Six Days, Seven Nights: Santo Domingo, Monte Cristi, and Santiago

Thomas and I arrived in Santo Domingo on the 29th and stayed at Hostel Nòmadas, my favorite hostel. They always make sure that I´m taken care of no matter what. Their rooms are clean and comfortable too, with hot water, air conditioning, and a fridge for only $40. We stayed there until the third and I was able to give Thomas an insider´s tour of Santo Domingo with Wilman´s help. I think we ended up staying too long in Santo Domingo and may have even had a chance to visit Miches if we had planned better, but I think we both still had fun. Then we took a Caribe Tours bus to Monte Cristi, which only ended up being a 4 and a half hour trip when it was supposed to take over 6 hours. It was because the roads were good. I didn´t really like Monte Cristi that much because there wasn´t much to do so we headed to Santiago for a night after I had accomplished all of my lobster house duties. Santiago was interesting. We went to the Centro Leon, which is a museum dedicated to the history of the DR. We were the only people in there besides three others. It was the most deserted museum that I have ever been in. They had some interesting exhibits though. Then we went to the Monument in the center of town and had to pay to get to the top and take pictures. It had a fantastic view of Santiago. I liked Santiago. Thomas described it like Boston compared to New York. It is smaller, cleaner, and the people are better educated and have a higher income. It´s carro pùblico system is also a lot easier to understand because there are only a few main roads, making it difficult to take the wrong route. The photos shown here are a little out of order because blogger.com can be difficult sometimes, especially for someone as technologically-uninclined as I am.

This is a photo of Thomas on top of the hill we hiked in Monte Cristi. I love this photo, despite what he says. :P

This is a photo of Rinconcito, monastery ruins where they have live music ever Sunday night. People start setting up their chairs around five and the show starts at 7. The entire hillside is covered with people. It is my favorite event to go to in Santo Domingo.

Here is a photo of the Faro de Colòn (Christopher Columbus´s lighthouse), which is called by one tourist ¨an architectural atrocity¨. In the book I read over the summer about the history of the Dominican Republic, ¨Why the Cocks Fight,¨ it said that millions of dollars were spent to build it and when they turned it on for the first time, the entire city of Santo Domingo lost power. Now they only turn it on during Columbus day and it shots a light in the form of a giant cross into the sky. It is a complete waste of money.

Here is a photo inside Los Tres Ojos, the system of caves outside of Santo Domingo. It was really cool. This cave is open to the air and you can hear merengue and bachata music drifting down from the guardhouse. In order to get to it you have to use a ferry through the caves that costs 20 pesos.
Here is a photo of the view from the hill we hiked in Monte Cristi. That mountain is called ¨El Morro¨or the plateau. We wanted to hike it but it is a reserve so it is not allowed.

Here is a photo of the guagua we took to the airport outside of Santo Domingo. Darien had left my phone at the Europecar office so that I could use it while I was in the capital and in Monte Cristi. Unfortunately I didn´t know it was there when I got off the plane so had to go back to the airport. Usually it is a $30-40 cab ride each way. Since I didn´t want to pay that hefty price, which was actually more than the phone cost, I combined tourism with business and along the way was able to introduce Thomas to the guagua system, a motoconcho ride, gave him a tour of La Caleta park, went to Los Tres Ojos, and the Faro de Colòn. I also was able to prove that you could get to the airport without paying a taxi and we ended up only paying 150 pesos for the two of us. We took the guagua to Boca Chica from around Parque Enriquillo that cost 90 peso and they dropped us off about 1.5 km to the airport. The we took a motoconcho the rest of the way for 60 pesos. On the way back we took a cab ride to Los Tres Ojos and I was able to talk the driver down to 500 pesos and we walked all the way back to Zona Colonial, but did some sight-seeing along the way.

On New Year´s Eve we hung out with Wilman and his friends Sandy and Yimmy. We went to Yimmy´s house, where were were introduced to canasta. Then we went to Yimmy´s aunt´s house for a delicious dinner and some dancing. After a few drinks I was able to convince them to take me to the Malecon, the road by the ocean, where there was fireworks, live music, and a live broadcast from NYC! It looked a lot colder there than it was in the DR. This is a photo that Thomas took of Wilman and I dancing. I think that it came out looking pretty cool!
Here is a photo of all of us before we went to go to Yimmy´s aunt´s house (except for Thomas because he is taking the picture). In order from left to right is Yimmy, Sandy, me, and Wilman.
On our way back from visiting the food market on the 27th de Febrero (the Dominican Republic´s Independence Day, which is also Thomas´s birthday!), we came across Chinatown! I was excited to see it because it is rare to see Asians or any foreigner for that matter in the Dominican Republic that are not tourists. This is a photo of him with the statue of the Chinese immigrant. :)

