El Limon Waterfall

20 minutes east of Las Terrenas on the Samana Peninsula lies the little town of El Limon that we were told offers access to a beautiful waterfall, and after three days in our overly sedate beach environs, the time has come for some adventure. "Some dudes on motorcycles will just see you coming and will guide you to where the horses are," rings in my ears as the guy on a white bike makes eye contact with me and asks "El Limon?" to which I nod. We follow him to the south and soon we are pulling onto a steep, narrow road, rolling past a number a little farms with more chickens than seem plausible. We then see groups of horses that are being draped in plastic sheeting as an afternoon cloudburst opens up. We are ushered into a parking spot just past the horses and the guide group's leader just nods at me and says "diez minutos, no problema." Sure enough, 9 minutes later, the rain stops and we are negotiating a price for our crew. Each person is assigned a horse and a guide (ranging in age from 14-67) and then the clip clop of trotting is all we hear. The trail is rocky, uneven, and so steep at in sections that one of the horses in our group falls to all four knees but the guides assist it in standing and is thankfully uninjured. We stop about 1/4 mile from the waterfall and we finally catch a glimpse of it and understand what the recommendations were all about: rather than a more or less "solid" stream of water pouring off a cliff, this is broken up into a hundred fingers that trickle over the moss and jutting rocks. We leave the horses and with the help of the guides and a shakey handrail, we make it down the last few feet of the slick trail to the base of the fall where many visitors are taking a swim in the spill pool. I join in and am treated to an amazing sight while floating on my back of gallons of water falling from 60 feet above me. You can also swim behind the fall and duck into a little cave and enjoy the sound of all that water coming down. The nag of responsibility tugs at me as I remember the evening's scheduled fish fry and our as yet unbegun contribution to it, and realize it time to head back. After we clamber back up to the horse post, we see that our mounts are rested and fed and we let them confidently return us to the car.

The Moca Route

We've been using a new route to get to the north shore of the island which runs up and over a windy mountain pass through a town called Moca and allows one to be privy to a host of Dominican sights and sounds rarely seen in most other spots. Our first time taking it was on the way home from another sun and surf soaked weekend in the party town of Cabarete. Driving up two days before, we took the typical route through Santiago which produced, as it always does, a series of SNAFU turns that get you so far encsconsed in the belly of the town that you may as well rent an apartment and live there for a month or two. We knew that we couldn't handle another pass through Santiago on the way home so got good directions to go through Moca. As you leave Cabarete, you can see the green mountain whose pass you will be ascending just to the south of you and you wonder if your little car and its 1/2 cylinder can handle it. Los Brasos (the arms) is the first town drivers pass through and we promise ourselves to come stay at some point at the rumored-to-be amazing Blue Moon resort to be treated to a 6 course Indian feast. As we climbed in elevation, it was quickly obvious to us that we were in for a beautiful drive; the challenge with mountain driving, though, is of course to take in the strange and beautiful scenery while making sure you don't go careening off the edge of a cliff in mid-gawk and this is doubly true of The Moca Route as travellers must also contend with myriad road hazards - both moving and stationary - that suprise you faster than a springtime Seattle sunbreak. One of our favorite sights (and one that is often tough to catch on film because I usually feel like a putz taking peoples' pictures without their permission, and because we are in a moving vehicle, besides) is the bee hive of rollers on Dominican womens' heads. These heads of colorful rollers are ubiquitous on the Moca route and it seems to be the activity of the day for nearly all women, young or old. The men seem to be much more inclined to race their motorcycles or scooters at insanely high speeds up and down the narrow highway, often positioning themselves in "super man" pose with their stomachs on the seat and legs sticking straight out over the back tire - it's crazy to watch. The route takes drivers through dozens of blink-of-an-eye villages, each hosting a few domino games, colmados blasting enough bass to rip your face off, and a few dozen dogs - all female - with painfully swollen teets. Before we knew it, we had crested the pass; the valley spread out wide and yawning before us, its lushness breathtaking. A few minutes of brake-testing decline and we have reached the bottom of the hill and are on the Duarte heading for home.

Bahia de las Aguilas photos

Bahia de las Aguilas, aka heaven on earth

We spent three glorious days this past weekend at Bahia de las Aguilas (Bay of the Eagles) in the arid southwest region of the island very near the Haitian border (it seems like I have also spent about three days trying to get the photos on this blog in the right order which is a task I have now given up on!). 4x4's are required to get in the camping area and the hill climbing definitely demands all your rig can give, but this assumes that you can even find your way there in the first place. Dominican sign-making is something that leaves me and the rest of the newbies a bit non-plussed, so thank gawd we had knowledgable drivers to get us there safely. The entire area of Bahia de las Aguilas has been now sold twice, initially to a French consortium whose deal fell through and recently to some other group pushing for development. It is easy to say that any development of the area would be an irreversable travesty (and I am sure that any eco-friendly promises would quickly be forgotten), but after seeing the abject poverty in the towns nearby it does make you wonder how the people might benefit from such a move. The first thing we noticed upon arrival is that the wind drums up impressive force as the heat of the day goes up, but with the first hints of evening, the wind softens quickly. Indeed, we found that the evenings and nights are perfectly tranquilo. Tranquilo is a fitting Spanish word for the experience of being in a place like Bahia de las Aguilas as it means calm, tranquil, or "chill" as my friend George translates it. You can see from the photos that the sunsets are glorious and even inspired my friend David to dust off his sense of awe. We discovered what is easily the best snorkeling so far in DR and the water felt perfect just about any time of day. The intrepid Paul Keene even began each day with a "reverse evolutionary crawl" from tent to water at about 7:30 a.m. and never once shivered from the temperature.

Getting home was much harder than getting there as we ran into a massive traffic jam that was created by some angsty men in a cliffside town (see 2nd and 3rd photos in the top post above) whose name we never did get; ostensibly, they moved all sorts of detrititus (flaming and non) onto the road to get attention from the press about their quality of life -- specifically and, for me, ironically because they have not had running water in 8 years. This sad fact that we learned a few days later is ironic because I am currently reading a nonfiction book Water by Marq de Villiers which discusses many spots around the world which are on the precipice of violence because of water shortages; the DR wasn't mentioned in the book, but I'm sure it would be apt for the context. My buddy Ian and I along with a few other hearty drivers who really needed to get moving learned that angry Dominican mobs don't necessary take kindly to people moving their well-placed detritus (especially gringos), so we backed off and just waited for the proper authorities to arrive to take care of things. It really made me wonder what happened 8 years ago that would have changed their water situation so dramatically and how very poor people who live in the middle of Dominican nowhere have any sort of contact with the government to appeal for improvements. The situation finally ended after a very toasty hour of trying to find shade and we got on our way, but with end-of-weekend traffic the total drive back was about 8 hours --that's a lot for island driving!

This whole week since coming back I have been reminding myself of the Bahia de las Aguilas sunset+deep breathing=tranquilo formula which helps solidify my dedication to go back again next year.

Palabra.

politics 1.2

Oh Oh Oh, did I call it or what! Al Franken announced yesterday that he will be running for the Minnesota Senate in '08 -- great news.

politics

Read a great article by Al Franken about the media coverage in Iraq. Franken deftly illustrates that the backlash against the supposedly "negative" reports about Iraq in the mainstream media is unjustified and how realistic appraisals of the situation do not diminish the micro-stories of positive growth and progress made by our troops currently on the ground. The more I hear about/from Franken the more impressed I am -hopefully there is some possibility of him running for office one day and he can show that a background in comedy is really quite perfect training for a future in politics (certainly better training than acting)! How about this: Al Franken/John Stewart in '08!

http://www.startribune.com/562/story/905313.html

funny things

Saludos.
Many people have been emailing me questions about some of the finer details about life here in the DR. Jim from Sioux City, Iowa, wants to know whether or not people eat plantains the same way they eat regular bananas. Debbie from Provo, Utah, is curious if we have ceiling fans AND air conditioning units in our classrooms. And finally, Viurnesh from Zagreb, Croatia, wants to know when I will be visiting beautiful Zagreb for their annual Kicking The Car festival. Well, in answer to these and the dozens of other questions I've gotten over the last few months from readers around the world, here is the blog entry for December written as an average weekday in Santo Domingo.

Rising at 6, I indulge in my daily breakfast of Bruggen fruit cereal purchased from the nearby La Cadena grocery store with some sliced banana on top (unless our lovely maid, Juana, made us Spanish tortilla that week to munch on). The air conditioned bus, driven by the ever-popular Demitrios, makes its rounds at both 6:40 and 6:50, and I usually opt for the 6:50, but sometimes, if I am in the mood for a little morning sweat stroll, I march down Ave. Enriquillo to Sarasota to the school and it takes only about 10 minutes. Upon passing the 10 or so security guards who always check all vehicles for bombs with their giant-sized dental mirror and the 10 or so maintainance workers sweeping the sidewalks, I pass into the hallowed halls of Carol Morgan School. The first thing I do after opening my classroom door is turn on the two overhead fans and then to the wall by my desk to switch the two air conditioning units on max. When the kids come in at 7:30, they will invariably tell me it's too cold in the room but I promptly insult them for being pampered and weak and tell them the cold will keep them far more alert for the day's lesson (they don't seem to pick up on the irony that even having air conditioning is pampering). (FYI, my two AP Language and Composition classes have about 12 students each and my English 11 classes are closer to 20.) I will likely have to ask students to stop speaking Spanish a couple of times during each class period, which they decend into when they are either wanting to talk to one another about their social lives or get stymied when trying to express their ideas related to class in English; this has been such a problem that the school has signs posted all around which instruct students to speak "English First." Depending on where we are in the unique "5 period per day out of 7 period tumbling schedule", I might get the chance to see my amazingly deft principal teach his S.A.T. prep class that he chose to do in order to "keep [his] sanity." How refreshing to see an administrator do whatever he can to keep a legitimate connection to actual teaching.

The CMS cafeteria serves up food for three lunches per day, one for each school (elementary through high), so by the time it our turn, most of the food is picked over. Dominicans have a thing for fried food and grease so there is never any shortage of anything that will piss off your cardiologist. Not cheap for either a cafeteria or the Dominican, the food usually rings up to something around $3.50 or $4, and if you want a salad, keep dreaming. The school day ends at 2:15 and then kids who need extra help will come in for a half hour of Enrichment. When I leave school, the temperature is around 80 degrees which is just about right to head to the Hotel Fiesta for a dip. A good choice for dinner would be Zona Fria which is owned by a Taiwanese couple and they make light and healthy asianish food (though we still debate exactly what some of the menu items are and what their "background" is); a dinner there usually sets us back about 6 dollars for two people. Another good possibility might be the local chain favorite Adrian Tropical which serves great Mangu (mashed plantains), Mafongo, and Sancocho.

If I am lucky, I will at some point in the day have a chance to use my newly learned Dominican facial expressions taught to me by friend George (see photos above). The first is the proper way to indicate that you mean that thing over there. The second is a way of indicating to whom you are speaking that you want more information. George is seen here performing a special version of the maneuver that he strangley only reveals at gringo parties and therefore is probably an expression that means something like "kick my white American ass, please" -- I'm glad he taught us all that!

When it is all said and done, I will likely have seen about 50 or so hired security guards throughout my day around the city, all of whom carry shotguns -- the DR LOVES guns in a way that would make Charleston Heston wet himself.

Well, hopefully everyone has a jolly holiday season and these blogs will continue back up in January after I freeze my arse off for two weeks in the snowy land of Idaho. And, Viurnesh, I am not sure when or if I will make it to Zagreb, but I will be sure to kick a few random cars just to imagine how much fun that festival of yours must be.

