Santiago (i.e. That is one MAD Donkey!)

            What a weekend! I dare say, it was my best yet…overall, it was an extremely Dominican weekend, and it’s the first time when I’ve been on my way back to the orphanage and wishing I had another day to be away. So Thursday, Avriel, Madelon, Hannah (Madelon’s sister), and I took off at 4:00pm for Santiago. A bus ride, walk, bus ride, walk, bus ride, coach bus ride, and taxi ride later, all of which took about 5.5 hours, we were in our hotel in Santiago. We got the cheapest room (600 pesos/less than $4 each) that was literally like the maid’s quarters, not even in the hotel, but on the roof. We like to refer to it as the Penthouse Suite :) We dropped off our stuff and headed out for the famous monument in Santiago to meet some friends. The monument has to be about the highest point in Santiago and it had an amazing view! From there, we went out and did a little dancing and then headed back to our rooftop suite and called it a night!

The americanas take on Santiago!

This is where the 'Penthouse Suite' business went down!

            Friday morning, we took another guagua and headed over to visit Batey La Libertad. It was a lot of fun being there and there were TONS of cute kids who were more than willing to show us around and display their finest dance moves for us. This batey was quite different than the bateyes around here. For one thing (and we noticed this all over up north), things seem less integrated between Domincians and Haitians. In the batey, I strictly heard Creole where as here, you hear both Creole and Spanish, sometimes even more Spanish in the bateyes. On the guagua ride back into Santiago I experienced something I’ve only heard about up until this point. There were security checkpoints along the highway where the police wave down busses. They hop on, stare everyone down, and then demand that certain people show their documents (of course, the darkest ones). They then bother everyone for a minute or two and the cobrador who works on the bus has to give them a few pesos in order to get them off and keep going (i.e. bribe them). It was just maddening to see...(not to get political, but when you think about the uproar in AZ over racial profiling, this is just 100x worse and no one blinks an eye, because it’s such a norm). Anyways, next, we took another guagua over to the town of Tamboril which is northeast of Santiago. The next road we went on isn’t quite fit for vehicles so we took a 40-minute moto ride way up, up, and up into the mountains. It was GORGEOUS…hands down, the most beautiful views of my life and certainly the best moto ride. 

Best moto ride EVER.

Does it get any prettier than this?!?

After 40 minutes, we literally reach the end of the gravel road at the top of the mountain in a village of about 70 people called Arroyo El Toro. There, we were welcomed with open arms by the entire community. A couple years back, Madelone took a trip with her college and got hooked up with a couple of these families as her host families, so they were all thrilled to see Magdalena and her 3 americana friends. We went around the community, walking up and down hills, greeting everyone, seeing the sights with a pair of old binoculars lent to us, and playing a little baseball plus we got our first taste of mountain coffee, which was undoubtedly the freshest, most delicious coffee I’ve ever had.

End of the road i.e. our host family's house!

Part of the Arroyo el Toro village...

...more of the village...

The houses next to the baseball field...

The play (baseball field) and yep, I'm out there by "third base."

Doing the rounds and saying hello to everyone!

The binoculars!

Eventually, we headed back to home base, essentially a two-room house with an outdoor kitchen (open fire for cooking, do-all-laundry-by-hand kind of situation, and use sheets for extra walls).  Our host mom had prepared a delicious supper of pasta, rice, and beans and per Dominican custom, she had us four girls sit down at the table to eat and the rest of the family ate after us. That night we hopped on over to Madelone’s other host family for a birthday party for Yonelly. She turned 17 and already has a 10-month old gorgeous baby girl with her husband (her mom became a grandma at age 31!) We danced, opened presents, and ate cake…there must have been at least 15 of us in this small, little house. We then did a little prayer service (Friday night custom) and then continued the dancing with some of the neighborhood boys.

CUTEST. BABY. EVER. (Not to mention extremely delicious coffee!)

The whole crew at the birthday party! Yonelly is in the pink pants...

Breakfast time for the chickens...right in the kitchen with the rest of us!

Kitchen "sink" where all food prep and dish-washing happens...can you believe that view?!?

Stove...can you imagine using this for all your cooking?!?

Saturday morning, we woke up at 6:00am to be able to see the beautiful sunrise over the mountain. We were trying to be as quite as possible so as not to wake anyone up, but sure enough, a nearby donkey FREAKED OUT as we were climbing up the little treehouse and everyone quickly learned that the americanas were awake. By 7:00am, our host dad had us over to his brother’s house to meet the fam and drink some more delicious café (this time with cinnamon added). We then went and checked out a house that is the making right on the edge of the mountain there and returned home for a hearty breakfast of oatmeal. Soon after 8:00am, we had the neighboorhood boys rounded up and we took off on about an hour hike to the nearby caves. Up and down we climbed until we got to the cave entrance…pretty spectacular-looking. At this point, the boys lit up their homemade torches and we spent the next half hour slipping and sliding up and down the muddy hills inside the cave until we reached the very back in nearly complete darkness. Needless to say, I took the prize for worst walker…at one point, I literally did the splits in the mud, and I came out looking pretty darn dark since I was covered in mud. Two words: worth it.

Buenos dias!

This donkey was NOT happy to see us at 6:00am (hence this blog's title).

This is UNREAL.

We returned home for showers, another delicious lunch, and many goodbyes as our motos returned to pick us up at 1:00pm. We soon realized going up the mountain on motos feels a lot more safe than going down…ay dios. But we made it safe and sound and were home by 8:30pm Saturday night in order to be ready for Visitor’s Day and the return of the kids who were on summer vacations on Sunday.

Also, guess who had visitors on Sunday?!? ME!! Suzanne, Michelle, Becca, and aunt Mary are here right now! So far we’ve played lots and lots with the kids, hung out with the boy we sponsor here, Wilson, and eaten lots of Dominican food. Tomorrow, we are headed to Puerto Plata to spend 3 days at an all-inclusive there. Mages invasion of the DR=in full action. Next blog post about the family!