What a weekend. I’ll do my best to recap it for y’all, but I’m sure I’ll be leaving some things out.
Friday night I arrived in Cabarete and waited for Jordan and Amber at the complex where they’re renting a small house for a month. Shortly they arrived on a poorly painted, lime green moto. It’s from 1985 (older than any of us) and starts with any sort of key or screwdriver. There is no real speedometer, only one drawn on cardboard with an arrow pointing between “muy rapido” and “rapidisimo.” Our first task was to fit a third person on the 2 person bike along with all of my stuff. We managed, Dominican style, and got to their house. It was their neighbor’s last day in Cabarete, so they had decided to cook a communal dinner and eat it by the pool side. The environment was awesome: clear, starry skies, palm trees, small swimming pool, thatched roof houses, and people from all over the world. There were 3 of us Americans, the Dutch neighbors, a man from Quebec (who seemed to think he was European), a Welsh woman from England who lived in the Grand Caymans, two Russian girls, and their Danish friend. While eating salad, tomatoes with mozzarella, fried cheese, corn, chicken, potatoes, pineapple, vegetable shish kebobs, tuna, pork, etc., we learned about the difference between Holland/Netherlands, learned the physical characteristics of a Grand Caymanian, and discussed why the heck Germany hadn’t taken over Denmark. It was a delightful, tranquil evening.
The next morning at 6:45 we woke up and I had my first surf lesson. I did much better than I thought that I would, especially when I had the instructor with me. I was able to ride a good number of waves in and had to stop myself (by falling off, of course) because either I had reached too far in or the wave had simply stopped. Clearly, I was just using a learner board so it was quite large and steady, but it was fun. When I was by myself my main problem wasn’t the actual “surfing” part of it, but rather getting my board flipped around and being ready to catch the wave. We came back for lunch and then while Jordan and Amber headed out to their kiteboarding lesson I went down to the other beach to meet up with some of the new study abroad people who also chose to come to Cabarete for this weekend. We sat by the beach for a while and I stole some shade from a nearby umbrella since I didn’t feel like paying for one (and heck, they weren’t using it all anyway. Although it was kind of awkward when I stood up and hit my head on their umbrella but I just kind of walked away very quickly…). Briana (the girl from PSU who’s there this semester) and I walked back, swam in the pool for a bit to get the sand off, and then showered. By that point the rest had come back and we went out to get in on the many happy hours on the beach at that time. Banana mama= yum.
Dinner was next, and we ate at one of the lovely restaurants along the beach that had tables out right in the sand so you could have sand in your toes while you ate. Fantastic. I had a pasta with tomatoes which was fine, but got to help finish off the nachos one girl got which was delicious. I’m really going to miss fresh avocados. And fruit juices. We sat closer to the water after that to give time for our food to digest and then headed back up to that strip of restaurants/bars on the beach and hung out the rest of the night. Near the end I ended up meeting up with some of the Esperanza interns and it was great to see so many different parts of the summer merging.
Pretty much all day today (Sunday) was spent at the beach, which you can tell almost immediately when you look at me and see that I am slightly pink. And I did wear sunscreen (and even reapplied more than once… that’s got to be some sort of record). I guess that’s what the Caribbean sun does to you on a hot August day, despite the fact that you pretend to have Latin blood in you. Breakfast was fruit, yogurt, muesli, a croissant and orange juice. It was enough to count for both breakfast and lunch and, along with an ice cream and a banana, got me through until a very late dinner (11:30).
Dinner is a story in itself. Amber, Jordan, and I were all thinking about going into town to eat at a restaurant there but then none of us really had the energy to move around dinner time. So basically we sat around until 10 pm when we figured we should start making some sort of decisions about food/the rest of the night. In the end, Jordan and I took the moto into town in search of some cheap yet delicious pizza. On our 4th stop, we finally found a place offering 2×1 personal pizza specials on Sunday nights so we put in our order for 3 pizzas and then decided to look around the restaurant. Seriously, I might have some tripped out dreams about this place. There were between 50 to 100 fish tanks there, all of which were lit with a blue or green or white light. The tanks seemed to be placed wherever there was room for them. In fact, the fish tanks took up more room than the sitting area (and this was not a small place; probably about 15-20 tables). The great majority of the tanks had fish in them, but all had some level of algae (many were not too pleasing on the eyes). There were a large variety of small fish, usually broken up by tanks. While it was great that the owner had figured out a way (albeit untraditional) to merge his passion (fish) with his business (restaurant), I still don’t think I ever need to go back there (except that the pizza was fine). The atmosphere was so strange since in addition to the fish tanks there were red rope lights which would flash periodically, a disco ball, and a strobe light hanging on the ceiling over the seating area. Near one of the outside entrances there was a glass case used to keep food warm that was dripping with condensation on the inside and had dingy yellow lights inside. There were not many people there, and the ones that were I think were related to the woman who took our order. The boy was skateboarding around and the little girl was carrying cushions and her brother’s shoes around. The mom was lying on the cement ground playing with them. I wish I could have shown you all this place just so you know that it exists.
That was long, but I guess it encompasses many days. Tomorrow, maybe the 27 waterfalls. That depends if I can get more pesos on my phone somehow by morning.
