Last weekend, Loma, July, and I traveled to the far north side of the island to visit the Samana peninsula. We stayed in Las Terrenas, a small beach community on the north side of the peninsula. Oddly enough, this area has a strong french community, seems to be a resort town for even the locals (everyone drives around on these crazy 4 wheelers as everyday transportation), and we picked a perfect quiet weekend.
Our hotel, sunshine resorts, was really awesome and the food was amazing! We made friends with our chef and enjoyed chatting with him. Not only was the food awesome at the hotel, we ate incredibly well all weekend long!
Julissa introduced me to the night life of the Dominican Republic. I picked the perfect dance partner, I think he saw me, an American girl, and thought, "this girl will need some dance help!" He was a dance instructor and taught me to Salsa and Meringue. This was the first of many times I have heard the phrase, "you are a good dancer for an American." I blame Jersey Shore.
Saturday morning was spent doing some shopping downtown due to some on and off rain showers. We found some wonderful art and we all bought some hand crafted jewelry made out of natural local supplies: Shells, coconuts, fossilized sea creatures, and gords.
The highlight of the trip was most definitely our climb to El Limon's waterfall early Sunday morning. July and I rode horses up the mountain for an hour with our hilarious guide through streams, up very steep rocky paths, and through the most lush forest I have ever seen. When we reached the top of the mountain, we had to climb down to the waterfalls, while the climb back up was daunting... it was worth it! The ride back down the mountain was much more adventurous, our horses were getting tired and going down steep hills on an animal is a little frightening, but we made it with only a lot of squeals and a couple and bruises and scratches on our legs.
As I mentioned in the earlier post, the trip home was an adventure of its own. The buses here are all privately owned and sometimes less than reliable. We had planned to take the bus from Samana, the same one we took TO our trip only to find out that it "may or may not come," what? So we hopped a small aguagua (bus) to the next Caribe stop about 20 minutes away and waited for 3 hours. The group that had come with us, along with others waiting at the stop, watched several buses go by full. The guys convinced the very LAST bus to let us ride without seats, so July and I rode all the way back to Boca Chica on the floor of a crowded bus!
lmo anyway was amazing
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