Los Tres Ojos

On Friday after work (we made it through the five-day work week, whoop!), we decided to go see Los Tres Ojos, which are underground freshwater lakes in Santo Domingo. There are three main lakes within the cavern, all of which have a bright blue color. They say that these caves were used by los Taínos for religious purposes as well.  They were gorgeous!!

I somehow managed to remember my nice camera, but forget the batteries at home... :[ I was so upset! So these pictures are decent, but they don't nearly do justice to how beautiful the lakes were! They were so clear and bright, and you could stick your feet in all of them.  The caves are located in a National Park, and there are trees and other greeneries all over the place as well.
There's a fourth lake, called Las Damas, that isn't considered one of the eyes.  You can still get to it though by paying a boatman to take you across. In the darkness of the caves with the water dripping from the ceiling and all... it a little felt like crossing into the Underworld.

Crossing the River Styx...

But no worries, because what you arrived at once you exited the cave was definitely not the underworld (phew). Instead, it was this lovely view.

Those indians had the life... bathing in this lake everyday, are you kidding me?? We made plenty of plans as to where exactly we could put a rope swing and platform to get a running start into its waters.

Once we emerged from the sauna that was the cavern, we took a walk around the park above it. The flamboyán trees were everywhere--it was so beautiful! While we were sitting on a bench, a park worker came by to tell us the park was closing and that we needed to leave. We asked him to take our picture before we left and he agreed. We all gathered together and posed, and he stood on a bench, and so completely confidently holds out the camera in front of him, pointed toward himself, and takes a pictures.   At first we thought he was kidding, but he honestly just didn't know where to point the camera! We showed him and got the group picture, but in the end we liked the picture of him so much better.  It's my new favorite picture from the trip... look at him! He's just so happy, nicely taking a picture of us... and so naive.

Hello, Mr. Man.

On the way home from Los Tres Ojos, we had José drop us off to walk near the ocean. We found a seawall, and got a bit sprayed by the waves, but had so much fun!

After we got home we went to Virginia's house for some cold-tubbing (it's a lot like hot-tubbing but without a heater...), and then home to bed for the weekend trip!

We always manage to fit so much into our weekends--I love it!! I'm loving getting to see so many different parts of la República Dominicana :]

Love,
Abby