Dunst Hunting

As we were nearing the last leg of our journey, Erik and I found ourselves with nearly three hours to kill in LAX. To pass the time we engaged in our favorite LAX activity, namely arguing if the people are better looking in LA or in the bay area (each ardently defends his/her homeland). When we tired of this we moved on to obsessivley tring to beat each other's all-time best yahtzee scores (to be honest, it was Erik trying to top my legendary 417, while I relaxed, confident that my crown would defend itself.) Even this eventually grew tiring, but we lacked the motivation to come up with something else to do. Then I glimped her, our motivation, who, in this case, was dressed like Kirsten Dunst. We wanted to make sure, so we quickly tailed her, thinking we could head her off at the pay phone, but she slipped into the bathroom before we could accost her with our poperazzi gawking. Like good stalkers we patiently waited outside. I racked my brain trying to remember her hair color in the most recent celebrity tabloids, cursing myself for not recalling if she was one of those celebrities who bleached her hair out every summer. Then she emerged, and to our amazement, she wasn't Kirsten Dunst. Erik said, "she looks about as much like Kirsten Dunst as you look like Clair Danes.". I can't figure out if he was trying to make me feel better or worse. Then he scored 429 at yahtzee.

Frizzy Lizzie

There is another Frizzy Lizzie in the world (good thing we spell it differently).

We met her our first day in the DR. When I was in line in the ladies room at the museum we visited in Santiago, the woman with very curly blond hair behind me asked, in perfectly unaccented English, "Which part of the states are you from?" I told her California and asked which state she called home. "Oh, I am from here, in Santo Domingo," she replied, "but my father is from the Mid-west."
"Cool," I said. We proceeded to chat about our travel experiences, the good places to visit in the DR, and our higher education goals (she wants to get her masters in law at Stanford). As we washed our hands I asked, "what's your name?"
"I am Lizzie," she beemed. I knew then and there that we would be friends forever.
We emerged from rest room gossiping like old friends, much to Erik's surprise, and there were introductions all around. Since we had planned to spend the last couple days of our trip in Santo Domingo we exchanged contact information and then went on our way.

Fast forward to last Saturday.

Erik and I met up with Lizzie again in Santo Domingo. Lizzie picked us up at our hotel in her sweet convertible and took us out for a night on the town. We started with dinner and drinks at a fantastic Dominican restaurant with local paintings decorating the walls, and a mariachi band playing in the bar. Then, Lizzie showed us the town through a locals eyes. It was perfect way to spend our last night in the Dominican Republic.

I can't wait for her to come to Stanford. She is so fun (and has great hair).

Trek to Santo Domingo

Today, we started out around noon bound for Santo Domingo.

We stopped in Puerta Plata to see the amber museum. It was definitely worth while to see what specimens they had. The best one was a small piece with an entire lizard in it. It's rare to find any vertebrates in amber so this one was a treat. It looked like many of the geckos that we saw in the Dominican and the tail was separated from the rest of the body by a little space. Perhaps the little guy released his tail to try to escape the deadly resin :)

The rest of the journey was pretty uneventful except for two traffic incidents. Let me just take this moment to complain about drivers in DR. They are maniacs and there are no rules of the road... none. If you are a big truck you easily have the advantage to run the little cars off the road, and if you are a little car, you have the advantage of being able to drive on the sidewalks, in the dirt shoulders, and through the brush to get around and in front of other drivers. You are also less likely to get hit as you blaze through the red lights of any given intersection.

The first incident caused me to hit an elevated concrete brim on the side of the road after a large truck decided he wanted to be in front of me. It really wasn't a big deal but did give us both a scare.

The second incident was more exciting. We happened to come to a standstill on the freeway from Santiago to Santo Domingo when a jackknifed big rig blocked all however many lanes there were. This wasn't the first truck that we passed in a predicament, but the other was a grain truck in the brush and people were already scooping out grain from it by hand into a rescue grain truck. After a little while of waiting suddenly it became clear that we had to take the detour, which was a small road through a couple little towns and back on the freeway. Cool, huh? But it's a free for all to get onto this little road. There were big rigs doing three point turns on the highway, racing their way down the little road and everyone was pushing forward. If you were stuck on that little road going the opposite direction, you were pretty much screwed. The madness mad the street a one way thoroughfare. The people in the town must have got a kick out of the situation because we passed many of them hanging out on their patios drinking and sitting on top of the parked cars laughing at us. One area even had some music blasting since it was fiesta time and having loud music makes you the most awesomest on the block.

