Puerto Plata

The morning after la Fiesta, myself and several of my friends (Sam, Katie, Stephen, Renata, Anna, and Shanita) got up early to make the 8:00 bus to Puerto Plata. I was still a pretty sick at this point from something I picked up from the food at La Solapa, and the bus ride killed me. I felt like such a liability. But I barely made it without incident, then threw up the 4 crackers I had eaten that morning and was ready to face the day (side note: I never throw up. Like ever. This was a strange experience for me.) Our philosophy for this weekend was to kind of show up and see what happened. We had an idea of some things that would be cool to see, but we didn’t know where any of them were. When we arrived we took a taxi bus to a hotel we knew was cheap but would be safe to keep our things in. Thankfully, they had a room for us! The one thing we knew for sure we wanted to do by thispointwas to take the teleférico, which I think means cable car because that’s sort of what it was. We asked the hostess at the hotel to call a taxi because we wanted to get started right away, and off we went. Our taxista dropped us off and gave us his card so we could call him when we were done (this is a mundane detail to include because they always do that, but it becomes sort of funny later on...). Immediately after we all got out a man came and insisted that we let him be our guide. We tried to ignore him because we had been told not to do this because you don’t need a guide on the mountain and they just make you pay them money. But he was so insistent and kept talking about a special for students and said that he could lower our ticket prices significantly if we let him guide us. So after a lot of frustrating discussion we finally decided to let him. This ended up helping us a lot because even after tipping him our cost was much less than it would’ve been if we hadn’t accepted his help in convicing the ticket lady to lower our price and we learned some cool stuff about the plants and this cave that was there and the city and stuff. But it was also a little bit sketchy because he kept asking where we were staying and other questions we had to avoid answering. I was a little bit terrified on the cable ride (handling heights isn’t one of my strongest points) but it was literally a breathtaking view (photo credit: Stephen). Once we got to the top of the mountain we walked around a little bit with the guidance of our eccentric guide and got to see some beautiful flora and even a little cave! It was really cool. We went back down the cable car, which I think was even scarier for me than going up but it was still so pretty.

Once we got down we decided to go to the grocery store to get food instead of eating out for all of our meals. We were told it would be about a 20 minute walk so we started on our way, even though we felt a little bad for not calling our taxista (when you go somewhere it’s good to form a good relationship with one taxista so you don’t get ripped off and you can count on him to take care of you). Exactly an hour an a half later, after asking about 9 more people for directions, each of them saying that we were only 5 minutes away from the store, we made it! (Cultural note: Dominican time is very much different than US time:) ) We dispersed ourselves throughout the store without much of a plan other than sandwiches and snacks because we were so hungry by this point. Somehow, an incredibly short time later, we reunited with exactly the right items and right amount for what we needed for a lunch and breakfast/lunch the next day. It was amazing to me. We didn’t want to wait to eat until we got back to our hotel so we decided to eat upstairs in the little food court (We recognized the strangeness of our little picnic but we didn’t care at this point-but just to understand how weird we were for this, it would be like grocery shopping at Meijer and taking the groceries upstairs to eat them.).

While eating, we decided our next move was to call this horseback riding place we had read about to see if they were open. It took awhile to get a hold of them but we finally did and they said they were saddling up horses for us and to call when our taxista arrived so they could explain how to get there because it was difficult. Also, we were cutting it close for getting the people who weren’t going to stay overnight to the bus station on time. So we went downstairs and there were some taxi drivers there but weregoing to charge us what seemed like a lot to get there so we decided to call our taxista. He was pretty confused as to how we had gotten to the store (we were too...) but he came. The other drivers were pretty indignant with us for not using them and calling someone else. That was awkard while we waited right next to them. He finally came...with a flat tire. The other drivers were giving us priceless looks that clearly said some form of “Suck it” and “That’s what you get.” Hah but he got it fixed and took us there and it ended up only costing a little less than they were going to charge. But we finally made it, groceries and all (we didn’t have time to go back to the hotel first, and it would’ve costed more taxi money). And then I remembered how scared I was of riding horses, because they are pretty tall.

Fear notwithstanding, it was such a crazy and wonderful experience! The scenery was beautiful and the people were off their rockers. Not to mention the horses. They kept running themselves, and consequently us, into the other horses. Mine didn’t listen that much to me and he kept biting other horses. But he was beautiful, probably the prettiest one there and I’m not even being biased because we had a pretty crotchety relationship, and his name was Chendi. One of the guide’s names was Javier and he took a particular interest in Katie (Katie is the only one who is married out of all of us, which makes it even more amusing) and I was by her a lot and he wouldkeep splashing us with his horse when we went through puddles that were the sixe of small lakes, which we did a lot. And he kept calling me Sophia, which I have to admit is a much more sophisticated name than Kristen but was strange nonetheless. 3 hours and much sorer legs later, we were done with our little jaunt through the mountains and were in a hurry to make it to the bus on time. So we had the secretary call a taxi right away and headed on our merry way.

We dropped Anna, Renate and Shanita off at the bus and Sam, Katie, Stephen and I went back to the hotel to shower and think about dinner. Stephen had this guide book thing that had become our best friend this day and we found a pizza place that looked nice and affordable so we decided to go there. The pizza was so good! It was an open air, all outdoors restaurant that was really quaint. And it was really cheap. Afterwards we decided we wanted to just hang out and play cards instead of do anything else. There was this cockfighting thing that had looked really cool (on a cultural experience level, I don’t think I would’ve been able to actually watch the whole thing) but we thought we had had enough adventure for one day so we went back and made cards out of paper and talked and laughed and also shared some really deep life story events. It was a great evening to end a great day. When we finally decided to go to sleep (don’t worry, there were two beds so Stephen got his own double and the three of us shared a queen size-we are poor college kids and couldn’t afford 2 rooms!), we turned the light off but it kept flickering and wouldn’t turn off. It was really annoying but also kindof creepy. So we made Stephen unscrew the bulb. Then the TV wouldn’t turn off and we hadunscrewed the light wo we couldnt’t really see things too clearly. So we just turned it to video so it was kind dark. The random and strangeday just wouldn’t have been complete without a light and a television that wouldn’t turn off!