Return Trip

Yesterday I booked my flight tickets for the DR! My boyfriend and I are going on December 29th. I'm staying until the 19th, but he's only staying until a week later. I'm planning on spending a few days in Santo Domingo with him and to see the New Year's fireworks that happens every year in Santo Domingo. Then we are off to Monte Cristi so that I can learn more about the lobster houses there. Angel, the head of the program there, is supposed to be there as well, so I'll have a translator and I'll actually get to talk to him in person after our numerous e-mail and phone calls. My goals while I'm there are to check the lobster houses, interview the fishermen, and learn all I can about the program. Then we might have enough time to go to Miches before Thomas has to leave so that I can show him where I spent my summer. : )

I found out yesterday as well that 40 more houses are going to be built this weekend! It's a good thing that I'm constantly logged in on skype or I never would have known. I chatted with Henry for a bit in the morning and that night Victor asked me for bus information because he is helping with the construction and is coming in from Punta Cana. This means that the houses might be in the water by the time I get there and that I can check them for lobsters, collect GPS points and any other information that hasn't been collected. The houses are going to be split between two communities: Los Mameyes (the community that already has the houses) and Sabana de Nisibon (the community that Angela is stationed in). Juan is going to be collecting data on the lobster catch that is brought in, including all of the information that I collected this summer, such as the fishing method, number of lobsters, species, weight, sex, carapace length, total length, tail length, and presence of eggs.

New England Lobster Dinner

Last weekend I went home to celebrate my mom's birthday and she decided that she wanted a lobster dinner. Since we were going to have our dinner celebration on Sunday, we went to buy the lobsters from the lobster truck that operates out of the Auburn Traffic Circle. They have the cheapest lobsters in town!

Here's a photo of the lobster flag that they put out in the parking lot they are based out of. I want one.

The lobster truck! One of these in NYC would make a killing! Who cares about wasabi ice cream from the Big Gay Ice Cream Truck when you could be eating lobsters?

The owner of the truck displaying his seven pound lobster. It costs $42! My dad told me that my grandmother would buy one of these lobsters for herself and eat the whole thing for dinner. I think I inherited her appetite for lobster.

We brought our lobsters home and Mom thought it would be a good idea to bring the lobsters out for some fresh air before they got put in the pot and I agreed. We taught them to play some few sports as well. I was continually reminded of the poem the Walrus and the Carpenter. Do you think it was cruel of us to put these poor animals through this torture? I still don't know, but the resulting pictures were pretty cute. : )

Keep that ball rolling!

This lobster looks a little threatening with that bat. I wouldn't want to mess with him.

We bought 5 3 pound lobsters and they provided us with 8 lobster sandwiches and a fantastic lobster dinner. We cooked them on Saturday and reheated them for dinner on Sunday in order to cook them fresh. The lobsterman said that the lobsters would last in the refrigerator until the next day if we wanted to cook them then. It seemed cruel to keep them alive out of water for that long and would probably taste better cooked fresh anyways. They did get to enjoy their lawn sports though. : )

New Job Description: Coral Gardener

Last Monday through Wednesday I spent in Punta Cana volunteering at the Ecological Foundation. It was a blast and I helped Victor, who was the Peace Corp volunteer in La Caleta when they were building the lobster houses. His job now is to take care of the coral nursery that is growing two species of coral that almost disappeared in the 1990s due to white band disease. He also travels throughout the DR to find populations of the coral to increase the genetic diversity of the coral growing in the nursery and to maybe start building more nurseries across the country. The purpose of my trip was to help with the coral project and to talk to the fishermen in Punta Cana because they have a few lobster houses that were built with the help of Colleen, a former Peace Corp volunteer who was the first to build lobster houses in the DR.

To get to Punta Cana, I left Miches on the 5:40 guagua through Sabana de Nisibon to Otra Banda, a town outside of Higuey. This trip took three hours because the roads were so bad. Then, I took a guagua from Otra Banda to Punta Cana, which took another hour. I got to Punta Cana around 9:30. Victor briefly told me about the project, showed me some pictures, and told me what we were going to do. Our first dive was at 11:30 and we went out with a group that was going snorkeling.

Once we got down there, I was put to work taking off all of the algae that was growing on the coral because it kills it. This is a lovely photo of me. I look like I'm thinking what the hell are you doing taking my picture?

