Transportation

One of our challenges here in Cabarete is getting around, so I thought I'd write about a few of our available modes of transportation.

Walking
Cabarete is a small city that is spread along the main road, route 5, that travels all along the north coast of the DR.  Our wonderful spot at the Nanny Estates is located about a mile and a half west of the touristy restaurant/gift shop hub of the city, which is also where the some good swimming beaches are for children.  The boys' school, Las Tres Mariposas, is about another mile and a half to the west.  Lucky for us, we don't have to walk on the road, because we can easily access the beach, and our destinations are rarely far from the it.

It takes us about 35 minutes for us to walk along the beach to get to school every morning, and it is a beautiful walk, usually with morning rainbows.

Happy Beach doggies

We were at first uncertain how Graham might react to having to walk so long in the mornings but he has been able to keep up.  Win inspires us by kicking a soccer ball on the way, or conducting ski-training exercises, or by telling tales of Kip Keino, Kenyan runner who ran 5 miles to school every morning.

We also walk east to town some afternoons.


Road Travel
As far as I can tell, there aren't a lot of rules about driving here in Cabarete.  The cars share the road with motorbikes, intrepid cyclists, and pedestrians of all types - carrying things on their heads, or trying to sell to tourists, or simply sitting in the road (didn't your mother teach you not to do that!?).  Drivers, if they want to pass a slower vehicle, simply pass them... to the left, or right, and regardless of oncoming traffic. Turning onto the main road from a side road?  No need to stop at the intersection.  A left-turning vehicle rides the left shoulder until it's "safe" to cross to the proper lane.   To add to the confusion, the main highway, Route 5, which runs through town, has a fair number of potholes, which we are all trying to avoid and therefore weaving around.  In this environment, I introduce to you the Motoconcho and the Guagua.


Motoconcho
It is a motorbike taxi.  They are everywhere.  This is how it goes:  I show up on the street.  Several young men on motorbikes call out to me; I select one, tell him where I want to go, agree on a price (usually 25 pesos, or about .75 USD), and then I climb on the back of the motorbike.  He takes me to my destination, and I pay him.  Fun!  You would be surprised how many motoconcho drivers will offer a ride to a woman and her three small children, because, as you can probably guess, Yes, you can fit five people on a scooter.  Remind you of anything?

Guagua
A guagua is an informal public minibus.  They run every 5-10 minutes going in either direction on the main road.  These would be called 12-seater vans where we come from, but here we have seen 21 people in one van.  You might also be riding with a large pane of glass, or a trash barrel (we've done it).  Two people work the guagua: the driver, and the money taker, who stands in the sliding passenger side door and slaps the top of the van to signal stops to the driver.  It's pretty cozy inside the guagua, even sardine-ish, I might say, but a cheap way to get around... unless you're not wise to the real cost.  It should cost 20 pesos (about $.50 USD) but the money taker is notably unable to make change and is usually willing to overcharge foreigners.

Boat
Glas bottom boat!  Fumy and rocky on a choppy day but man, what a pretty ride!

Taxi
Too too expensive for this little island!  We only made the mistake once.

Rental Car
We have rented a car on two occasions.  Driving is an adventure!  We have enjoyed living mostly car-free, especially because the fumes from diesel cars and trucks are an overwhelming reminder of our own carbon footprints on this earth.  Still, if you wanna get to the beautiful places, you gotta get yourself there.  We visited Playa Grande (see previous posting) and the city of Puerto Plata, which is where we were able to take the ...

Cable Car
... to the top of Mount Isabel de Torres.

 A little boogie at the top

Some beautiful plants from the botanical gardens at the top

Win, relaxing

Boogie Board

We found a little surf beach called Encuentro, with lots of surf shops and schools and this little tidal stream that provided a few minutes of fun before the rain came down.

And finally....

Kite

No, this is not like Curious George riding up into the sky... It's kite boarding, a kickin' sport that Cabarete is famous for.  On a windy day you can see dozens of kites up and down the beach.

And... could it be?  Laura and Win harnessed in and flying?  Stay tuned...

Sosúa: ADIP

A Day in Pictures

 

Español and some pics

I have always been a grammar gal.

When I was teaching ESL, it was my favorite subject. Now that I'm studying Spanish, I get to dive right into the deep end of Spanish grammar because I know very little about it.  I can understand lots of spoken Spanish because of having studied other latin languages, but oh! the conjugations!  And the irregular forms! Joy!

Win and I took a little jog and swim this morning after we dropped the boys at school.  While we swam and ran, we tried to conjugate the regular -ar and -ir and -er verbs together and I do believe they are beginning to become a little more automatic thanks to the practice.

