DAY 6
Part I
I Like My Beaches A Little On The Trashy Side
I Like My Beaches A Little On The Trashy Side
Kimberly jumps up at the crack of dawn, full of energy, but either because of the rich dinner we ate the night before or because of the massive amounts of alcohol I drank I don't feel quite the same.
My head is pounding and my stomach is a wreck. I opt to stay in our room and recover at my own speed while Kimberly takes the yoga class.
As I am stepping out of a very long, very hot shower I hear a high pitched voice in my room.
"Hola? It's me, Ralphio!"
I groan under my breath. How the hell did he even get in our room? I vow to kick Kimberly later for not locking the door.
"Can you kindly leave the room Ralphio? I still need to get dressed!" I shout from the bathroom.
"Thats ok!" Ralphio says in his annoying sing song voice. "I will just sit down and wait for you, then we can go to breakfast together!"
Jesus. I restrain myself from running out in my towel and removing him from the room by brutal force.
"I will meet you out there! Ok?"
He takes some convincing but I finally get him out of our room and quickly dead bolt the door.
I wait as long as I can to head to breakfast in the hopes that he will already be gone, but of course the first thing I see is Ralphio frantically waving me over to his table.
I focus on the sound of the waves crashing behind my back, the warm sunshine gently caressing me, and the luscious fresh fruit I am eating, determined to drown out the incessant sound of Ralphio chattering about himself.
Kimberly soon joins us, positively glowing from what she claims was the greatest yoga class of her entire lifetime. I glare at her through breakfast but it has no effect on her blissful state. I don't think she evens notices Ralphio describing every single time he has ever done yoga to us in excruciatingly boring detail.
We manage to lose him long enough after breakfast to call a cab to take us to the main stretch of beach in Sosua. As our cab is driving slowly down the long, pot holed dirt road leading out of the hotel, we hear screaming.
Kimberly and I look out the back window to see Ralphio running as fast as he can after the cab. He is wearing nothing but his silk boxers again with a blue and white striped towel slung over his shoulder and a giant camera bouncing around his neck.
"Wait for me!!!" He shouts.
"Andale! Andale!" I shout at the cab driver. Even with my limited Spanish I feel that this should clearly mean step on it but the cab driver stops instead.
Ralphio breathlessly jumps in the backseat, crawling over Kimberly to seat in the middle of the two of us. He talks happily the entire way to the beach, oblivious to our obvious dismay at having him there.
When we get out of the cab Kimberly tells him her and I need some alone time and we sprint into the crowds of people in the streets.
After running several blocks we stop to take in our surroundings. Sosua is a disarming mix of beautiful serenity and in your face corruption. A main dirt road follows along soft white sand leading to a glistening cove of turquoise water. Children scream and splash in the water. Tourists snorkel and jet ski in the crystal clear ocean. Yet less than 30 feet away as you walk the shade dappled dirt path, prostitutes and drug dealers beckon to you from inside filthy dark bars. Walk a couple feet and see a happy couple dancing to a live band in the sand. Walk a couple more and have a prostitute with dirty knees reaching out for you.
Face one direction and see the inviting soft sand and cleansing ocean water, turn the other and see a man doing drugs in the most disgusting bathroom you've ever laid eyes upon.
We spend hours soaking in these contrasts. Laying in the sun, drinking beers in thrillingly decrepit bars, dancing under the shady trees, swimming in the perfect water, eating pizza covered with giant freshly caught prawns, politely turning down offers of drugs and hookers. Just another day at the beach.
Part II
All Animals Can Swim, Right?
Kimberly and I had been told with good reason not to stay in Sosua after nightfall so we head back to our hotel well before sunset. I felt a tinge of guilt about leaving Ralphio behind but we had no way of finding him, and I figured he would be okay. Sure enough he is right there to enthusiastically greet us when we pull up.
We bypass him quickly and head straight to the beach by our hotel. We had arranged previously to go horse back riding along the beach. Kimberly has never been riding on the beach and is hoping it will be just like what she has seen in the movies. She asks me repeatedly if I think the horses will really run along the water.
"Yes I think so. They usually don't mind getting their hooves a little wet." I tell her knowledgeably.