The species of coral that I worked on was Acropora cervicornis. There were a lot of animals living on the coral, such as crabs like this one that had decorated itself to look exactly like algae!

There were also coral predators attracted to the algae as well. This is a photo of a fireworm. They swallow the coral and it turns white. You can see the damaged coral that is gray and covered in algae. Other predators that were there are damselfish, which attack you when you get close to their coral patch, butterfly fish, and parrot fish. The presence of these predators is a good sign though because that means that there is enough coral for them to survive.

Besides cleaning the corals of algae, I also had the chance to transplant some corals into the reef and onto a new frame because one of them was old and overgrown. Also, most of the coral was dying due to too much predation. All you had to do was cut off a piece of coral that was large enough, find a hole in the coral in the surrounding habitat, and stick it in. The coral was surprisingly resilient. Supposedly some people are allergic to coral because it is a cnidarian afterall and has stinging cells. The skin that gets exposed to the coral starts to peel. I handled a lot of coral though, and I didn´t have that problem. The coral was also tied to a new frame with zip ties, giving it more space to grow so that pieces could then be harvested from those pieces.

I highly recommend taking up coral gardening if you have the underwater space. Corals are really beautiful and attract so many fascinating organisms!

Snorking Multimedia Overload!

Since I haven't been able to post many of the videos and pictures of our snorkeling adventures, due to a multitude of factors such as poor internet connections, power failures, several floods, computer inundations, and construction craziness, prepare for a multimedia overload!

This is a photo of rock boring urchins that are actually on top of a queen conch shell that is the size of a fist. That makes the urchins about the size of my fingernail!

This is me "rescuing" a hermit crab from the lobster nasa. I don't know if it actually made it all the way to the seafloor without cracking its shell or injuring itself in some other way. Oh well, I guess it could have met its end this way or to be eaten by the several lobsters that were in the nasa.
Six cushion stars of various shades aligned perfectly in a triangle. These guys were almost a foot across!

The first video is of the nurse shark that we saw. The second is of a jellyfish that Paul saw that was about the size of a fist. The last is a view of one of the lobster nasas under water. You can even see the lobsters!

Fourth of July in the DR

This fourth of July was like no other fourth of July I've ever experienced. There were no fireworks, barbeques, or a trace of red, white, and blue to be found. Instead I spent two days snorkeling with Darien and Paul and Diane, who are English. : ) On the fourth of July, the weather was extremely hot so when we got a call from Paul asking if we wanted to go out on the boat and search for wrecks, we couldn't say no. It was a fantastic day. We set off towards the Point and tried to find a wreck that was supposedly out there, which is like looking for a needle in a haystack. We gave up finally and anchored close to some reefs and did some snorkeling. One of the reefs we went to had extremely deep sides and would be an awesome dive site for Paul and Diane to bring tourists. I even saw a jelly fish! I actually think it was a comb jelly though. It was about the length of my finger. Here's a glimpse of the fantastic clear sailing we had.

The next day we started off around 8 in the morning, picked up a day's supply of empanadas, and got a moto ride from Paul to Ceyba Park. We watched Deep Sea, a documentary on the deep ocean, until Frank arrived, who was the fisherman who knows where the wrecks are. He's also the fisherman who is likely going to help us with the lobster houses. The plan is to give him 20 lobster houses in exchange for the collection of data on the number, size, and sex of the lobsters that are attracted to the house. He will also get to keep the legally harvestable lobsters. On the way to the wreck, we stopped and checked Frank's nasas to see if he had caught anything. Here is a photo of us pulling up one of his nasas. It was a lot bigger than what I expected and made me wonder how they are able to fit them in their tiny boats.

He has 12 nasas that are located in an area that he thinks would be good to keep the lobster houses. However, Paul dove down the the nasas and found that nothing was in most of them. This probably means that someone has been checking his nasas. Although Frank is one of the most respected members in the fishing community, since many of the fishermen rent their equipment from him, fishermen still steal from his nasas. Vigilance is going to be a major problem, especially since many of the lobster fishermen fish at night. I don't know if it is a good site to have lobster houses because the water is over 30 feet deep, the seagrass beds are not of the highest quality, and there are no coral reefs. Frank suggested that a compressor could be used to reach the lobster houses but that's illegal... I was thinking that maybe we could employ Paul to check the lobster houses instead because he wants to practice his free diving and is in need of employment. : ) Some of Frank's nasas did contain a number of lobsters and I got to see my first live lobster! I think they are really cute... much cuter than American lobsters.

The problem with Frank's fishing method is that he is planning to leave the lobsters in the nasas until the veda is over, which is also illegal. Although the lobsters might have enough food to live off of since the nasas are baited with beef and there are other fish that get trapped in there too, they might start eating each other. Frank said that the lobsters would survive off of the algae that grows on the side of the nasa, which I think is very unlikely. Also, how are the females with eggs supposed to migrate to deep reefs to release their eggs or the lobsters mate with the rest of the population? Hopefully we can get this project started so that Frank will use lobster houses instead of nasas so that the lobsters would be free to come and go as they please.

Then we went to the wreck, which is by the twin tanks, where I went snorkeling before with Adam and Paco. The wreck was about 35 feet deep so it was hard to see from the surface but you could see an outline of the ship and what looked like two cannons. There was also a cave in the coral right next to the wreck. I can't wait to go diving there and explore some more! While we were there, we also saw shark! It was a nurse shark though, which according to the reef fish guidebook only bite when provoked. It was still over five feet long and was Paul's first shark ever, which I found hard to believe since he has been diving for eight years. I was also excited to see a barracuda that was at least two and a half feet long. It was in the cave next to the twin tanks and I only got a glimpse of it though. Like always, we also sawplenty of brightly colored fish.

On the way back, we stopped at a beautiful sand bar that you could actually stand up on to your waist. It was covered with cushion stars and white sea urchins. I even saw two queen conches mating! Well, I guess it's the season because there is a veda on them right now.

Another Snorkeling Expedition

I haven´t been posting updates because sadly my camera has failed and it's no good to post on a blog without photos. Luckily I was able to steal photos from Darien´s camera this time.

On Saturday we had another snorkeling expedition that consisted of from left to right (me, Paul, James, Diane (she's the hand in the back with the ok signal), Wilman, Bowsen is Paul and Diane's dog in the background, and Darien is taking the photo. This is our superhero pose because we were feeling like superheros with our skin tight wet suits. James even has the incredible symbol emblazened on his chest. : )

We took the boat off of Punta Ratón and snorkeled in some reefs and there were beds of algae that were at least three feet tall, which is an environment that I have never seen before in the Domincan Republic. There were a lot of fish that were larger than most that I have seen. The most interesting thing I saw was a sea turtle! It was two feet long and when I saw it I was by myself away from the boat so sadly no one else saw it before it decided to take off. I don't know what kind it was because the green, loggerhead, and hawksbill sea turtles look very similar. Since I couldn't get a photo of it, you get to see a photo of me instead. : )

The next stop was a coral reef that was closer to the point that Paul thought might be a good site to monitor for Reef Check. There was a very shallow seagrass bed that I stuck close to and saw at least ten cushion stars, which are giant red sea stars that look like brightly colored pin cushions. I also found a queen conch (lambí) that we determined to be seven years old because it had seven notches. The fishing ban on the queen conch began today and I'm curious if they are still selling lambí empanadas down the street. The queen conch is listed as CITES Appendix II in the DR so they are not allowed to export it but they are still allowed to consume it domestically. There are also size limits and the shell has to measure 25 cm in order to be large enough to harvest. Here is Paul modeling the lambí.

Fun Facts about lambí gathered from Wikipedia

• lambí usually live for seven years but can live to be forty years old
• it reaches maturity around three to four years old and weighs approximately five pounds
• the lambí fishery is one of the most valuable fisheries in the Caribbean, valued at approximately US $60 million in 2003
• the shells were used by the Native Americans of South Florida to make tools and blowing horns but the trade of these shells is controlled by CITES

Playa Rincon

Tuesday afternoon Adam mentioned that he wanted to go to Samaná on Wednesday for a day trip. It would be his last trip before he had to leave on Thursday. Then we found out we would have to leave today in order to get there because it takes seven hours to get there and in order to catch the last ferry we would have to leave right then. So we packed and were ready to go in 20 minutes. Darien and Henry dropped us off at the guagua station in Miches and we took a 2 hour guagua ride to Sabana de la Mar.

From Sabana de la Mar we took a 2 hour ferry to Samaná. On the ferry was a boy who had a cast covering the entire legth of one of his legs and the thigh of the other leg. It was amazing how they were transporting him. The cast had a bar between the two legs of the cast so that he could be lifted easily. It was unsettling because Adam and I had just had a conversation about how inacessible health care is in this country. Here's a photo of Samaná from the ferry.

After we got off the ferry, we got on another guagua to Las Galeras that took another 1.5 hours. By the time we got to Las Galeras, it was 8:30 at night. When we got off the bus, we tried to find Paradiso Bungalows, which according to the guide was a cheap place to stay and close to the center of town, where we were. We asked some people for help but they said that Paradiso Bungalows was far away and that we should stay at a hotel across the street. It turned out that they worked on commission for the place and they showed us a room that they were going to charge us 1200 pesos. We said we still wanted to check out the other place and got the response that the price will increase as the night goes on. Almost everyone in town was trying to take advantage of us because we were two young American tourists. I guess I don't blame them though.We left the hotel and went to the street to get our bearings and find the hotel ourselves. It turned out that it was right across the street! The sign was not lit up though so it was hard to see. We walked in along a path that led to the bungalows and it was very dark. It went behind the kitchen of a restaurant and a French woman saw us and greeted us in English, which was very welcoming at this part of our journey. She showed us a bungalow that was really cute, besides the fact that there were a few dead cockroaches around, one of the lights was burned out, the ceiling fan and the shower didn't work (you could tell that the room hadn't been used in a while).

Before we went to bed, Adam for some reason decided to check out the closet and a huge spider that was larger than my hand was plastered to the side of the wall! I didn't want to kill it because I am fond of spiders because I've studied them a lot and had a pet spider when I was a kid. We decided to try to lock it in the closet by shutting the door and leaning a mirror up against it. When we woke up the next morning, we checked the closet and it was gone!

Here's a photo of the beach we woke up to in Las Galeras that we didn't even know was there when we had come in last night. Somehow we had set our biological clocks to wake up exactly at six because we didn't have an alarm clock and we set out for the guagua station. There was a half an hour guagua ride to the entrance to the road to Rincón where we took an hour and a half motoconcho ride down some of the worst roads I've seen in the DR to Playa Rincón. It was a very uncomfortable ride because we were holding all of the stuff that we had brought with us. The motoconcho dropped us off at a restaurant that was the only development on the beach and agreed to pick us up at noon. Less than five minutes after the moto dropped us off, the skies opened and there was a torrential downpour that lasted for twenty minutes. We took refuge in the restaurant and consumed our peanut butter and nutella sandwiches to wait for the rain to stop.

The beach was gorgeous! It was the most beautiful, most deserted beach I had ever seen. The water was crystal clear and the beach was covered in soft white sand. There was still some trash on the beach that had been washed up from the ocean but it was the cleanest beach I have seen in the DR. I took a leisurely walk along the beach and jumped into the water to snorkel along the way while Adam walked to the end of the beach to the river called Rio Frio (which means Cold River and Spanish and it definitely was well-named). Most of the reefs were dead but I still saw some giant brain corals, parrot fish, black and white sea urchins, and tons of other fish.

Playa Rincón!

While I was walking, I ran into two guys around my age running on the beach, one of them was an American and the other was a Dominican. They were camping on the beach with some of their other friends by Rio Frio and were currently stuck there because they were out of gas and water. They were trying to stay hydrated by drinking coffee and rum, which was all that they had. Camping was free because there is no enforcement in such an isolated area. I would definitely want to go back there to do some camping there. It has everything: beautiful beach, cold river to wash off in, mountains to hike in, and a restaurant down the beach if you get tired of roughing it.

This was definitely the most extreme adventure I have ever had, complete with people trying to swindle us out of money, we were exposed to the problems facing this country such as poverty and inaccessibility to health care, bumpy guagua rides, crazy motoconcho drivers, and some genuine good people helped us along the way.

Snorkeling at the Twin Tanks

Yesterday Adam and I went snorkeling with Paul and Diane to the Twin Tanks, which are these huge tanks that were dropped into the ocean at least a hundred years ago. No one knows how they got there but now they are covered with coral and many marine creatures make them their home. It was really cool! I saw many different species of fish (including parrot fish, a sting ray, sea urchins, fire coral, gargonians, brain coral, flamingo tongues (which are parasitic gastropods that feed on sea fans), and lots of other interesting sights. I have been looking forward to snorkeling and diving in the DR since I heard that I was going there. Hopefully this will be the first of many trips because Paul and Diane just moved from Spain to set up a dive shop at Ceyba Park, which is right down the street from us. The Twin Tanks is going to be one of their dive sites. Also, next week I´m going with Darien to La Caleta Park just outside of Santo Domingo to check out the lobster houses that are there. ReefCheck with the help of a Peace Corp volunteer has put in about 100 lobster houses there and we are going there to learn how they are made, where they are put, and how to capture the lobsters.