Also helping our efforts to learn the language is the Cabarete Language Institute.  Win started his intensive classes - three hours per day, five days per week - on Monday of last week.  Although he has struggled to complete homework assignments due to his own work load and a commitment to spending time with family, he has enjoyed the other students and his teacher Michelle immensely.  His classmates have included Americans and Canadians of all ages and he seems to really be getting better at speaking and understanding Dominican Spanish.

I started my own classes yesterday.  I will be attending three times a week for two hours at a time.  My class focus is on developing more fluent speech but we will have grammar reviews daily (yay!).  There is just one other person in my class - Mike, a Canadian who has spent the last 20-some winters here - and we seem to be at more or less the same level, with strengths in different areas.  It's great to have the opportunity to speak Spanish with people that will wait for me to form my very sloooow sentences...

Here are some photos from the last few days.

Some pictures taken by the boys on their camera:

Some bad island art

Some shots from school

Old VW Bug parked in front of the 3 Mariposas

Have a wonderful day!

Weather or Not

It's a common thing to talk about the weather, anywhere you go.  Chit-chat, sunny yes, nice to see you.  In the DR, however, I'm told that talking about the weather is usually rather boring, since it is very predictable and changes in the weather are infrequent.

We have, however, seen a few variations from the Sunny and 78 that seems to be the norm here.  Downpour when we arrived, some clouds coming through the past few days with sprinkles, and the main event at last night's Dominican Republic Jazz Festival 2011 was kind of soggy.

We had reserved our rental car for today only, planning to go to one of the more remote beaches for the day.  So, when we realized this morning that today looked like rain, rain, rain, we considered for a moment changing plans and exploring around the mountains inland, or visiting the Monkey Jungle or Ocean World.  But in the end we decided to push through to Playa Grande, a beach east of Cabarete.  And we were so happy we did.

Playa Grande is a quiet and remote and you have to drive 45 minutes from Cabarete to reach it.  It is popular with Dominican families, but not many foreign tourists visit, and there are few amenities there.  It's where you go when you want to have a remote deserted beach experience.

Lush, dark-green vegetation.  Unbelievably clear blue water.  Startling cliffs.  Unspoiled crescent shaped beach.  All five of us in our family were in wonder of this truly inspiring place - sorry!  I didn't take any pictures that do it justice!  But you can see photos of it here.

If you followed the link above, you'll notice something about Playa Grande I haven't mentioned yet.  The rustling winds of change have brought a beautiful new golf course to Playa Grande, and within the next few years this unspoiled stretch of beach so far visited by few will soon be a full-scale resort the likes of which I probably will never have the inclination (or dough) to visit.  Development is brewing over this crystal clear curve of the island, and it will bring jobs to the people who live in the rundown homes nearby, but at what price?  Even as we walked the mile of beach, and as the rain fell down on us, we could feel the air of change in the destiny of Playa Grande.

Today we took the opportunity to fully enjoy and be present to the wildness of the place.  To the rain, to the huge swell of the waves, to the clean sand, to the beautiful mysterious shells we found there.

What are you appreciating today?


Here are some great shots of the boys in some mangrove trees.

What a long day!  By the time we got home we had 2 sleepers.  So cute.

Enjoy your weather today!

The Nanny Estates

Our home in Montpelier is an old 3-bedroom rambling farmhouse.  It's hard to heat, the floors tilt, and the street out front is too busy for us to safely let our boys roam outside without parental eyeballs. But it is our home, with its cozy nooks, great big kitchen that I love to cook in, a spacious deck for playing ... We love our Montpelier home.

But what a contrast to the Nanny Estates, our home away from home, or "our vacation home" as the boys call it.  We are in a small development with about 20 units right on the beach.  There is a quiet central courtyard with a pool, and we just need to run down the short path to get to the waves.

Path to the beach

You can see pictures of our unit here, choose "standard" from the pull-down menu and click on B2, and pictures are more or less accurate.  Imagine our faces in the rooms and you'll have a mental picture of us in our vacation home.  There is a lovely spiral staircase up to the 2nd floor and roof, where there is an outdoor shower and, of course, exercise classes every morning

Rooftop Abs Class

Thank you to Mike Rossi of First in Fitness, and to Geoff Beyer for recording the 6:30 a.m. Abs Class and sending it our way, and thank goodness for the heavy rock Win found poolside to provide an  extra challenge of the crunch twists.  The roof also serves beautifully as a peaceful yoga refuge, if you can clear out the noisy boys.  Nothing but the sea and the sky.

