Though we had originally planned to go visit Project Heart for the weekend, Jillian wanted to do something more fun for her and Derek’s last weekend in the Dominican Republic. She and I both looked into where we could go for a day trip adventure, but mostly came up empty-handed. I really wanted to go see a cocoa, coffee or sugar cane farm and/or factory, which are plentiful in the province, and there is currently an initiative to build an ecotourism industry (Monte Plata is the 3rd poorest province in the country and quite rural), but the only options we could find were two package tours leaving from Santo Domingo. I sent an email to the local organic agriculture organization that is active in the area and works with several of the co-ops, but didn’t hear back. I hope to make that connection before I leave the country.
3-day-old baby on board!
We checked out the central Catholic church for a bit since it is a very popular pilgrimage destination in the DR, and then took a short walk to see some of the town and to look for transportation to Salto Alto while we did so.
side chapel at the Bayaguana chuch
Not finding anything more than a couple groups of guys on corners with motorcycles nearby (which is the equivalent of a taxistand), we started to wish we had dug deeper into how exactly to get from Bayaguana to the falls. Online, it seemed like Bayaguana was a fairly small town, with motoconchos that run to and from the falls. We eventually went into a Western Union and asked a man if he know how we could get to the waterfalls. Though I was the once speaking to him, the man kept speaking at Derek. Apparently he thought Derek was Dominican, and laughed it off (somewhat exasperated) when he realized that Derek couldn’t understand a word he was saying.
The man who was helping us walked outside and called over a couple of guys with motorcycles. He explained where we wanted to go, and a 15-minute negotiation ensued. It was much further than expected, and the roads are bad all the way there, not just on the last stretch, as we had thought. Eventually, we agreed to a price (which seemed high to us, but it was better to hire them roundtrip, which would involve them waiting around for an hour at the falls, than to hope to find transportation there) and set off; two passengers sat on the back of one guy’s motorcycle, and one on the other guy’s motorcycle. This is taxi transportation, Monte Plata (province) style. It was also my first time ever on a motorcycle, and there were no helmets involved. The drivers were highly skilled and drove their bikes with mindboggling agility and precision to avoid ruts, potholes, rocks, and the many other dangers of the road, which represented more of the road than the passable parts. I felt like he was playing a video game, and was very good at it.
Salto Alto
The not-so-fun part of our Sunday adventure
Unfortunately, I didn’t know that motorcycles have extremely hot exhaust pipes, which are located right where a passenger’s right leg goes if s/he dismounts on the right side or otherwise shifts his/her leg back from the footrest. I did the former as we waited for gas, and immediately regretted having rolled up my jeans. The burn hurt and turned bright pink, but didn’t seem like a bad burn. I unrolled my jeans on that leg and put aloe on the burn when I got home. Over the next day or so, however, it developed a giant blister. Having volunteering for a while on the burn unit at NewYork-Presbyterian Hospital, I know how to treat a second degree burn and that I should not pop the blister. It was incredibly painful to the touch (or graze) and the blister didn’t go down for several days. I wore skirts and capris/rolled up pants all week.
Unrelated note:
I am 99.99% sure that something is eating my bed. They’re probably termites or carpenter ants, since they’re tiny enough for me never to have seen them and they chow down on wood. I keep hoping Aude will look to see why the floor slowly accumulates sand-like stuff right along the edge of the bed, since I’m not sure how to bring up the fact that there are almost definitely many-legged creatures feasting on the frame, and given the choice between leaving them to slowly chew whatever they’re chewing down there and having my bed soaked in residual pesticides, I would definitely choose the former. In three weeks, I will be gone and they can do whatever they would like to rid the bed of the pests. There do not seem to be many of them, and the bed is very solid.
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