When I woke up yesterday morning, I thought I would be spending the day in a not-so-very-clean pool, having a scuba lesson. I was bummed to find out that our instructor was sick - no class! so what on earth was I going to do all day? I didn't want to stay at home all day. Luckily, neither did a friend of mine. We deliberated for maybe 15 minutes over which direction to head toward - mountains or beach - and 30 minutes later, we were off.
Since we are going to the beach next weekend with friends, we decided to head toward the mountains. We read about a small town named Constanza, nestled in a valley between the island's cordilleras (the Caribbean Alps, as they call them). Constanza has one of the sustainable tourism clusters that we work with, and they have loads to offer in the way of outdoor activties - plenty of waterfalls, hiking, mountain biking, rafting, etc. all in the region. We had a map of the country, and a general sense of the direction...the rest we left up to the wind.
The drive was absolutely beautiful! After we got outside of Santo Domingo (it's own challenge, for sure), no one was on the roads, and they were so nice and clean. This country is insanely green right now. We took the major highway toward the northwest, then turned off onto one of the mountain roads, leading through a pass to Constanza. The grade was steep and the switchbacks were hairpin, but I think the most dangerous thing about the trip was the constant urge to crane your head to the side to see the view! We just had to stop a few times for pictures.
Getting to Constanza took a bit longer than we had estimated, so we only had enough time to get lunch and look around before it was time to head back...but now we know where to go for a weekend's worth of outdoor mountain fun. All in all, it was a gloriously serenely, fresh, cool (only 65 degrees up there!), lush day. It leaves me with only one conclusion - impromptu road trips might just be the best thing ever.
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