So, the trek took about 8 hours from start to finish.

Mucho Nachos

We had dinner tonight at Pitu's, which I rate pretty highly on the list of good restaurants on the ocean front in Cabarete. We got Mucho Nachos, a huge portion of nachos, cheese, chilis, and calories.

Monkey in the middle

This afternoon, with our new friends from the resort, we played Monkey in the Middle in the pool for just about way too long. I looked like a raison at the end of it... well my fingers did anyway.

Cavern hunting

On Thursday, our last full day in Cabarete, we decided to get up a bit early and go cavern hunting. Cabarete has some local caves at the edge of town and we went searching for them down this rugged dirt road. We got to a point where the Nisson Sentra just couldn't go any farther and was bottoming out over the rocks so we got out and hiked for a couple of miles down the trail. We went into the trees and passed pastures with horses and cows... a couple of them said hi to us so we took their pictures.

There were a few small houses and farms along the route. Finally, we had to turn back when a herd of cattle was being driven down the trail at us and we were a bit afraid of passing them on the narrow path.

It was a nice hike and, yes, we finally found the caverns. It turned out that there was a tour to see them that started from the begining of the dirt road that we just happened to pass by. In the end, we were pretty tired and didn't take the tour. From what we know, the caves are 3 holes in the rocks surrounding a lagoon near Cabarete.

July 4th party

Wednesday was our opportunity to go out with all the people we met at the resort over the week. We met up with about 10 of them ranging in age from 17 to 29 (and yes, I was the oldest). We headed to a bar called Ono's whcih had happy hour specials on pitchers until 11. It was a lot of fun to hang out with the group and make some new friends. No fireworks except with Liz, but I am pretty well known to be out of the US on most July 4ths (thanks Sun Microsystems for the shutdown week).

Scuba Diving in DR

Today, Liz and I got up early for our second attempt at scuba diving. Yesterday, we had some trouble because the group that was going had a lot of experience and were going on some 32m dives, which is a little bit too deep for us.

We met Alan, our dive master and he drove us out to Rio San Juan, the city where we met the boat and took off. The boat was in this fresh water lagoon and to go out to the ocean, you motor down this narrow waterway with mangrove trees all over the place. We saw vultures and other white birds bouncing round the roots of the trees above the water.

Our first dive spot was exciting. We saw a lot of fun things including trumpet fish, a blow fish, an eel, a scorpion fish, tons of coral, Liz saw a ray, and millions of other fish and interesting formations. The visability was terrific I thought, especially after my 5 ft vis in Monterey a couple weekends ago. It was also nice to be the only two people on the trip for the day.

Our second dive was much smoother for me. I had no trouble getting down and equalizing. The fish were a lot friendlier too. There was one who came right at my mask and made me flinch a bit. Liz tried to catch another one, but with no success.

Overall, I'm glad I got my scuba certification and could actually see myself doing this whenever I am on vacation.

Dive 1:
50 ft, 50 min, corals, reefs, cave inlets.
Dive 2:
40 ft, 45 min, sandy bottom, corals.

Surfing DR

The conventional surfing here is not so great, but we are in the windsurf capital of the world, so we figured we would give a new kind of surfing a shot. It was so fun. We were riding beginners boards which means they were HUGE. I would say they were more like boats than boards really. But they were fun in their own way. For example, if I caught the wind at just the right angle so that I sailed along at a decent clip, and then belted out sea shanties at the top of my lungs, I felt like I could almost pass as Captain Jack Sparrow. Yargh!

Another important lesson learned: don't wear a hat with a seven inch brim in the windsurf capital of the world.

Tapas and some new friends

Tonight, we went out for dinner at this nice tapas place which had happy hour and we devoured an entire wheel of Camembert cheese which I didn't think was a big deal. Liz told me later that I should just have a stick of butter instead. Oh well, it was good.

During dinner, we met some Americans who were sitting at the table right next to us. After about five minutes of conversing so that everyone on the beach could hear us, we decided to invite them to our table. I don't have a picture of all four of us, but here are a couple of pictures of them and us that night.

It was good to meet some people from the US and one was even from Encitas, close to where I grew up in San Diego. It's funny how small the world becomes as you travel through it. Anyway, it was a good night of laughs (I won't forget the pole dancing story for a while) and hearts (the card game in which Liz kicked all of our asses).

