Sunday, March 1, 2009

...and the good times continued.

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This is a little frog that made a really cool noise who lives in the caves.

After the caves we went and watched the windsurfers on Cabarete, said by some to be the windsurfing capital of the world.
I ate a sweet mango and some Haitian women came up and haggled me into getting my hair braided.

We stayed the night on Cabarete at this awesome hotel right on the beach. The guy at the counter said that you can hear the music from the bar at night but we still couldn't understand why it was so cheap.

The view was awesome, the location perfect, the room was clean...and then the music started. It was the most raucous party I have ever heard! We, fortunately, were able fall asleep anyways thanks to some training on the loud streets of Harlem.

The next day we had virgin pina coladas for breakfast from the bar downstairs and then took off on a gua gua tour of the north coast. We were on 5 different beaches in one day. We stayed in a hotel on Malecon with another ocean view.

The next morning we left on our way to the waterfalls. This was the thing I was looking forward to the most. We took a few Gua Guas out into the country and I hired a few guides, Amilka and Gabby to take me up the falls. They grew up around the falls and they think of them like their own backyard. They were amazing guides!!

We started hiking up a river and then we got to the first waterfall.

We climbed up 8 waterfalls using ladders and ropes and sometimes just climbing up the rocks.
When we got to number 8 I needed I decided to start heading back so they showed me how to get back. To get down #8 you jump 25 - 30 feet into the pool at the base of the falls. This is me ready to jump.
The rest of the seven were a series of natural waterslides and jumping off the rocks. It was beautiful and SO much fun.

After getting back from the falls we jumped in another series of gua guas and headed to the airport. We missed our flight by a few minutes so we hung out in the airport for a while enjoying the warmth and then headed back to New York. It was murder getting myself on that plane and getting myself off of it into the cold NYC weather was even worse, but I made it back, for better or for worse.

3 comments:

Sue said...

I love the braiding in your hair. What did your student's say? The waterfalls look great! Sounds like a perfect vacation!

laura said...

Brian and I are shocked- this is not how we pictured the DR. It looks absolutely incredible, and the latest spot on my "vacation getaways" list. You look so great and so happy there. I guess that's what vacations, beaches and pina coladas will do to a person.

Roger said...

What a great adventure. I wanna go.