4 Ways to Access a Dominican Beach

1. Step out of your hotel room.
That´s what we did our first morning in the DR in a little town called Boca Chica. We were so excited about our situation that we didn´t do a good enough job applying the $10 bottle of sunscreen that we had just bought, and we both slightly fried. After 4 days, the little blisters at the top of my arms and the top of my legs are finally starting to peel. The pain was totally worth it because our little section of private beach was in a cove of warm, blue, 4 foot deep water that extended for about half a mile.


2. Walk 2.5 miles from your isolated farm house-hostel through town and down an unpaved rural road.
That´s how we got to little magical LaPlayita (located on the peninsula of Samana) where there were no other people except for a couple cuddling on the sand and a Dominican woman who made us lunch. On a covered table on the sand, we ate fresh fish, rice, beans, fried plantains and fried bananas that the woman prepared back in her little makeshift hut that doubled as a kitchen. It was delicious.

3. Take a little jet boat over churning, stormy waves into the middle of the ocean with a driver screaming ¨Quiero morir!¨ (I want to die!) every time he got air off a wave.
That was how we got back into the pristine cove of Playa Rincon with its 3 kilometers of white sand. The beach is apparently one of the most beautiful in the Caribbean, and its sand and backdrop of palm trees were stunning. On the boat ride on the way back, the sea was even rougher, and I devised a plan in my head about what I could leave behind in order to swim to shore in my underwear. (I was the saddest about the prospect of losing my TIME magazine.) Fortunately, neither my magazine nor my clothes had to be sacrificed to the great deep, but I did get a cramp in my arm from gripping the side of the boat. The video fails to depict the real treacherousness of the situation.

4. Drive down a steep, unpaved, muddy, boulder ridden road with a flat tire.
That was the road we had to take from our mountainous luxury camping place down to the popular beach town of Cabarete. Our tire wasn´t completely flat, but when some kids in a fruit stand yelled out ¨problema! problema!¨while pointing at our car, we became even more nervous. We made it slowly down to the mountain to a gas station, and after we filled the tire up with air, it was fine and it has been fine ever since. No holes. No obvious leaks. A miracle. The beach of Cabarete was lively with tourists and of course, stunning. (The video I posted above is of the bathroom at the luxury camping place where we were minutes before we got the flat tire. The video's connection to this paragraph is weak, but I just liked the bathroom a whole lot.)

Driving Dominican Style

Greetings from the Dominican Republic where I am spending my spring break with my dear friend Jen Keng and risking our lives behind the wheel of a white Mitsubishi Lancer. For the first time in my international travels, we have rented a car. (In keeping with my travel habits, I didn't bring my driver's license, just my passport, so the car is in Jen's name, but I've asked to do most of the driving. Fortunately, highway patrol here seems pretty lax.)

The first sign that the driving would be difficult was the fact that the windshield has a foot of dark tinting along the bottom and two feet of dark tinting along the top, giving us approximately two feet of clear visibility. This visibility is reduced to about a square foot when it's raining and we use the decade-old streaky wipers at full speed, which has been every day. I can see through it really well when I lean up against the steering wheel, granny style.

Once we find the peep hole out of the windshield, we focus on swerving around the man-size potholes that could possibly consume our vehicle. In some undocumented part of history, the DR must have been the victim of its own Blitz. At a particularly ugly set of potholes, some entrepreneurial teens were taking advantage of the situation by demanding a toll from the slowing cars.

Other road obstacles include:
- The luxury buses that pass us on two-lane roads, completely covering us in their wet slosh. (Normally I would be embarrassed to admit that I was getting passed by million-pound buses, but these dudes are crazy.)
- Gorgeous ocean views.
- 70% inclines. With potholes. Good thing our automatic can shift down to first gear. RRRRR.
- Puddles that reach halfway up the car doors.
- Yelling "hola" to all the children and families hanging out on the main streets as we pass by. (see picture above)

Don't worry, Mom and Dad, I feel perfectly safe!

Another reason I love being a student at UW

Free roller skating every Friday night at the university gym!

Tearing up the gym floor with my friend Kurt.

Laney, Marissa and I practiced purposeful falls before we hit the main drag.
Laney has a nice video of one of her falls here.