Pretty Pizza with a Cherry on Top

For lunch today Erik and I decided to have a pizza since it is a rather popular dish here, and we found an ocean front pizza place with very reasonable prices. Much to my delight, their "Hawaii" pizza was described as having pineapple and cherries, which saves us the trouble of having to order "no ham" in Spanish ("sans jaman?") Besides, I love trying new things and have never had cherry pizza before, plus it is cherry season...in California. This occurred to me well into the pizza baking process. I suddenly realized that it was likely that the canned pineapple on the pizza would be accompanied by maraschino cherries. Now, maraschino cherries are great on ice cream and in Shirley Temples, but on pizza? It turns out my premonition was correct, and we were indeed served a canned pineapple and maraschino cherry pizza. But you know what? It wasn't so bad after all. Actually, it was pretty good. I might just import this custom to the US.

¿Dónde Está el Translator?

Have you ever noticed that Americans tend to yell at people who don't speak English as if increased volume will help them understand? Apparently yelling makes other languages comprehensible too.

Yesterday Erik and I asked a man for some directions. We began the conversation inquiring as to whether he spoke any English since we couldn't remember the Spanish words for left and right. He didn't speak English, but like most of the people we have encountered here, he really wanted to help us. He proceeded to yell directions at us in Spanish all the while flailing his arms as if we could navigate our car directly up.

A gecko in the room

The island is beautiful, tropical, and hot, humid, and sunny... except for the occasional afternoon down pour. I went for a swim and a walk on the beach Saturday morning. The beach near our resort is clear of people for quite a few miles, since we are just on the edge of town. There is drift wood on the shore and sand as far as I could see.

Liz has been teasing me every time we have seen a gecko because she knows that I like to chase and capture the little devils. I ran after a couple, but they are pretty quick and their four little legs move a lot faster than my two, so I figure I am at a disadvantage. Luckily, when we got back to the room, I noticed that there was one next to the couch waiting for me to catch him. So, he is certainly already trapped and I can just take my time and plan out my abduction.

It's just like driving in Boston

So, the exciting part of driving in Santiago is that it reminds me of the time that I had to drive in Boston. There are 2 lane on the main highways, but actually, if you look really hard, you can see about 4 lanes on each side, and if there are motorcycles, then probably 5 lanes. Plus, there are people hanging out playing cards on the side of the road and just chilling in the nice warm climate.

My suggestion is to drive defensively, NOT. If you do, you'll end up in the dust while everybody passes you. But it was fun if you are into avoiding obstacles and high tension driving like I am.

So, the drive through the mountains was quite nice. There are green green green mountains and lots of little villages along the road to Puerta Plata. We had fun.

Un-Strung Hero

Tonight Erik and I were lured by the sound of an Eagles cover into an Irish Pub on the beach called Jose O'Shays (no joke, that is really the name of the place). Turns out the cover band was actually a guy with a guitar and a computer that did drums and back-up vocals. Part-way through a Beatles tribute, we noticed something funny about the guy's guitar. It didn't actually have strings. There were buttons on all the frets and little metal bars across the body which he strummed as if they were strings. The best part, when he pushed a couple buttons on the back his "guitar" started sounding an awful lot like a piano. It was like watching someone who took guitar hero to a higher level. What next? Electric flutes?

Miami

We are on the airplane leaving Miami. The flight was delayed for a couple of hours but that gave us a chance to find some seating without hand rails for me to sprawl out on and take a snooze.

The airport population is quite different in Miami than in Los Angeles, or for that matter, San Jose. It's still good people watching though.

Hopefully I'll pick up some Spanish rather quickly once we get to DR. One the place, I tried to help this woman to her seat, and all I could muster saying "la" which I am pretty sure is some other language.

The Best Part About Getting Ready for this Trip

I finished all my packing around 10 am this morning. That is a fully 11 hours before leaving. I don't think I have ever been so on top of the packing. The best part is, I managed to pack 5 pairs of shoes and way more outfits than days I will be gone, and somehow, I still have space in my suitcase for souvenirs, lots of them (if they are small). I sure hope I didn't forget something...

The Start of the Trip

So, I am off the the Dominican Republic for a week. I am really looking forward to my first vacation of the year, and I always enjoy going to a tropical island for a relaxing and adventurous stay. We are staying at this resort in Cabarete, a town along the northern coast of DR. It's going to be a week of seeing the northern coast and then driving all the way down to Santo Domingo for a two day stay in the south.