Here´s a photo of Ceyba Park. This place is very odd. More than 10 years ago they started builting this multimillion dollar community but they never were able to get it off the ground. Each of the houses were supposed to cost over a million dollars. The owner and the architect visits every once in a while, but they are so rich that it doesn´t really matter that it is just sitting there. This photo is of the two cascading pools that they have that overlooks the private beach.















On the way to the dive site we met up with a group of fishermen that had killed a spotted eagle ray. When asked if they were going to eat it, the fishermen replied that the people eat everything, which is true. It´s categorized as near threatened by the IUCN Red List. Sorry I don´t have any pictures of beautiful fish that are alive to counteract this picture. Guess I need to get a waterproof camera.

Santo Domingo

I've been working on this post for five days! The internet has not been very reliable and would not load photos. Last weekend we went to Santo Domingo. We got a ride from someone who was going there as well and I snapped this shot from the town of Mira Mar (look at the sea). It is a beautiful view of Miches and you can see Montaña Redonda (the round mountain) in the distance.

Santo Domingo is the craziest city I've ever been in! It's Miches multiplied by 100. There are motos weaving through traffic, unregistered cars that function as buses that have up to nine people stuffed inside them, bachata and merengue music playing in colmados on every corner, and the streets are lined with trash and vendors selling second-hand clothes and pirated dvds.

While I was there, Adam and I stayed with our friend Wilman, who is one of the employees of the Ministry of the Environment that is working with us on sustainable fisheries. We went out dancing with some of Wilman's friends and explored the Zona Colonial at night. There was a traditional dance performance in one of the squares and at the end the dancers came down into the crowd and started dancing with us! They were really good and taught Adam some merengue. Then, we found a small merengue bar that played merengue and salsa music. It was classic and the dancers were amazing! Sadly no one I was with could dance salsa but I had fun just watching them and dancing merengue. Afterwards, we went to a pool hall where we made fools of ourselves playing pool, which is very popular in the Dominican Republic.

The next day we walked along the Malecon, the road that parallels the ocean, in order to find fishermen and net-makers. It was the dirtiest shoreline I have ever seen but there was still fishermen. We found two fishermen that were fishing with just some fishing line, a hook, and some worms. They had caught two small fish that were only 5 inches long. We also went to the "Plaza de los Pescadores," where there were some more fishermen and two people who were making nets.

The Zona Colonial was much more lively than during the night and there were many tourist shops, restaurants, and street vendors. I was especially interested that every street vendor was selling mamajuana! Guess it is really commercialized for tourists. I heard that every tourist shop offers a sample of mamajuana to customers but I didn't go into one to find out. I'll have to save mamajuana tasting for another trip. : )

Rain, Marine-life and Sun-burns

I can't believe I've been in Miches for five days! As I looked up today in Spanish, "el tiempo vuele cuando te diviertes." I've always wanted to start a blog and thought it would be easier than sending e-mails to everyone who wanted updates individually.

Yesterday was my favorite day so far. I went for a six hour walk with Adam out to the point and along the way we took pictures of the beautiful beaches. We hardly saw anyone except for some fishermen and a moto, which is basically a moped. The man riding the moto, Mitchell (I'm not sure how to spell his name but I'll go with the American version), gave us a ride all the way out to the second river. He was Haitain and worked at one of the houses that is on the beach. I didn't know you could fit three people on a moto! I was a little squished because I was in the middle, but it was really fun.

We walked past the point and found a beach that actually had waves! Playa arriba, the beach that is close to Miches, is very isolated because of the Samaná Peninsula shelters it. We body-surfed a bit and then went snorkeling. I was surprised how many fish there were! The corals were mostly dead though.

On the way back, there was a gigantic gray cloud that swallowed the town of Miches and the entire coast. It started pouring and there was thunder and lightning. The rain was actually kind of cool and refreshing and rinsed of some of the salt water and sand. On Playa Arriba, there was a star fish that was on the beach that was gigantic! It was a cushion sea star. We have also come across nine-armed starfish every time we have gone on the beach. The beaches are covered with interesting critters. There are crabs that bury themselves in the sand, sand dollars, and snails that have shells that are shaped like unicorn horns. Playa arriba has a significant amount of trash lining the beach but the farther east you go, the more deserted and pristine the beach becomes.

When we got back, we were exhausted and I noticed that I had a sun burn. The water had washed off all of my sun screen and I now look like the lobsters I´m studying. : ) Thank goodness for aloe vera.