Sosua Beach



The anticipated day arrived...a whole day at the beach!

 

But first, we had to get there. Everything I read prior to leaving warned tourists NOT to drive in the DR. Get a driver. Take a taxi. Find a tour bus. But whatever you do, don't brave the streets on your own!

 

Dominicans tend to drive like horses with blinders on. They only see what is in front of them. Not behind, not to the sides. You must be alert at all times. You also never know when you might be stopped by an "electrician" "fixing" a problem. A big truck and rickety ladder in the middle of the road, with mopeds zipping by...not an obstacle course I would want to undertake on my own, that's for sure.

Puerto Plata has about 200,000 people and I'd say a rough guess is that 190,000 of them drive mopeds. Without headlights. Or side mirrors. Loaded with passengers. Seriously...we saw one guy driving his whole family, five people, on a moped. If they aren't loaded with people, they might be loaded with loads. Of fruit, plastic, washing machines, boxes, tires, you name it, they carry it.

It's no wonder all the cars have massive bumpers.

After running the highway gauntlet, Bob treated us to the gauntlet of vendors on the way to the beach. Rows and rows of people selling anything you can imagine that might catch the eye of tourists walking by. Shouts of "amigo" and "hola" and "I do this very nice, just for you" greeted us as we made our way to Bob's favorite spot. He has a guy he prefers to conduct his beach going business with. We had three umbrellas and five beach chairs reserved for us, although we only needed the three chairs. Nicco never sat down. Ever. And one of his parents was in the water with him at all times. Two of our chairs were occupied by bags and towels.

 Beautiful! The clearest of clear and bluest of blue water.

Nicco attempted to boogie on the gentle waves, but he didn't do it perfectly the first time, so that turned into a near tantrum.

 

After threats of leaving and never coming back, the boy settled for rolling and gliding in the waves until lunch time.

We dragged him away from the waves to The Hungry Viking for lunch.

 It nearly killed him to sit so close to the shore and not go in. He asked if he could just dip his toes while we waited for our food. And could he just go down for a minute while everyone else finished.

I could not force him to wait for the bill to be paid, so I walked my boy back to the shore until the rest of our company joined us.

After a day of sun and surf, we went to dinner. Patrice had commented earlier about islanders epitomizing recycling. When we pulled up to the restaurant, an example of ingenious recycling greeted us:

The hotel placard painted over an old Marlboro sign. Classic.

And another day is in the books!