Gringos

So a few weeks ago, my family came to visit. A day late. Amy and I had gotten up extra early to finish packing, catch a bus to Sosua, and take a taxi to Cabarete, a beach town on the north coast. The taxi ride was fun. We were meeting the family at the condominium. We knew the name of the place, directions to get there, but not the address. This confused and worried our taxi driver. We tried telling him, "It's by the Texaco station." His response, "Texaco? Texaco? OH! TekshAco!" Once that was cleared up, we managed to make it safely to the condo. We were early, but took our stuff to the room anyway. We were hanging out when the owner of the place came by to tell us that they missed their connection and weren't going to arrive until tomorrow afternoon. So Amy and I went out to eat on the beach that night, slept in the next day, and did some grocery shopping. They all did finally arrive: Mom, Dad, Sister, Sister's Boyfriend, Aunt, and Great-Aunt. All with the exception of one piece of luggage. For the rest of that story, please refer to the previous entry discussing the loss of Kathy's luggage. The situation was the exact same. The only difference was Kathy flew American and received food vouchers, while my family flew Delta and did not receive food vouchers. For those of you planning trips to the DR: It is virtually impossible to arrive in the DR on the same day you leave. Schedule your two flights a day apart so you can spend a comfortable night in a hotel instead of in the chairs at an airport.

It was a fabulous week. Amy and I made some Dominican food for them to sample, we got plenty of rum (it goes great in Dominican coffee), we went to the beach every day. We did some deep sea fishing out of Puerto Plata. I use the word "some" very specifically. 6 people went, 3 threw up, 3 caught a fish. We only got to keep 1. But it was delicious. We went to the same spot on the beach almost every day. Our waiter was this nice young man named Wilgren. He really liked Colleen. He kept offering to take her to the parties on the beach at night. We ate a delicious meal at a restaurant on the beach one night. Dad and Patty had lobster and almost everyone else had red snapper. The highlight of Mom's week was the mojito she was served at the restaurant. Instead of being mixed with sugar, it came with a stick of sugar cane. If you've never had sugar cane before, heads up: you can't eat it. You just chew on it and such the juice out. This kept Mom busy all night: playing with the mint leaves, stirring around the sugar cane, sucking out the alcohol, stirring it up again, chewing on the cane for a bit, playing with the mint, etc.

The best part of having visitors was seeing how they reacted to life in a third world country. Amy and I were really excited that the condo had hot water on demand from ALL of the faucets and that we could flush our toilet paper. My family was disappointed that the hot water ran out after a few minutes, so you'd have to turn the water off and on for it to come back. So inconvenient. They all refused to ride a guagua even though there was clearly plenty of space for all of us. (there were three open seats and no one hanging out the door) Patty was the worst at spending money. Locals will rip off gringos, especially at the beach. You should never pay even half of what they ask for. They would name a price for an item and Patty would say "400 pesos? What's that, like $10? That's not bad!" and whip out her money. Thankfully we had Derek around. He could work the store owners. He got as good of prices as Amy and I. (they usually give us a better deal when they find out we live there and get paid Dominican salaries, not American salaries)

The end of the week was sad. It was so wonderful having people you love all around you. Amy and I watched the taxi pull out of sight and could instantly feel the hole inside us that was left.

So there are two lonely gringos here, if anyone wants to pay for the unreasonably spring break priced plane tickets. Or, if you come in February, we can go whale watching. Eh? Eh?

Also, pictures coming soon.