Monday, January 21, 2008

Back home... at least for now...

Sorry for not posting in almost a week, but I've had a nasty flu bug and am just finally feeling almost normal. Matt didn't catch the entire thing, thank goodness, just some cold like symptoms. Lets just say that Matt has told me that there is not a need to share EVERYTHING and that I can keep my bugs to myself!!!

Lets see if I can get us all caught up here.

I last posted on Tuesday when we were waiting on wind in Las Terrenas. We planned on driving to Samana City on Wednesday to hopefully see the whales. Matt, Kim & Jay made the drive down to the southern tip of the pennisula while I stayed in Las Terrenas and slept as I felt awful. After a pretty rolly 4 hour boat ride, they did not see any whales as it seems they haven't really shown up yet. They heard lots of great stories and were told that in past years as many as 4,000 whales could be seen in the area, WOW!! I wish they would have seen the whales, but I'm also glad I didn't miss them.

On Thursday, we made a very short (like minute long) drive to the point just outside of town and found a beautiful bay for them to kite in. It was a beautiful bay surrounded by lots of palm and mangrove trees. The wind was onshore so it had them kiting close to me so that I could take lots of great photos. Overall, the beach was beautiful and deserted but did not have the same safe feeling that we do here in Cabarete. Nothing bad, just felt like we really had to keep an eye on things to make sure they didn't "walk" off.

We decided to extend our trip by one day (Friday) to hopefully give everyone another day of kiting before making the drive back along the north coast. We drove up to the point called Portillo and were looking for a way to access the beach. We tried playing stupid tourists saying that we needed inside a gated neighborhood for "la casa de mi amigo" (my friend's house), but while the guards did let us in, they didn't buy it and proceeded to follow us around until we finally left the neighborhood. We decided to hop a curb in the rental car and park alongside the beach and walk up to the point. It was a beautiful bay but we had to watch the weather a bit as the wind was up and down and it looked like rain. Kim and I even built a fort out of old plywood, sticks & coconuts to protect the camera from rain since we were so far from the car and the sky was threatening all day. All in all, not a great kiting day but it did allow me to get some neat shots from my position on the beach.

We left Las Terrenas early on Saturday morning and returned to Cabarete just a bit before noon. Neither Matt or I felt good so we napped almost all of Saturday afternoon. We finally woke a bit before dinner and managed to eat a bit of pasta. Yesterday was pretty much a repeat although Matt did walk down to the beach with his kite gear only to return when there wasn't enough wind.

Today we actually managed to head down to the beach for a couple of hours and Matt took his 10 meter kite out for a sail. I worked on my tan while reading and relaxing on the beach. We made it into town tonight for some dinner on the beach so life is finally returning to normal.

We can't believe that our time here is almost at an end. We have less than a week before we return to the states and work. We're busy trying to clear out all the food from our cabinets and the cupboards are looking pretty bare so it will be lots of eating out for us this week. We are both ready for a change and are looking forward to going home but we will miss our wonderfully laid back life here and all of the wonderful friends that we have met.

No comments: