Tuesday in the DR

On Tuesday we decided to "go into town", or just get away from the resort for a little while. We rented some taxi vans with our friends and went a few places. It was quite interesting to be out and about. The roads were really scary because all the rules of the road that we know seemed to go out the window. There were huge potholes in the road, big enough to swallow a car. All the vehicles would go around the potholes and at times we thought we were playing chicken with the other drivers. It was easier to not look in front of us. People also would pass us and not really check to see if a car was coming in the opposite direction. I think if I ever came here again, I would not rent a car, but leave the driving to the natives.

We passed several orchards full of banana trees. Here is a picture of one:

Our first stop was at a local school. Some of the people in our group brought school supplies to donate to a school. I sure wish I would have thought of that. It looked like the kids didn't have many learning tools. This school was surrounded by a fence.


There were 2 rooms at this school. This room had first graders. The other room had all the other kids up to 9th grade.

We visited both rooms and our friends gave the supplies to the teacher. Then we left.

The teacher sent this kid to lock the gate as we were leaving.

Our next stop was at the mall. I think this was a wasted trip because the mall was high-end shops and things I wouldn't buy. They did have a Hard Rock Cafe there and Jeremy bought a necklace in the gift shop.

We also had some fries and a drink inside. Here is a picture of our group. A lot of them were itching for something recognizable, so they ate more than we did. :) I ended up getting some Larimar earrings for myself and Athena and Samantha from the mall.

After the mall we were all very hot and sweaty, so we went back to the resort for a swim. We took this picture of the courtyard as we were going back into our room.

Ahhhh, refreshing.

Oh, and we slipped in a picture of our balcony. Here it is. We must have gone out there for a minute before hitting the pool.

After swimming, it was once again time to get cleaned up for the evening and go and eat. We went to a Mexican/Dominican buffet that was offered at the resort. I really enjoyed the food there.

After dinner the evening's performance was a circus. The performers were coming around before dinner and doing little acts here and there. This guy was teaching Tanya, from our group, to juggle.

The buffet had several carvings made out of squash. We took a picture of this pirate carving for Nathan.

After dinner we were off to see the circus. It was interesting, but I've seen better. I guess it gave us something to do.

Again, after the performance, the MC told everyone they had 3 minutes to come up and take pictures of the cast. Jeremy ran up there and got this picture.

When the circus was finished, we didn't really want to go to bed yet so we walked around the resort. I really liked this huge palm tree. I'd been watching it for several days and wanting a picture, so when I saw it with the night lighting, I figured now is as good a time as ever to get a picture. This tree has one trunk and then branches out into the huge fan. It's so pretty!


We headed out towards the beach and noticed there was a fantastic lightning show going on down the coast. Our friends, Morgan and Kristy, came and watched the lightning show out on the beach for about 45 minutes. This was a very nice evening. Watching lightning is one of my favorite things, and to the sound of the waves crashing on the shore it couldn't be any better.

Jeremy spent his time trying to get pictures of the lightning. I think this picture below is the best one he came up with. Still, I'm amazed he was able to get a picture of it at all.