Feliz Navidad y prospero ano!

The Secret Garden

Our trusty Skoda (pronounced Sszzchhkoda) Felicia transported us safely to the north coast to chill out at the transcendent Secret Garden resort which is owned by two lovely Hungarians. An absolutely beautiful and nearly deserted beach was only about 100 meters from the place, and we made good use of it. The first day we were there was cloudless and hot with mellow surf good for boogie boarding and body surfing; the next two days, however, brought in a few ominous clouds, nightly rain storms, and some very fierce surf. We body surfed throughout the days just to see what our scrawny selves could withstand and it turned out to not be much. My favorite sight was the formation of wave pinnacles from two colliding ways going in almost opposite directions. The pinnacles were about two or three feet higher than the normal waves which were already five or so feet tall and just flat out crushed you everytime they formed - great fun.

Getting a good night's sleep was a tall order since the electricity from the Secret Garden's solar panels routinely dies out at around 1 am bringing the ceiling fans to a dramatic halt. As the midnight sweat begins to pool on your neck, the bionic Dominican crickets that are squatting just outside the window sense it is the right time to begin their hours-long orgiastic emissions. Combine that with a nasty, lingering cough from Dominican strep throat and you have yourself a night from hell. Thankfully, the incredible homemade $7 Hungarian breakfast took some of the sting off of what would have otherwise been a morning defined soley by insomnia-induced ugly man mood.

Down the road a few miles from The Secret Garden is the town of Cabarete that we had heard so much about. Cabarete feels like a slightly burned-out California surfer town, but has a kinetic night life and some great restaurants and also has the hilariously named Sports Bar Jose O'Shay's where everyone can make up their best possible jokes pertaining to Spanish and Irish stereotypes.

We will definately make it back up to the Secret Garden soon.

Halloween Dominican Style

Even though Halloween registers barely more than a blip on most Dominicans' holiday radar screens, my colleague Daryl and his wife Virginia host an annual Halloween bash in their beautiful top floor apartment near the U.S. Embassy. Four of us came up with a plan to be Mexican wrestlers and spent some hard-earned cash buying beautiful fabric to create costumes of which Nacho Libre would be jealous. Every half hour or so at the party, we would initiate a match (and thus becomming "those people" that everyone must watch out for at parties) and wrestle one another or innocent by-standers to the ground using a particular specialized move that matched our names: Atomic Pedro, Hombre Handler, Senor Smash, and Lethal Labios. Everyone was reminded once again not to let Mark on the dancefloor with a beverage as my butterfingers just can't hang on to anything while trying out new Merengue moves (especially in costume, for gawdsakes). Unfortunately, my friend Lissa took a nasty fall to the elbow before a towel arrived to swab up the mess. Those revelers who remained at the party to the end were treated to a huge steaming bowl of delicious Dominican soup called Sancocho that put each of us to bed happy.

Ghoul Bowl

CMS held its annual "Ghoul Bowl" ultimate frisbee round robin tournament yesterday, and my very own team 'Stache pulled out an amazing comeback when we were down 6 to 1 in the final round in order to secure a first place finish. Almost all members of the team sported a special 'stache inspired by famous moustaches of the last century and had t-shirts to match (Gallagher, Ernest Hemingway, Frida Kahlo, Salvador Dali, Ron Jeremy, Tom Selleck, etc.); undoubtedly, these 'staches were the source of our power. Play was inspired and tough and as the tournament organizer said in the post-game news post on the offical tournament website, "It was the best disc ever played at CMS." Throughout the game, ominious lightning bolts and rumbling thunder threatened to make the Ghoul Bowl a mud bowl, but it held off so that the proper team could win the tournament without having to run with 6 pounds of Dominan mud clinging to each shoe.

