If there's one thing that all thirld world countries
have in common, it's insane drivers.
On the way back to the hotel yesterday from the
restaurant, I hitched a ride on a taxi motorcycle.
It's actually more of a cross between a light
motorcycle and a moped, and the drivers zip around
like the Dominican maniacs that they are.
As we were roaring down the street, leaving a loud
trail of blue exhaust in our wake, I wondered how
often these guys got into an accident.
Next thing you know, a maroon Honda barrels out of a
side street, completely disregarding his stop sign.In
a burst of fear/adrenaline, we come to a screeching,
sliding stop, the Civic doing likewise, and end up
staring into the white of each other's eyes just
inches away from a side impact collision.
After our hearts resumed beating, my driver wasted no
time in hurling curses at the Civic driver--something
about his mother and the IQ of a donkey or whatever it
was he was yelling.
Pascal and I ate dinner with Chris and his lesbian
friend, who return to New York on Monday. As it turns
out, she takes care of the online photo editing,
graphics and webcam for Penthouse.com. Good lord!
Pascal and I slept for a few hours, our alarms waking
us up around 11:30PM. And then, back to the clubs!
Woo-hoo!!
The next morning, our alarms woke us up at the insane
hour of 7:45. Pascal, who for some reason didn't take
his contacts off the night before, kind of freaked me
out with the whole super red-eye look he had going.
(I'm interrupted in my writing here as the local
shotgun-wielding security guard is trying to explain
something to the owners of the internet cafe and
gesticulating all over the place with his shotgun.
It's a bit unnerving and I'm keeping an eye on his
trigger finger...)
At 8:15 we were carted off on the back of a truck
(kind of like the military-style troop transports,
except painted in bright colors) with a dozen or so
others. Time to go four-wheeling!
Four-wheelers (for those of you who don't immediately
have an image come to mind, imagine a cross between a
tractor and a motorcycle, with four little chubby
tires) are a hell of a lot of fun.
We roared through muddy back roads and villages for
hours, and I tried to blast through as many deep
puddles as I could, sending mud and hot water splaying
all over the place (it takes so little to make me
happy!) The guide yelled at me a few times for what he
considered excessive action (wimp), and once or twice
the water got deep enough to get the whole engine
smoking.
The only downside to this little adventure was my
brilliant idea to wear sandals instead of shoes. Apart
from the added difficulty in switching gears and
braking with my feet, I also had my left ankle graze
the side of the engine a few times. Maybe it was my
imagination, but apart from the scalding pain I was
pretty sure you could hear the sizzle and smell of
burning flesh. YEOUCH!
Despite my 4 SPF lotion (I know mom, it's not
enough...), I managed to get a fairly decent sunburn
in the process, especially as we stopped once at a
river and another time at the ocean to swim. The
latter, by the way, looked like it'd been lifted right
out of a postard: yellow sand, scenic palm trees, true
blue water and a bright sun.
At the beach, we saw this little kid of maybe 8 scale
up a coconut tree with no ropes or any special
equipment. I have no idea how the hell he did it, but
as a side note to Kyle I'll point out that it was
considerably more effective than trying to run up the
side of the tree!
Back in Sosua now, after a couple hours nap, the sun
is setting and a slight breeze is coming in from the
ocean. I'm going to see if Pascal is awake and try to
score some dinner (chickens be warned!)
Cheers,
Gabriel
