got on the way there....but I know it sure looks interesting!

It's been forever, I know.

And I'm sorry about that. So. I don't really have an excuse...I've been busy? Somewhat true.

This weekend the Liberal Arts students, me, and Cricket are going to Samaná, a town in the east on the Samaná peninsula. We'll be there the whole weekend, so hopefully on Monday I will have plenty of pictures and stories to make a blog post...

Anyway, as far as anyone reading this is concerned, I'm still in Constanza. So, day two:

A delicious buffet breakfast (of course) before we set off for the Aguas Blancas waterfall nearly an hour-and-a-half away. We drove up bumpy, bumpy roads in "safari" style, meaning in seats in the bed of a pick-up. It's hard to explain exactly...this is where taking more pictures probably would've come in handy. Here's a view from said safari truck though:

What an ugly country. (Kidding!)

I did take pictures of the waterfall that we got to though...

 You'll notice some people swimming in the pool beneath the waterfall in this one. There's a reason I wasn't - it was freezing. Literally, it was below 32 degrees.

Taken by Lynne Guitar. 

Me, Sarah, and Andrea.

We stayed at the waterfall for about an hour, had some ham&cheese sandwiches and juice boxes, felt like we were in second grade, it was awesome.

That was pretty much the highlight of that day...had lunch back at the hotel, took a nap in the afternoon, BBQ-style dinner...The next day we were all super tired but me and pretty much all of the other girls decided to go into the actual town of Constanza which was pretty uneventful and *ahem* boring. It really is just a town in the middle of nowhere - what's exciting there is all the outdoorsy activities, not the little town.

And now I'll be taking a quick homework break (which I actually have today, crazy, I know) and then I'll be back to write another post...

Since it's been almost three weeks...

This might take a while.

Part 1

The Weekend-Before-Last:
Cricket, his fake brother (host brother) Vienne, and I went to Cabarete on the north coast (about fifteen minutes away from Sosuá) and stayed in a hotel that was USD$25 a night per room. We paid in cash. Which was weird. The hotel was a ten minute walk or so away from the beach, which was awesome and also horrible because we had to walk in the sun just to go sit in the sun so we could walk back in the sun to sit in a hot hotel (but out of the sun).

Cabarete is a very strange place. It's full of tourists but the parts we saw were still very obviously Dominican. Merengue blaring from most of the bars, motoconchos always asking if you need a lift, but also a lot of white people. Lots from Spain and other Spanish-speaking countries and also a fair share of americanos. I don't think there's anything I hate more than a stereotypical American beach-vacationer. We are obnoxious; I'm sorry, World.

We didn't do much in Cabarete besides hit the beach and search for a hairbrush since I forgot one (a harder search than you'd think). On Sunday we went to this beach that was created by the earthquake in Haiti a few years ago:

That floating body is Cricket. He's alive.

And we stayed there for a few hours before heading back to the bus station to wait for our bus. All in all it was a pretty nice weekend. I'm currently in the process of trying to figure out when I can go back.

Last Thursday Avy left. For America. For good. Well, she might be back, but I really, really doubt it. We'll see her again in Spain but I'll miss her antics until then.

Anyway, this weekend Cricket and I went with the CIEE Liberal Arts program students to a mountain town called Constanza. We left at 8:00 AM Friday morning which made for a very exciting bus ride. (It wasn't.) Constanza is about three hours away from Santiago so we all got to take a very nice nap. Cricket befriended Lynne's ten-year-old grandson, Brighton (he's Dominican), when he let him play with his iPad and listen to Spanish songs with bad words in them. Brighton was a little obnoxious but in the way that most ten-year-olds can be. The other girls in the Liberal Arts program were not amused, needless to say. 

We arrived at our hotel which was surprisingly gorgeous. We all got to stay in villas which I could've stayed and lived in for the rest of the trip. 

There were glasses and plates and pots and pans and everything. It was awesome.

We also had a gorgeous view from our balcony:

We checked in and got our room keys. Boys and gals were obviously split up so I got to room with three girls from the Liberal Arts program: Stephanie, Andrea, and Sarah. They were all super nice and we got along really well which was a relief since I had pretty much no idea what any of the Liberal Arts kids were like. We had a delicious buffet lunch (the food is basically always good here) in the hotel before setting off for a hike up el Alto de los Mañangüise. The route we took was the same that the rebels and guerrillas of the 14th of June Movement took - a group of exiled Dominicans living in Cuba hoping to overthrow Trujillo - while trying to run from Trujillo's army, though their attempt to topple the dictatorship failed.

At least they had a nice view.

The hike up was muddy and dirty and full of spiders and I don't even know what else - but it was a lot of fun. Our buses were waiting for us at the top which was such a beautiful sight after hiking uphill through wet clay and cow poop for an hour and a half. But don't get me wrong - it was awesome!

Andrea, me, and Stephanie half-way through the hike. And not yet completely covered in mud!

