This past weekend, via three different guaguas, Betsy and YO ventured north to the city of Sabana de la Mar. The purpose of the trip was to attend an all-important Mini-VAC* meeting, our goal, rather: to have a lovely vacation from the home site.The meeting was extremely well attended. I always make it clear that I am not a volunteer, and that I just came because I heard that ther`d be Americans. I also brought my favorite crackers, Club Social, which I distributed to all attendees at a preliminary staging point.
We ate at a lovely open-air-tiki-bar sort of place. I had my first local experience with fish. I assumed this was fairly safe because I could see the very water where the little guys were being harvested from my seat in the restaurant. My review: excellent.
After getting all of the business out of the way, a local volunteer wheeled and dealed until a group of us had a ride and a boat tour through Los Haitises Park. We rode out of town on the back of
a pickup, and after completing some necessary errands (as is the norm here), we arrived at a lovely little river inlet-thingy. At first, they attempted to cram us into a boat with a bunch of hotel guests, but Colleen knew that something was
After getting all of the business out of the way, a local volunteer wheeled and dealed until a group of us had a ride and a boat tour through Los Haitises Park. We rode out of town on the back of
a pickup, and after completing some necessary errands (as is the norm here), we arrived at a lovely little river inlet-thingy. At first, they attempted to cram us into a boat with a bunch of hotel guests, but Colleen knew that something was up, and they redistributed the guests to a different vessel.
The tour wound about through a “river” that somehow penetrated an expansive forest of Mangrove trees. We then hit open-water and motored out to and around some islands and to a few different docks where we exited and learned all about the usage of the islands`caves by the indigenous peoples. Our tour guide was a real hard ass on the rules (the first Dominican that I have seen this way), and wouldn’t allow us to take photos of the pictographs. Fortunately, through the miracle of Microsoft Paint, I have reproduced a few from memory in near perfect detail. Enjoy.
Also pictured is a cave relief carving (I believe of a Muppet eating his hand), our crazy bus that we took through Jurassic Park (door opened), an ever-so-holy Catholic rosary with the addition of a Spongebob, and……Our crazy pirate boat- Now
this boat was delightful in many ways, especially when the motor quit in the middle of nowhere on the return trip. Fortunately, we had the guy that had driven us there in his pick-up to help our shifty guide re-start the damn thing. Four times. On a few of the longer “breaks” that we had, Travis, a fellow non-volunteer attempted to paddle us back with the broken kayak paddle that we had as backup. He might have made a little headway if the boat had not weighed about a ton, and if we had not been on the freaking ocean. Anyway, we eventually made it back. (I am pretty sure that we were just running out of gas.)
The weekend was topped off with a quality visit with several volunteers, and some good eating.
Also attached are some post-hoc photos of our visit to Jakes. I think that there are scenes from our many garden lessons, and also those from my work on Betsy’s garden here in her site, which is a secret.
Tally-ho
-Jeffro
*The Cuerpo de Paz is quite fond of abbreviating every
is possibly
limited to
PCDR. In this country, there is not-so clever name and abbreviation for everything… for example: ASCHOSEYPEMI=Associated Chuauffers of Seibo/Pedro Sanchez/Mitches=crappy little van line running regular routs between Mitches and El Seibo, definitely not worthy of such a lengthy anything. So Learn your PCV lingo….ET, COS, IST, ISLT, PDT, MOs, APCD, VAC-and don’t mistake your PCV for a PCVL.
The tour wound about through a “river” that somehow penetrated an expansive forest of Mangrove trees. We then hit open-water and motored out to and around some islands and to a few different docks where we exited and learned all about the usage of the islands`caves by the indigenous peoples. Our tour guide was a real hard ass on the rules (the first Dominican that I have seen this way), and wouldn’t allow us to take photos of the pictographs. Fortunately, through the miracle of Microsoft Paint, I have reproduced a few from memory in near perfect detail. Enjoy.
Also pictured is a cave relief carving (I believe of a Muppet eating his hand), our crazy bus that we took through Jurassic Park (door opened), an ever-so-holy Catholic rosary with the addition of a Spongebob, and……Our crazy pirate boat- Now
this boat was delightful in many ways, especially when the motor quit in the middle of nowhere on the return trip. Fortunately, we had the guy that had driven us there in his pick-up to help our shifty guide re-start the damn thing. Four times. On a few of the longer “breaks” that we had, Travis, a fellow non-volunteer attempted to paddle us back with the broken kayak paddle that we had as backup. He might have made a little headway if the boat had not weighed about a ton, and if we had not been on the freaking ocean. Anyway, we eventually made it back. (I am pretty sure that we were just running out of gas.)The weekend was topped off with a quality visit with several volunteers, and some good eating.
Also attached are some post-hoc photos of our visit to Jakes. I think that there are scenes from our many garden lessons, and also those from my work on Betsy’s garden here in her site, which is a secret.
Tally-ho
-Jeffro
*The Cuerpo de Paz is quite fond of abbreviating every
arbitrary title possible. This
is possibly
limited to
PCDR. In this country, there is not-so clever name and abbreviation for everything… for example: ASCHOSEYPEMI=Associated Chuauffers of Seibo/Pedro Sanchez/Mitches=crappy little van line running regular routs between Mitches and El Seibo, definitely not worthy of such a lengthy anything. So Learn your PCV lingo….ET, COS, IST, ISLT, PDT, MOs, APCD, VAC-and don’t mistake your PCV for a PCVL.
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