Continuing to take advantage of my month of no Mondays....this past weekend was packed with Liz vs. the Wild -type activities (and now I have Monday to recoup!) I did two day trips with friends this weekend and they couldn't have been more different...
Saturday: Diving trip to Bayahibe with some friends/colleagues from the Embassy
This was a 2 dive excursion that friends organized, with an early (7am eek!) start from the capital. Leaving SDQ at 7am on a Saturday might mean a tame Friday night, but it also means a peaceful and dominican driver-less trip along the coast. We got to Bayahibe by 9am and were on the catamaran, ready to dive by 10:30.
The first dive was a relatively shallow reef dive, relatively ho hum...except that we saw quite a few creatures - moray eels, sting rays, lobster, lion fish, stone fish, etc. It was pleasant and easy...and a 100x better than the last dive we did in Punta Cana in December! (a horror of a dive with a current that exhausted and a guide that lost us) The second dive of the day, though....wow! We went to a shallow shipwreck just off the coast from the resorts. In its "glory days" (this was no Titanic), the boat had been a ferry that took tourists to Catalina Island for the day. At 35m long, it was too big for its shallow mooring and was washed against the reef during a storm and subsequently sank, about a year and a half ago. Looking at the ship underwater, though, you would have thought it had been there for far longer. Salt water and currents are not so kind to metal...
The wreck was not safe to go into, but we were able to do a few laps around it to satisfy curiosity. Parts of the railings and side laid in contorted pieces along the bottom of the sea and you could watch the schools of fish dart in and out of the glass-less windows of the ship. The color of water and the ship, with the errant beams of sunlight that streamed down was breath-taking. Inside the front section, we could see the remains of a hammock, still suspended from the ceiling of the ship...making for an eery image of what had once been...
The shipwreck made me get excited about diving all over again. Now I want to continue on to the advanced certification, so that I can do more wreck dives as well as night dives, which I hear are amazing!
Sunday: Saltos de Aguas Blancas (waterfall) and a nice mountain hike
Getting up early for a second day in a row on the weekend was totally worth it with the day that my friend Robert and I had in the mountains of this country. We grabbed our coffee to-go mugs and headed out of SDQ before 9am on Sunday, with the Constanza valley and the Valle Nuevo national park on our To Do list. We stopped at Miguelina's bakery in Bonao, then started the winding ascent to Constanza. It's only a 50km drive, but takes at least an hour to do with the switchbacks and the narrow 2 lane highway. It's a beautiful drive, though, and we had a full view of the Bonao valley after only 15min of driving.
Constanza is considered the breadbasket of the DR and its residents remind you of that fact with all the fresh fruits, vegetables and flowers they sell on the side of the highway. Now we're in strawberry season. yum! We stopped a few times during the day to get strawberries during our trip. After we got to Constanza, we took the route headed south toward San Jose de Ocoa, which passes through the Valle Nuevo park and passed the Aguas Blancas falls. The road was touted as being so horrible you needed a tough 4WD vehicle to get by. Well, I guess Rob's Xterra was tough enough, cause we did just fine. (we were hoping for a little more mud to give the 4WD an actual workout...) About 45 min into our semi-off-road trip, we reached the waterfalls.
The waterfalls had a nice little viewing platform at the bottom of the falls, and then there was a rather rough, straight-up-the-hillside hike you could do to get to the top. Most of the Dominicans we saw stayed on the platform. Rob and I headed straight for the top. It was not exactly an easy climb to get up to the top of the 135m waterfall, but it was totally worth it! The view of the Constanza valley below and the rest of the mountain range in the distance was remarkeable...and totally made us forget that we were actually in the middle of the Caribbean (definitely reminded us both of Colorado). After resting for a bit and eating our lunch, we decided that the view from the actual top of the mountain must be even better...so we should climb up to it to see. The total lack of any path was a minor detail and we set off to blaze our own. Aside from some scrapes (I look like I lost a fight against a cat), we made it to the top unscathed and in only 20min. The view was amazing! I don't know how high we actually were, but the mountains in that area reach up to 2600+ meters above sea level. Not too shabby for a Sunday afternoon.
Just after remarking on how there was an awesome absence of insects during our adventure, we ran into a tarantula on our descent. That's right, a tarantula...reality check, we are in the tropics. To be fair, I probably startled him more than he us...especially since I nearly stepped on him. We were a bit more vigilant for the rest of the descent, however. I couldn't leave the waterfall without going for a dip...so I took a plunge into one of the pools above the falls on our way out. The water was FREEZING! but oh so refreshing! And we were the only ones there. What a fabulous day! By 3pm we had to get going so that we would avoid the most treacherous of the roads at night. The return trip was pleasantly uneventful, and we were back in our homes, happy and exhausted by 7pm.
Next week Liz vs. Wild continues as I take my friends Jesse and Oana (along with friends from SDQ) for a weekend visit to Las Galeras (Samana peninsula). On the To Do list - cliff jumping, whale watching, yoga, beaches and maybe a lobster dinner....stay tuned
Man vs. Wild, DR
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