[dominican republic's next top models. look for us at the next fashion week for sure!]
so on this ol' teaching program, all of us teachers get a week long vacation to go and do whatever the heck we want. it's fantastic, people. a small group (me, macie, karsen, katie, kaylee, courtney, kendall, ryan, and jeff) of us decided to go out to samana (a really pretty beach town about four hours away) for a few days and then cabarete (known for the nightlife and for us, the food) for the weekend with just da gals.
we woke up suuuper early monday morning to take a rickety bus (called a papagallo) to samana. i'm not exaggerating when i say rickety! i swear, the bus goes like 90 mph and drives like a bat outta hell. and just like true dominican fashion, it stops about every 30 min for a snack/potty break. we finally got to samana and from the bus station there, we had to take a gwah gwah (that's how it's pronounced in espanol...it's essentially a 15 27 passenger van taxi that was supposed to take us to where we were staying in las galeras) for another hour.
[you can't really tell but she's flipping me off. lovely children!]
let me tell you, at this point we were so over traveling, so when the gwah gwah just drops us off after an already long ride and tells us it can't take us any further towards our hostel because the roads are too bad, it's an understatement to say that we were all peeeeeeeessed (read: pissed). we decided to eat lunch and take a break from all the driving to calm down, which was smart because kendall (a teacher from our group who was meeting us there) just randomly got dropped off outside our restaurant as we were eating. we all decided to take moto taxis up to our hostel, because that's what all the locals recommended and we had a lot of our luggage that we didn't want to lug around.
[said in a british accent: a horse at a beach!]
[our hostel. haha totally kidding....but basically kinda like our hostel.]
let me pause right there and say that i am 100% against the moto taxi situation out here, as in taking one myself to get somewhere. you don't know their experience! what if the psycho is just borrowing his friend's motorcycle for the day to make some money and doesn't know how to drive at all? just because they're an actual moto taxi driver out here doesn't mean they actually know what they're doing and how to maneuver this crazy metal machine. anyways, so i'm essentially peer pressured into it because we don't really have any other choice since no regular taxis will drive us there. and i also don't want to be a paranoid-over-analyzing-worrying-about-any-and-all-possible-scenarios freak, so i lizzie mcguire movie it and get on the bike with the random man. there's the driver, who's holding a heavy carry-on rolly bag (should've been the tipping point....probably literally was though haha), then me, then kendall and our two backpacks. we start going and i'm like okay, this will be fine, i am a carefree woman! then we get to this giant steeeeep mountain and i'm like oh shizballs, we're gonna die. of course he's not going up it fast enough and i can already tell we're not going to make it. he yells back at us for us to jump off because we're rolling backwards and kendall's getting off and i'm trying to get off on the left, but the driver's already tilting the bike over so it doesn't roll down the mountain and my right leg smacks the exhaust. TWICE, people. let me tell you, it stung like a mofo. and it already started to blister, which is always just great haha. the driver felt awful and was saying all this stuff in spanish and i'm just ugly-smiling through my teeth and thinking all the cuss words (sorry mom). we walk up to the top and he drops us off by our hostel. the kicker is that later on we find out from the other moto taxi drivers that our driver had never even made it up that mountain before! oh, the putz. i could slap his freaking face off. i was pretty annoyed that it happened the first day of the vacation, but in true stubborn dastrup fashion, i was not going to let it change any part of the week for me! freak no, not after all that dumb traveling. bring it on baby! we spent the rest of the day walking around the beach and swimming in the ocean (because saltwater is good for burns, right?) and then getting the best burritos for dinner from a little place owned by a spunky british lady named dee dee.
[how unreal are the beaches out here though??]
[day 1. and of course, i broke a nail too when we crashed. i knew i wasn't the best candidate for fake nails!]
needless to say, i for sure walked back to the hostel that night (and all the other nights) and graphically flashed my burned leg in protest to every annoying moto taxi trying to pick me up on the way. "el moto es muy mal! ay ay ayyyy!"-my perfect spanish, i know.
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