Yun and I ate at yet another filthy ‘restaurant’ last night and as a consequence, it was her night to be horribly sick. I went out early this morning to get the paramox as she is not doing too well.
I received an email from Ben this morning notifying me of the publication of his article on the prestigious Von Mises Institute’s web site. I read the article to Yun and she began to immediately feel better! click the image below to be forwarded to his article.
The night before last I harvested a colony of parasites somewhere in my body. I came to this realization about 2am when I made my first of many visits to the bano. I was in horrible shape the next day, so unfortunately didn’t spend much time out of bed. Fortunately, the owners of our new hotel recommended paramox 500 which we found at a local ‘pharmacy’. It was very successful and very prompt and by the end of the night, I felt significantly better.
As such, today I felt great so Yun and I took a guagua out of Santo Domingo toward the city of Juan Dolio. A guagua is a local ‘bus’ (for lack of better term) that are used by the locals (same as a Turkish dolmas). It got us to playa guayacanes for about $2.oo as opposed to $30-$40 by cab.
The beach was alright – we were anticipating something closer to what we found in Cancun, which is not exactly what we found. The sand was nice enough and the water was pretty clear, but not warm enough to get too far in.
I found a couple cute puppies following me around on the beach, so I took a few dozen photos.
Later today we made our way to Tres Ojos (three eyes). The ‘eyes’ refer to three subterranean lakes. They were well worth the visit as the photos below demonstrate. There was a fourth lake that we had to take a ‘boat’ through one of the caves to get to. We could see plenty of bats circling above our heads.
The floors of these caves are filled with beautiful circular lakes fed by the Brujuelas, a subterranean river. The sulfurous waters of the first lake are only about 20 feet deep. The second, named La Nevera or “refrigerator”, drops to 15 degrees centigrade. The Women’s Lake, the third and smallest, is warm and shallow. A fourth lake, measuring 300 meters deep, is named Los Saramagullones after a species of ducks that inhabits it.
We went to ‘Faro de Colon’ today which is the tomb of Cristobel Colon (ie, Christopher Columbus). The ‘faro’ looks like a modern day penetentary and is apparently quite controversial because of this and the amount of money that was invested into its construction. We only spent about 20 minutes there as we were going to Tres Ojos immediately after.
Hayek made his first appearance in the Dominican!
Yun and I spent the day wandering around the Colonial Zone of SD. We had lunch in the house of Nicolas de Ovando who replaced Christopher’s Columbus’ son as Governor when he passed away.
It was very tasty, but unfortunately not authentic Dominican food. We came back to our hotel and took a ridiculously long nap which was wonderful. We were later awoken by a concert outside our window which was entertaining.
We spent most of the night again touring the Colonial Zone in hopes to find a place to eat. We ended up at Ristorante La Briciola.
The restaurant was really quite nice. There was live piano music to add to the ambience. I ordered spaghetti pecorino and Yunuen had rissotto milano. Again, not authentic Dominican food, but good nonehtheless. We have yet to actually eat Dominican food – perhaps tomorrow.
We eventually made it back to our hotel to enjoy some wine and shisha! The owners of our hotel are very nice and we had the opportunity to speak with them at length.
Earlier in the day we stumbled across a house with an open window. Inside there were some desks setup to roll cigars. I took some photos and sought desperately for a way in – but that was not to be. We went to a cigar shop today where the cigars were absurdly overpriced! I don’t believe I saw anything under $30/stick for a Dominican cigar I can get in the US for $5-$10. Apparently these things are rolled for export. I still anxiously anticipate the possibility of visiting a cigar factor or tobacco plantation.
Yun and I arrived in Santo Domingo about an hour ago and made it to Coco Boutique where we are staying for a few days. It is warm, but with a nice breeze. We had arranged for a guy named Jesus to pick us up from the airport who turned out to be helpful and nice. We may hire him for a day to tour around the city. We may head to the beach at Juan Dolio tomorrow so as to enjoy the warm Carribbean water.
Yun’s brothers came up for a visit today and brought my ferrings for my bike. I bought a 2004 Kawasaki Ninja 636 last summer, but I have yet to get a bike license and use it. This has been in part due to my desire to change the look of the bike. I liked the color of Abe’s silver Mazda 3, so I had the ferrings painted that color.
Unfortunately, the gas cap was left in Mexico, so I will need to get that sometime next week.
Yunuen’s birthday was last week and last weekend we had a party to celebrate her 30th at our house. We have a very small home, but somehow we managed to pack in 60+ friends, an 8 man mariachi, and 2 taco makers.
We had some awesome tacos, some excellent cake, and an indestructable pinata! To our great surprise, our friends from Dublin, Matt and Dana showed up at our door to join the party. It was really nice to see them and all the more when Matt pulled out his Cuban Monte Cristos he had smuggled into the country!
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We left Tucson for San Carlos two weeks ago after my mom and nephew Riley flew in to town. We arrived at Nogales around 7pm and switched vehicles to my Rodeo as we had the dogs with us and as such, it is much more accommodating. We were pressed for space, so we used the luggage rack on the roof for the first time. I wasn’t too confident our luggage would be there when we arrived; but it was.
We arrived to our condo around 1am and were fortunate enough to find someone to get us a key. As we were anxious to see how the dogs would take to the water, we headed to the beach nearly immediately. Surprisingly, both Scout and Tila were willing to get in the water right away.
We had a nice time over the weekend exploring the beach and an estuary. We also had the chance to charter a boat for a couple hours to try some deep sea fishing as well as watch the sun go down. Unfortunately, I hadn’t contemplated the formula:
‘2 hours + 2 beer – a bathroom = pain worse than childbirth’
As has become customary, we stopped at La Cobacha for lunch in Guaymas before departing today. Riley and I had the breaded red snapper, mom had crab tostados, and Yun had shrimp wrapped with bacon and cheese. Always good food.
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