Standing by the water with three shiny little horses is a young teenage boy who shyly introduces himself as Carlos. He tells me my horse is named Don Quixote and I am pleased to see that all the horses are healthy and well treated and Carlos is incredibly respectful of them. I had heard horror stories about how badly the horses could be treated on the island and tried hard to find a responsible stable.
Carlos takes us off at a gallop through a grove of almond trees. Kimberly is terrified because she isn't that used to being on a horse, I am terrified because of the almond trees. Turns out almonds grow on trees (who knew?) in these surprisingly large hairy pods. I still don't understand how you get an almond out of that thing and keep thinking something must be getting lost in the translation. All I know is they are very hard and fall with alarming velocity. I have been nearly killed numerous times at our hotel and now it is like we are riding through a minefield. The giant almond pods smash down around us, one hits my saddle horn so hard it makes a dent, another brushes past my leg and violently explodes around my horses hooves. I am convinced one is going to land right on my head and knock me unconscious, which is not an ideal situation when you are on the back of a galloping horse. Eventually, though, I begin to realize that by some miracle nothing was actually hitting me. In fact, it was almost like an invisible force field was around me that the deadly almonds could not penetrate. I sat up a little straighter on my horse and an almond whizzed by my head, but did not make contact.
I felt like Wonder Woman.
I spurred Don Quixote on past Kimberly and Carlos, screaming incoherently about being untouchable, and burst out of the almond grove onto the sandy beach. Kimberly's horse followed close behind, as horses will do, and Carlos shouts after us to slow down.
Don Quixote is as giddy as I am about our newfound invincibility and charges straight into the ocean. Not running alongside the water as I envisioned but smack into the water as if he is determined to swim out to the middle of the sea. Kimberly's horse follows with her screaming wildly after me.
"Dayna!!! What's happening? What are they doing?"
Don Quixote takes the crashing waves to his face like a champ and he is now neck deep and continuing to swim out to deeper waters. I've never been on a swimming horse before and I hold on for all I'm worth, completely submerged from my chest down.
"What are they doing? Where are they going?" Kimberly asks me breathlessly.
"I honestly have no idea." I burst out laughing at the ridiculousness of the situation. Carlos is hysterical on the shore yelling at us to come back. Kimberlys terror, and our horses determination to swim away to nowhere, its too much and I cannot stop laughing.
Laughter is contagious and Kimberly is soon laughing too, and I swear I hear Don Quixote chuckle. He finally stops swimming and there we are floating on two horses as they doggie paddle in the middle of the Caribbean and the giant glowing sun sinks slowly behind us. Our poor guide Carlos paces back and forth on the distant shore begging for us to come back in.
"Come on old boy." I soak in the glorious moment and then turn my horse's reins back toward shore.
Carlos is flooded with relief as our horses gently shake off the salt water and tamely start walking along the sand. He mutters under his breath about us being crazy ass white girls and keeps a very close eye on us the rest of the ride.
We pass a disturbing amount of men with guns, both guards with machine guns and locals waving around handguns for no apparent reason. We trot by raised huts on the beach that look completely unlivable but have children and dogs playing happily in front of them and cooking smoke drifting from inside. We stop and chat with some local guys trying to catch a giant fish in a homemade net. They have been patiently trying to bring the fish to shore for hours and just when they almost have it it escapes. They pull handguns from their pockets and desperately try to shoot it which scares the shit out of me, but the fish darts off into the sea. The men scream with anger and frustration and I try to look nonchalant about guns being causally carried and shot. I remind myself that I am Wonder Woman.
By the time we get back to the hotel Carlos seems to have forgiven us and I give both him and Don Quixote wistful hugs goodbye. I'm going to miss them.
Kimberly and I quickly change and head to Cabarete, another nearby beach town, for dinner and drinks.
After a huge dinner of rice and fresh seafood we choose a beautiful bar right on the sand and sink into huge red bean bag chairs inside a gorgeous open air orange silk tent. We stick our toes in the still warm sand, listen to the soothing sound of the nearby sea, and drink delicious mojito after mojito as we laugh about the events of our crazy day. Swimming on a horse in the open ocean, check. Turning down more than one hooker in a day, check. Being impenetrable to deadly falling objects AND finally cool in the face of danger, check and check.
