Dune Buggy Tour in Dominican Republic

 
 
 

This is a picture intensive post.  On Wednesday of our trip, we went on a Dune Buggy trip.  There was a man that had his own business running tours where you could drive in old Dune Buggies.  The Dune Buggies were  really old and in pretty bad shape.  There was us, another couple, the guide, a photographer and another car that was a mechanic.  Halfway through the trip, the mechanic had to stop and replace the clutch in his own car.

We drove the buggies right on the main highways where everyone else was driving.  If there weren't a lot of scooters everywhere full of people, I may have been more scared.  The traffic lights there had this awesome feature where they counted down seconds until the light was going to change to green.  I would like that feature here. 

The first stop on our trip was after a long trip up a super bumpy dirt road.  There were some empty lots, some lots with big fences around them and even a calieche mine.  On the tops of the fences were broken bottles glued in place (tons of them) to deter thieves from climbing the walls.  It actually was cool looking.  We stopped at a tiny village at the store.  The store was really one room in someone's house.  The village was a grouping of 5 or 10 houses.  At the store you could buy a handful of pasta or a spoonful of butter, whatever you could use to make it through another day.

This is a typical house, although they weren't all this beat up.  Usually there would be a door that could open on the top with that decorative trim on the top and maybe another window off to the side.  The house/store we stopped at had an indoor gas stove, and outside bathroom with running water and an outdoor kitchen.

 

 
 

Poor Joe didn't feel well the night before and then woke up feeling really bad.  He ate breakfast and then immediately threw it up.  We had already paid for this trip, so he decided to go on it, but he didn't feel well for most of it.  He still wouldn't let me drive though. 

Here is another house.  Many of the houses had rebar sticking up out of the roofs.  We thought that was strange until someone said that they pay before hand for everything that they build.  When they get money they build what they can.  Often they will put the rebar up for a second story.  Also, they don't have to pay taxes on a building until it is finished, so if there is rebar on the ceiling where they are going to build another story then the house is definitely not done.

 

Many of the houses had a large black water container on their roofs that they used to create water pressure.  It probably also helped to use the sun to heat their water.  Many houses had a bright red satellite dish on top too, so you know they had TV inside as well.

While we were stopped at the town, we saw that there was a room off the side of the house full of roosters.  They explained to us that the 2nd most popular sport on the island was cock fighting.  It is completely legal there.  So they put safety gloves on a couple of their roosters and let them go at it for us to see.

Above is the view out the back wall of the house/store.  The areas we drove through were surprisingly unpopulated.  Way off in the distance is the beach and the resorts, but it was a little too foggy to see on that day.  Below is a school that we stopped at.  This was in a little bit larger town.  In the rural areas, the kids will walk for a long ways to get to school and if their teacher doesn't show up that day, then they turn around and walk back.  In this smaller town, there was a one room school house.  It had kids from about kindergarten to about 5th or 6th grade. Apparently there are not enough schools, so they only go to school half day so that two sets of kids can go to school. 

Inside the classroom.  They all wear uniforms.

 

 

 One of our last stops was a public beach called Playa Macao.  It was Wednesday, so it was empty, but it was beautiful, even more blue and pristine than the beach by our resort.

  Poor Joe was still not feeling well.  At the school house he stayed in the yard and puked his guts out.  The natives weren't affected, they are used to puke I guess.  He was feeling a little better at the beach and he let me take pictures with him.

After this, Joe was really feeling ill, so we went back to the hotel.  Poor guy barely made it back to our room without passing out and then slept the rest of the day.  He didn't feel too good the next day, but it was a relax on the beach day, so he was alright.  After that, I got some of it, so I wasn't feeling well.  The funniest thing was when we were texting Adam and we told him that daddy was sick.  He said, "You guys need to go somewhere different...like Oregon."  Good point, son.

The Dominican Republic

 
 
 

 

My parents were nice enough to come and stay with our kids for a week so that we could get away.  We decided to try an all-inclusive resort.  Our destination was limited by the places that Southwest flew since Joe had a free companion pass this year, and I was his companion.  We chose the Dominican Republic because Joe knew someone that served his mission there and said it was really pretty.  We stayed at this really nice resort.  The weather was about as perfect as it gets the whole time we were there.  It never rained, there was a nice breeze and the temperature fluctuated between 72 and 85 degrees.

We spent a lot of time sitting next to the pool, reading.  As we sat there, this was the view that we had.  We also spent some time on the beach, but it was more sunny there and we didn't want to get burned, so we spent more time under this shade.  They were right next to each other. 

 

The second day that we were there, we took a horse back riding tour.  They started by taking us to a "cigar factory" where they let us roll a cigar.

 Notice he is concentrating so hard that his tongue pops out.  If he concentrates on it, he can stick it in, but otherwise, it is an involuntary reaction.

Then we rode horses through this beautiful, hilly countryside.  The horses were pretty old, so we went pretty slow. 

 In the middle of the horseback tour, we stopped and had lunch and rode a super long zipline over a river and back.  We saw how cocoa was made and some other plants that are grown in the DR.  It was fun.

Another day we took a buggy tour, but I will post separately about that.  The last full day we were there, we took a Segway tour.  We thought it would be fun to see what riding a Segway is like.

It was fun, and surprisingly easy to ride.  We just went on a small road through the forest next to a golf course.  There was a photographer on the trip who took about 100 photos of us doing the exact same thing and then tried to charge us $70 for the CD.  I wanted to support the locals, but I couldn't stomach that price.  The guide was a young guy (and it was just us and him and the photographer).  He spent most of the ride taking selfies of himself. It was very funny.

We had a very nice and relaxing time in the DR.  The all-inclusive resort was nice, but we felt like the food we had on our Carnival cruises in the past was better than the food at the resort.  (Maybe it is more Americanized than our resort was).  I think we may stick to cruises in the future!

Sea World

We got Sea World passes on sale on Black Friday to use the weekend we went to San Antonio for Ellie's gymnastics meet back in January.  Unfortunately, Sea World was closed that one weekend in January, so we never got to use them.  Everyone had Good Friday off, so we took a road trip to Sea World on Good Friday.  We, of course, stopped at Buc-ee's on the way.  It's a beaver!

 At the start of the day:

 Joe made all the kids ride the roller coasters they were tall enough for.  For the three oldest, that was all of them, but Nate couldn't ride the fastest one.  The first time they rode them, the kids were really upset and scared.  After they rode them once, though, they were very excited to ride them again and again.

 Partway through the day, the kids convinced Joe to let them get their faces painted.

 Then we watched Shamu.  We brought ponchos and sat in the splash zone.  It was fun, but not good for the face paint, so we went back and had the face paint redone.

We were in the splash zone for the dolphin show, but no one really gets splashed in the dolphin show.

 Then we rode this ride, that promises to get you soaked.  Everyone is in the back row (after the first time around, I sat out because I have a very low tolerance for motion sickness).  Michael was careful about his face getting wet, but Nate wasn't so much.

 He turned from a pirate into a zombie.

You should have seen the double takes that people were taking of him at the end.  It was pretty awesome!