Learning to love the Peace Corps... I think its in the vacations. Ben and I just got back from a few days camping with (American) friends at Bahia de las Aguilas and I took an additional day to visit Cheryl in Amiama Gomez.
How did I forget this, most basic of all work premises? All work and no play... we all know the rest. And yet. I forgot! Since my arrival 9 months ago (feel free to send me cyber pats on the back or a real cookie), Ben and I had yet to take an R&R day or vacation day to anywhere besides Santiago or the cap for resuscitation from the hardest job you'll ever love.
And what a difference a couple days makes. We set out on a Wednesday, on the last guagua to the capital. (I love it that the days are longer now and I can bajar the mountain after 5 PM and it still be light out). Our ultimate destination was Pedernales, where the cruise director PCV Carlos/Charlie awaited us with tents and coolers. However, in the DR all roads lead to la capitai, and we spend one night there before catching another guagua out to Pedernales, a boarder town in the South.
My buns hurt after all that sitting, but for he who may visit, the South is gorgeous beyond compare. On one side you have the turquoise sea/white sand deal and on the other low rolling hills we like to call loma.
The road is curvy in places, and nonexistent in others: just past Enriquillo, the road is a patch of sand beside the construction of a bridge over the sand; near Barahuco, the forestry on both side is so dense, small, pale butterflies flitter around the guaguas and only patches of sea can be caught through the vines hanging between over-burdened mango trees.
Pedernales reminds me of the movie City of God. All the houses, save a few, are concrete copies of one another. In their beige facades, I see the handiwork of an US Aid perhaps? Or something like it, because it reminds me of a project. Its nice that way, houses could have more trees, but they are safe and sound little places to call home. Charlie shows us to the shack of a dark Dominicano making empanadas. His are best I've ever had.
A real pastry chef, with no more than a vat of bubbling soy bean oil and his hands, he made me an empanada with a perfectly flakey, thin and golden outside and fluffly egg inside. The yolk was intact and had the consistency of an egg boiled, not fried.
Don't start laughing at me having a culinary delight over fritura until you've lived in a developing country.
Ah, Bahia... we started out with 2 flat tires on the way out to La Cueva where poor fisherman live in houses constructed out of caves in the petrified coral. From La Cueva you take a motor boat around the boulders through shoals just under the turquoise waters to Bahia, a beach so secluded we were the only ones on it that night. Sadly, many previous campers had left there mark in the form of trash in all the shrubs. Benji did the Eagle Scout thing to do and collected a rice sack full of trash to take off the beach with us.
Still, the bay was nothing but pristine water of supernatural blue-green. Through the afternoon we chatted, swam, listened to music and made merry. I ate mango after firm mango and chased it with beer and dental flossing.
At night, we were quiet, so as not to frighten any sea turtle that may want to come ashore and lay an egg!
The whole place is a national park. Its care is underfunded, but par for the Dominican course, what employees there are are friendly and kind.
I went snorkling and saw sea fans, more shoals of little fish, thick starfish, sea urchins, and those long spotted bottleneck fish, got mosquito bugs on my bootie, and sand in my backpack. With that rosy glow that can only come of spending the night on the beach, we left the next day, late.
On a cloudless day like that, the ocean and the sky looked like two bands of thorough blue meeting in the background as we rumbled away on the rocky road. I saw a hitch-hiking iguana, silvery in the sun like a giant leather coin.
Cost breakdown:
Guagua from capital to Pedernales: 630
Nights in Pedernales: free in Casa de Carlos
Food in Pedernales: 350
Rented Stuff (tent, snorkling gear, coolers): 300
Food for camping (water, salami, beer, surprise gourmet conch in La Cueva): 500
Travel from Ped to La Cueva: 300
Total: $2110 RD or $63 US
My budget ain't exact. And yes, it was a total deal of a trip!
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