Jarabacoa!

We had a free weekend this weekend and wanted to make the most of it... one of Ana's nephews, Miguel, is our same age and he was kind enough to invite us to stay at a house his family has in Jarabacoa.  Not knowing what to expect, we packed our bags and loaded up into his suburban for the drive.  Two-ish hours and quite a few winding-mountain roads later, we arrived. And... I'm not even going to try to describe it. Here:

I promise I took these pictures myself and did not find them in an online catalog...

Yeah. We were just a little bit excited. But as much as we loved the house, we had to make the most of the daylight! We threw down our bags and changed into swimsuits and headed out. Miguel took us on two different little hiking trails near rivers.  The mountains were so so beautiful! It was astounding to me how different the vegetation in Jarabacoa was, just a few hours away from Santo Domingo and its beaches.

Trail one.

The second trail we went on led to Salto Baiguate.  We drove about fifteen minutes down these tiny back country roads, then walked fifteen more, and found ourselves at the bottom of a beautiful waterfall :] We hopped in the pool, which was frigid, and tried to see how close we could get to the falls before the current pushed us farther away. We even jumped off the cliffs! Afterward we laid around on the rocks in the sun like lizards. Or mermaids.  I was a mermaid. 

Mom, you would love it here :]

Sometimes we take "Poster Pictures," in hopes of making on a wall in the Study Abroad office... look, look at us being Aggies and traveling...

Once the sun started going down we headed back, but must've fallen in the pool...

     After swimming and dining, we got ready and headed into town. Something I hadn't mentioned on here yet: you know how when you're traveling in a foreign country they tell you to try to blend in? Well here's the thing. Blonde people don't really exist in the DR, and so blending in is pretty close to impossible.  When we went into town, we walked into a pool hall, and, I kid you not, every single person of the fourty-ish people in the room looked up and stared at us as we walked in. ("Man, I must look good today...").  It's pretty funny, and we've gotten used to it while we've been here, but goodness! All I want is to be Latina but no one even starts to believe it for a second... :[
     We went to a few discotecas and learned to dance bachata! I got asked to dance quite a bit, but unfortunately I'm going to have to attribute that, again, to my hair color and not to my incredible dance skills... qué lástima.   It was an incredibly fun night just the same... I was worn out by the time we got back home!

Blurry, but you get the idea. Discoteca número tres.

Despite the tiredness, Lauren and I decided we just couldn't spend all of our time sleeping in such a beautiful place, and we got up at 5:30 to watch the sun rise over the mountains.  It was absolutely stunning.

     After the sun was up, I took a little nap on that plump yellow couch you see above, which felt great in the open air with the mountain noises all around :] But around nine, I woke up to the sound of frivolities and went and joined some of the kids in the pool. Soon after Aaron peeled a mango for us all with a knife the size of a machete. Cool.
     Once almost-everyone was up, we packed lunches and headed down the dirt road to a river. We followed Miguel's golden retriever, Vainilla, because she knew the way.  The dirt road was really more of a rock road, and pretty darn steep. We made it to the river and made sandwiches, and then started walking downstream. We found a deep pool we could swim in. Alex climbed up a cliff and jumped from about 5 feet up, and I had just told her how she needed to climb up to a tree and drop from one of its limbs, when three Dominican boys showed up, and then completely showed us up. They jumped off the cliff too, but from about twenty feet up instead, and one of them literally ran up the same tree I had mentioned, but didn't stop at the limb, and instead climb to its top and flipped into the water from around 30 feet up.  ... We laughed at the contrast between us Americans thinking we're cool and adventurous and then completely being one-upped by the natives, but we definitely enjoyed the show while it lasted :]

The rest of the afternoon was spent swimming, eating, and lounging around. It was such an incredibly beautiful, peaceful place with such a great group of kids... we did not want to leave. But alas, Miguel had some story about school and work the next day so we reluctantly got in the car...

All of us... such a fun group of kids:]

This weekend was so so SO much fun! It went by so fast but we managed to squeeze so many adventures into it. If I come back to the DR I definitely want to go back to Jarabacoa and spend more time, it's really a neat little town!

Well it's time for me to get some sleep...
¡Hasta mañana!
Abby