The boys all share one room.  Fletcher has been sharing the double bed with Graham while Jasper sleeps in the single.  You know something?  They like it.  Being all together, and waking up together - they actually seem happy.  Who knew?  Here we were, searching for a solution to our growing Montpelier issues of -not enough bedrooms-  and  -having to share a bathroom-  (should we expand into the garage? move?) when really, we have enough.  Naturally, being in a country like the Dominican Republic, this truth is evident almost everywhere.  More on this later.

Our kitchen here is small, with a tiny stove and mini refrigerator, but it has served us very well because there are enough chairs at our table for all of us.

Breakfast

And how we love how little CLUTTER our house has here.  It's much easier to clean up the toys when there are only a few, and especially when most of them are boogie boards, fins, and other outdoor gear that lives on the patio.  No mail comes in here, no winter clothes, and all of our sandals can hide neatly in the corner by the door.  It is easier to stay clean, too, when Lucy comes every day to clean for us.  We are so grateful for that.

Okay, so I did see my first 2 cucarachas this morning, but they were outside on the patio.  They were, um, ENORMOUS, but shall I also emphasize were because despite my desire to love all creatures, well, I just don't love cockroaches so I chased them down and squished them with my flipflop.

Not to end on that murderous note.  We appreciate and enjoy our house here and our lovely neighbors too, including a lovely South African family, some permanent residents that live here part or most of the year, and a doctors' group from Michigan that is here to do service work for people who cannot afford medical care.  Every ex-pat we have met is down-to-earth, generous, and kind. More on them later, too.

We love the comments - keep them coming!

Tres mariposas

The boys are attending a school called 3 Mariposas which they will gladly tell you means "three butterflies."  It is a Montessori school run by an amazing American woman named Sarah Ross and her wonderful Dominican volunteers.  Before we left for our trip, Jasper and Fletcher collected supplies for the school and we arrived with loads of toothbrushes and toothpaste  to share with our new friends.

As for the boys, their opinions of the school are as follows:

Jasper:  It's awesome!  I really like Sarah.  It reminds me of the Montpelier Montessori School.

Fletcher:  I like the pins and one board work.

Graham:  I just don't wanna say anything.  (Graham has an earache today and is quite grumpy.  No swimming for 3 days!)

Earlier today Graham, Fletcher and Jasper were engaged in some learning Spanish - Here's my first attempt at uploading a video.  Enjoy.

The travel time

Aren't time changes funny?  We set our clocks back on Saturday night knowing that we would have the "extra" hour in the morning to get out of the house for our 6 am flight (yikes!) but it felt like 7 am.  Which actually, does make a difference.  Then... when we arrived in a downpour in Puerto Plata, we changed our clocks forwards one hour, in effect giving back the hour we had borrowed in the morning.  Convenient!  

One of the things I love about traveling is the way you bump into people more than once, and right away we bumped into someone important in the context of our trip.  Way back in January, when I first started to have an inkling of traveling this fall en famille, she was inspired by a young woman named Hannah who gave a testimonial at the Unitarian Church of Montpelier.  She described the Coffee Camps in Nicaragua, where she had given her time with Planting Hope, and she is the one who first gave me a vision of what traveling abroad with three small boys could be like.  I imagined my boys playing with local kids while Win and I did some work building or teaching or otherwise helping an underserved population.  Hannah spoke passionately about her experiences and vowed to go back to Nicaragua to continue her work.  

And who should be on our plane from Burlington to Newark, but Hannah, headed back to Nicaragua!  We got to hang out with her for a little while before our connection took off and she was most interesting for the boys to get to know.  

Thank you, Hannah for your good work and inspiration.  You are part of the reason we are here!

The plane ride went well.  Would you believe we had four seats in the last row of the plane (yes!  the potty row!) and one seat in first class?  That's right. One parent in first class, the other managing a 3- and a 5- and an almost 7-year old in baggage class.  Hah!  tag team and each parent got a turn in the hot seat.  The boys did great, all in all.  This is a picture of them when they weren't fighting.  

Look at how green it is in the DR!

And it was, indeed green (but pouring) when we arrived in Puerto Plata.  

Packing it all up and in

We are determined to not be (more) stressed out about the packing and preparing.  But, oh my, there are so many things to do...

tie up business loose ends
get the house clean for the house sitters
pack all those boys' things
laundry laundry laundry
still lead (somewhat) normal life

Et cetera.  I have no fewer than 3 to do lists.

Never mind, what gets done, gets done and what does not will be okay.

Thanks for your support and visiting our blog!  We look forward to being able to share pictures and stories and observations with you.

If you are interested in seeing where we'll be, check out here for information on Cabarete.  Also, we are so excited that the boys will be learning at a wonderful bilingual Montessori School called 3 Mariposas.

And hey, if you feel like dropping in, let us know!  We'd love to see you!