It is hard not to think about the fact that if this sort of activity were taking place right now in Seattle, we would regard it as our season-ending hoorah and begin hunkering down for the winter wait -- not so here in the Dominican. In fact, this signifies that our season is now truly up and running and that all trades and labor negotiations are taken care of and teams are ready to get on with the business of playing hard for the next, oh, 7 months. And now that the humidity is just about within tolerable limits, we expect the level of play to increase dramatically.

Tuscan Village in the Dominican Republic?

Today we drove a couple of hours east of Santo Domingo on Highway 3 and tooled around an interesting place known as Altos de Chavon which is a kitchy 17th century, Tuscan-styled village that a guy built for his daughter many years ago (http://www.altosdechavon.com/fs_village.htm). Altos de Chavon borders the largest all-inclusive resort on the island known as Casa de Campo and serves as its "high culture" alternative to body shots and golf. All the limestone that was used for the faux-Tuscan village project was imported, and the location, at least when it was built, was in the middle of nowhere, so the logistics and cost must have been a monumental challenge. For lunch, we had some wonderful pizza pie and enjoyed the stunning view of the Rio Chavon while a feral cat tried to attack Salvador (and it may have been just flirting, who knows?). Ailing and I missed our 15 minutes of fame by about, well, 15 minutes, as we were approached by a French documentarian who was working for the Discovery Channel to make a show about Altos de Chavon. She was going to buy us lunch and interview us, but the bill was just being delivered and her camerman declared that the clouds were creating imperfect light. We tried to convince her that our inner radiance would correct any lighting problems, but her Gallic reasoning won out.

We then drove down to a former fishing village called Bayahibe and got to experience the local vs. gringo beach division (see last foto). For the hour we were relaxing on the tiny, crowded beach, there was one white guy hanging out on the loooong stretch on the other side of the rope. As with much of the island, the weathly resort developers leave a little strip of the land for the Dominicans to enjoy and rent the rest out at nightly rates to the tourists -- ahhh, what an industry! Technically, it is illegal to "ban" anyone from a stretch of Dominican beach but given that the resort security guards wield very tough-looking shotguns, I doubt the casual beach-going local is going to raise much of a fuss.

Living in My Own Sweet Sweat

For the past week, the city of Santo Domingo and the Carol Morgan School have been having major power issues that have made life here, if nothing else, very, very moist! (http://www.luxner.com/cgi-bin/view_article.cgi?articleID=1463) Most people who have been here a few years think it is the hottest right now since they can remember: to wit, the humidity is constant and thick, the sun is large and oppressive, and people are generally beginning to unravel -- especially those of the student variety. Normally, we have two functioning ceiling fans and two functioning air conditioning units per classroom. These days, the AC units are out almost daily and the fans seem to make little difference as does opening the windows. The kids appear to be melting into their desks and it is definitely a challenge to keep their attention (good thing I am extremely funny and an excellent dancer (see Puerta Plata post below)). The ultimate frisbee crew still charges enthusiastically out to the field every Wednesday to perform their duty, but the injuries are mounting and the heat tolerance might be reaching a head. At the end of every play, those who are particularly susceptible to heat exhaustion or sunburn scurry like roaches to the nearest patch of shade -- pathetic gringos that we, I mean they, are. The one thing that has been my salvation in all of this heat is the sweet Dominican woman who brings me a huge glass of freshly squeezed iced juice (orange, pinapple, sometimes lemonade) for the astounding price of: 30 pesos a day (less than 1 dollar) - oh yes.

Another fun component of life at Carol Morgan School is the way that the power outages affect the technology that we rely on in our classrooms. You are using your overhead and the power goes out -- good luck and scramble quick to come up with alternative. You just spent 25 minutes working on a document or email and, hey, for the fifth time today, it's gone just like that. It makes for a lot of redo's. You learn to save often and breathe deeply.

In other news, Ailing's middle school volleyballers just won their first game this afternoon. The 10 year-old scorekeepers may have helped our cause just a bit, but a win is always a win.

More Puerta Plata Pictures

More photos from the weekend.