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.
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