Our days in the d.r.

Let me preface my oncoming stories by telling you this.

Our trip was amazing.

A.maz.ing. Probably one of my favourite trips in a long, long time.

Probably because:

- I’ve missed hot, humid heat

- we got to stay in the temple patron housing, spend time at the beautiful Santo Domingo temple (maybe one of my favourites), and check out what city life is like in the DR

- it involved endless pina coladas and a white sand beach

yes this is a real picture. i know.

- and cabanas. i'm a sucker for cabanas

- I got to jump off of 27 waterfalls and swim through lagoons

the slide

a few of the smaller falls
- the ocean was the perfect temperature where you could sit in it allll day long with ever getting too hot or too cold




- we got to rent catamarans nearly every day and Neil taught me how to sail


- we found two discarded floaties on our third night there which took our pool-laying, ocean-swimming experience to a whole new level

- there was tanning involved

night 2 at the resort. this tan did not last very long back in good ol' NYC

- we went with some of our absolute favourite people in this world (best of all, since they are cousins, it means our foursome adventures are just beginning)

- I got a week away with this boy

So yes. The trip was fabulous. BUT a week away in the DR would not have been complete without:

*A few white-knuckled car and bus rides

Buses in the DR partition off the driver’s section from the passengers, which fully blacks out the passenger’s view of the road. They also have curtains shielding the view around the whole bus - for GOOD reason. One peak out from the black curtains and I realized why they try so hard to keep passengers in the (literal) dark. Because 80 mph on a one lane, windy road is perfectly acceptable. And red lights are not red lights at all, merely yields (and when I say yield I mean slow to 30 mph before crossing)

The non-rules also apply to cars. Which meant I put my faith in my cousin (who luckily had 2 years of DR-driving skills under his belt) to know when to pay attention to the rules of the road and when to just throw the rules out the window, drive over them, reverse and drive over them again. But all’s well that ends well – we arrived to each destination miraculously unscathed

Well unscathed rather than that….

* Trip to the local ER (twice)

Yay sketchy stitches in the DR!

Refer to above-mentioned waterfalls experience. Probably the highlight of our trip (for three of us). Probably not the highlight of our trip for Neil, who out of sheer random luck hit a spot in the ankle deep water that was slippery and did a 360 fall straight onto his chin. As soon as he got back up we saw the gash and knew it was stitches-worthy. Which is exactly what you want to be told when you are in the mountains in a third world country. So as Morg, Brit and I continued our waterfall adventure, Neil was whisked off by the only-Spanish speaking river guides and transported to a mountain hospital that gave him stitches that looked like this:

see that red stuff sticking out?

When we returned we took one look at those and decided that exposed flesh should not be an end result in stitches so we drove to the nearest large city (Santiago) to try again. After 4 hours in the ER, Neil walked away looking more like this:


(and was given a tetanus shot and some antibiotics as a bonus).

Much better.

waiting at the hospital.

* The mosquitoes

I think I tallied up 25 bites over the course of our trip. Morgan probably beat that number, and the boys I think counted two apiece. (DR mosquitoes apparently don’t love Bennion blood)

* A bout of “sickness”

When standing in line waiting to pay for our visa I noticed a warning about the possibility of getting sick from the food. Well if there’s a sign that says it’s a possibility, chances are I’m going to get it. It hit all four of us on the last days of our resort time. But the fairer sex hadn’t had the mission-prepping experiences to toughen our stomachs up and got hit the worst. While it didn’t leave us room-bound, it limited the beach and pool area to the sections nearest to the bathroom. It also led to the fun experience of trying to procure pepto bismal in a 3rd world country. Nothing like the hotel try to sell us the DR version for 6 dollars a tablet. We instead just clutched our stomachs and road it out. But hey, if you are going to have food poisoning you might as well be laying on a beach getting a tan, right?

So you know the trip had to be pretty AMAZING to make up for those experiences and then some. We’ve travelled the world in our three years as a married couple, but none of those trips were nearly as adventurous.

But when the majority of the trip had this kind of scenery:

It’ll always be called a success.

sad to leave!