As volunteers we are given 2 days of Rest and Recreation (R and R) per month. Being a good little new volunteer accompanied with major campo guilt (and baseball), I have not used my R and R days. So Sarayu, another volunteer, and I planned a trip to Samana to go whale watching (I’ve never been and it is prime humpback mating and birthing season). So we invited a bunch of people and eventually all of them backed out. So what you will read are the adventures of Sarayu and Heidi.
Saturday February 26: Sarayu and I left the PC Office early on Saturday because it was over flowing with volunteers, the internet was slow, we didn’t have any more meetings to attend and we were excited to get going on our trip. We waledk to CaribeTours (Greyhound version of bus transportation, but nicer) and waited around for about 2 hours because we were early. While we waited, we played the “What nationality are the other tourists” game. We ended up identifying a Swiss family who would end up following us onto the bus to Samana.
It was a cold bus ride with air conditioning, but we had a nice nap before we got invited to hang out with some older guy and his friends up in Las Galeras. We said “No thankyou” and then got off the bus. In the spirit of being spontaneous, we did not plan anything other than that we have 2 days of R and R, and we want to whale watch. So when we got off the bus, it was dark out and we had no idea where any hotels were or which ones to go to. Calls were semi-frantically made to other volunteers who have visited or live in the Samana area to find out good places to stay. The Swiss family (robinson) also was standing around looking just as lost as we were. While waiting for information, we went to the Bon (ice cream parlor) to have a pre-dinner snack. We walked through a little bar to get to the door and 3 older men turned and said “Te amo” (I love you) at the same time to me, I responded “Pero no me conocen” (But you don’t know me) and kept walking. We all had a good laugh about that. The ice cream was great and we got some suggestions about where to stay (from our friends and the nice lady who works at Bon). We grabbed our backpacks and went for a walk around Samana to find a hotel. We found one, but there was no room at the inn. Finally we came to another hotel, new and clean with hot water, and we got the last room that was available (there was a tourist group leaving and the other rooms were dirty).
Once settled into our room, we took off to find a real dinner. We found a restaurant in a super-touristy strip mall of Victorian style houses. While eating, we heard many new songs from the USA, ones that we had not heard before and then some good throwbacks like the theme song to Fresh Prince of Bellaire. Then we watched Finding Nemo in the spirit of finding whales.
Sunday February 27: The silence throughout the hotel was piercing in the morning; there were no roosters crowing, no dogs barking, no motos driving by and no yelling people. Sleeping is a wonderful thing.
We wandered around the “real Samana” (not the touristy part) to find a colmado to get some bread for breakfast. And ate in the park. Then we walked down the Malicon (board walk) and tried to find some cheap whale watching tours. After walking around for a while we found a place by the docks and asked about the tours. We were told the price (the cheapest we found so far) and that they had a couple extra spots. We agreed and we got a ride back to the hotel so we could get more money and change into our swimsuits. We got to the boat and waited around for a while until more people got there (lots of rich Dominicans – one with a little dog). The sea was rough that day, and I mean really rough. We stopped a little way out as a motor boat brought three late comers. We got to the whale reserve and saw about 4 different whales breaching the surface and waving their fins. I got sick, but got better. After seeing the whales we were taken to an island called Cayo Levantado that has a resort and nice beaches. We had lunch and got to hangout on the beach for about 2 hours. The beaches of this island were used in some of the first Bacardi Rum commercials. We carried around and awkward plate of leftover food and drank pineapple and coconut juice out of pineapples…I t was so weird to be tourists and we hated it. We missed our Dominican friends, and our little muchachos. But don’t get it wrong, we had a great time.
We got back to the main land and we got to see part of parade for Carnival (the Dominican Independence day is celebrated with Carnival – costumes, dancing and drinking). We dropped our stuff off at the hotel and went to see the festivities. We were walked around and listened to the live band. This is when we really missed our Dominican friends, because there was no one else to talk to, to dance with or to have fun. So we hung out for a while and got hit on our butts by young boys dressed as devils with cojuelos (bat type things with a ball on the end) and those hurt – real bad.
We decided to head back to the hotel at 8 to eat and relax a little when we got hit on by an old drunk Spaniard who we later realized that he thought we were foreign prostitutes. He was at the restaurant that we ate at the night before and called us over to chat, then asked us what we were looking for, and his Spanish was really bad (due to the drunkenness). Looking back on this event it kind of made sense because we were two girls walking alone at night with no purses (money/phones in bras and pockets). Horrified and disgusted by our revelation we locked ourselves in the hotel room with food and watched The Curious Case of Benjamin Button and I Love You Man. We are still processing what happened.
*Note: In every tourist town there is a major problem of sex tourism. Every day that we were in Samana we saw clients with younger Dominican women (and sometime men – in the Capital).
By this point we were the only people staying in the hotel, so the owners told us that if we needed to we could use the kitchen to prepare food. Awesome!
Monday February 28: We had breakfast by the water this morning and then walked to a little island via bridges off of the coast. We met a Dominican guy who gave us a tour of the little island. It was like we were walking around in an Indiana Jones movie. There were old ruins, crumbled paths, foliage and even a big bolder that tried to squish us as we ran down the paths (ok well the last part wasn’t true). Then we walked around a boat grave yard and got some cool pictures. After lunch we took naps and then a ride around the town of Samana on a moto with a cart attached to the back. We ate pizza at a pizza truck and watched domincans do jazzercise in the Malicon. Good times.
Tuesday March 1: Got on the bus back to Santo Domingo and there were about 6 people on there. And we tried to sleep the whole way, though it was really really cold.