We headed back in the buses and showered before heading out for dinner. Because Constanza has a significantly cooler climate than the rest of the DR (I wore a sweater there for the first and last time in this country), we got to enjoya meal of things we don't usually get to eat here in Santiago - sanconcho, which is basically just a hot stew (guess why we don't eat it often) and everything strawberry. Strawberry juice (amazing), strawberry cheesecake with a strawberry glaze...it was fabulous. The Liberal Arts kids take dance classes at the university, so there was some dancing after dinner which was very entertaining...

Headed back to our villahhhs and all hung out in the boys' cabin for a while, played cards and watched The Other Guys in Spanish while trying to learn a dice game (which I still don't understand). Turned in pretty early since we were all exhausted and were excited for our adventures the next day.

And now I'll start working on Part 2... 

An Update Is Coming!

I promise.

Parque Nacional La Isabela

We have a weekly Dominican History & Culture class with the resident director here in the DR, Lynne Guitar. Yesterday marked the second class, which was actually a day-trip to Parque Nacional La Isabela. La Isabela was the first town that Columbus founded in the Americas, and now all that's left there are the ruins of the structures that once stood there in 1493.

Ruins of a building in La Isabela. The boxes mark where columns would have been placed to hold the roof up.

In the 1950's, a group of German researchers wanted to visit the site of La Isabela to do some archaeological work and see what they could dig up (pun intended) about Columbus and the rest of its early settlers. This was during the time of Trujillo's rule, a dictator who ruled over the Dominican Republic from 1930 until his assassination in 1961. He told one of his generals that Germans were coming to visit La Isabela, and told the general to "clean up" the site. The general took this to mean bulldozing everything and anything in La Isabela into the ocean, which of course was not Trujillo's intention. 

Trujillo probably bulldozed his general into the same ocean.

In 1992, in preparation for the 500th anniversary of Columbus's arrival in the Americas, the Dominican government decided to make the former site of La Isabela into a National Park , complete with a museum and gift shop. (It's not really a gift shop, just a little warehouse where people try to get you to buy their wood carvings.) They also sell freshly made juice there which is delicious (as it always is here).

So we walked around the ruins for a while, saw a graveyard where the 38 Spanish men who were left behind when Columbus sailed back to Spain (wasn't enough room on the Niña for them; it was the only ship left) were buried (well, not really, the bodies were taken back to Spain because the Spaniards didn't like the idea of burying one of their own in the "savages'" land) and saw Columbus's house:

There were walls when Columbus lived there.

After La Isabela we drove just down the road to a beach called Playa Castillo where we had fresh fish (I had chicken. Tried the fish and it was good, but it tasted like fish. And I don't like fish.), tostones, salad, and Presidente beer. I was stupid and took zero pictures, but Lynne has some on her iPhone which may find there way onto my computer at some point or another. But anyway, the beach was beautiful, swimming was like taking a bath, we got to go snorkeling and see some awesome fish in the coral reefs further off shore...all-in-all a very good day. Lynne had insisted earlier that this wasn't going to be a "beach trip" but that's basically exactly what it was. After Playa Castillo we headed down the road another fifteen minutes to Playa Grande. Playa Castillo is in a bay so there are relatively few waves and the water is incredibly warm. Playa Grande had significantly larger waves and a definite undertow, so there wasn't much swimming there. Especially after I bumped into a jellyfish - I didn't get stung! Just brushed up against the mushy top part, and apparently it was a jellyfish that doesn't sting, which I wasn't even aware existed. 

Playa Grande was the last stop before heading back to Santiago, which would take a good two hours or so. On the way back one of the tires on Lynne's car went flat and we had to stop pretty much in the middle of nowhere (and in the Dominican Republic, "middle of nowhere" means middle of nowhere) but thankfully there was a little family of farmers that came out to help us out. And of course, in true Dominican fashion, the few motorists that came along stopped and offered their help. Spare tire successfully on we continued on our way back into the city without any further incidents.

Back in Santiago Cricket and I decided we wanted to go out (it was Saturday night after all, but Avy was a tired party-pooper) so we did just that. We actually ended up running into some of the Liberal Arts students here on a CIEE study abroad program through their various universities. They've been here for over a month now, compared to our two weeks, and we were very pleased to find out that they had made some English-speaking Dominican friends. Who had cars. We ended up going out with them to some little bar-hangout place for drinks and then to a surprisingly classy dance club inside of a casino. Classier than it sounds, trust me. So nice to be around people that knew where to go and what to do around town, definitely need to hang out with them more!

On a completely unrelated note, I saw a tarantula today! And yes, I screamed. Not as loud as Avy, but it was definitely audible. We were walking through the PUCMM campus, which is basically a giant park with some buildings and a road running through it, so there are obviously a lot of...things living in it. We were walking along the road when Cricket said "What is that?" And we ran. I went back to take a look when Cricket confirmed it was dead. Can't believe there are people that keep them as pets... Moral of the story: I hope I never see one again. And if there is ever one in my house I might have to come back home, not gonna lie. Overcoming arachnophobia is a long process.  

Commenting

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