Friday, December 27, 2024

Last night we went to bed at 10pm, waking/getting up by alarm at 5am.

I see the Bears lost last night to the Seahawks 6-3; sounds like an exciting game.

By 6:15 we were having breakfast in the restaurant. They had the middle section roped off limiting what food we could get to but they did have someone making eggs so that helped.

We were at our designated spot by 7:20 and were soon put in a van with a few others. They drove us to a gas station where we moved to a Greyhound type bus but no bathroom and no Wi-Fi. 😊

It was a 2 ½ hour drive to Santo Domingo and I don’t remember if we stopped along the way.

Rare photo of the two of us together:

We had a woman guide who spoke English, French, Spanish and German. After a conversation with a few others she just addressed us in English and Spanish.

Our first stop was at a park where we stood on top of what they call La Cueva de Tres Ojos (The Cave of Three Eyes). In Mexico they call this a cenote. Our guide said she had a bad knee and wouldn’t go down with us but it was only 60 steps down and back. She passed us off to different guides for different languages. I switched between the English and the Spanish with Teresa. I suppose the cave was cool but it felt very warm because of the humidity and it was a LOT more than 60 steps if you go further than just up and down.

From there our bus took us to the first church in the Americas (later I read an article that the Vikings built the first Christian church in the new world almost 500 years earlier) but I didn’t go in because I was in a sleeveless t-shirt.

This is a statue in the park outside the church honoring Christopher Columbus.

For lunch we were taken to a restaurant named Atarazana where we had a buffet lunch while entertained by these dancers:

We were taken to a gift store and our guide gave us advice about DR cigars and Mama Wana.

Teresa checked out a few stores but nothing really interesting.

We left by the same bus at 4pm and I figured we would be back at our hotel by 6:30 but we stopped at a “rest stop” for everyone to use the restrooms and Teresa bought a Coke Zero and a package of peanut puffs.

At one point on the road I saw a very dark cloud ahead and then noticed a funnel coming down. Uh-oh, but in the next second I saw smoke coming out of a chimney and reaching the cloud so it must have been from a factory.

At the gas station again we switched from the bus to a hotel van. The driver didn’t seem to know the hotel locations and obviously made a wrong turn at one point. We were finally back at our hotel by 7:30 and we headed right to the restaurant for supper.

 

JUST FUNNY