So I'm writing this from my ghost town: Santo Domingo. Walking down the streets and actually being able to see the streets is a new experience Usually the streets are packed with cars with horns blaring, but today, the streets echo with silence. Even the banks are closed as the whole country has packed up and high-tailed it to the beach or to visit their families in the campo leaving the city stripped of the chaos making it almost peaceful.
As most of you, I'm sure are very well aware, this weekend is Easter, making this week Spring Break, Semana Santa, Holy Week, Holiday, you name it as long as it means a week with no school which is definitely a much needed sanity check at this stage of the school year. Lucky for me, I got a mini break right before Spring break when my friend Courtney decided to brave the adventure of flying solo to visit me for the first time. We decided to visit the south coastal city of Barahona. I had never been there before, but won a free two-night stay at a tropical lodge so could not pass up that opportunity.
We ended up staying in a river suite which we think might have been the honeymoon suite as the whole bathroom was made of glass. It was so beautiful though and it was ironic that the lodge greatly resembled beach front property as it had palm trees, an infinity pool and overlooked the ocean that stretched for miles. Our suite on the other hand resembled a forest area and the trees were very different from the lodge only a couple minutes' walk away. To the right you see the view from the back of our lodge. (the river and trees) To the left is the view from the main lodge area.
It was so much fun relaxing and enjoying the Dominican breakfasts that we found out were complimentary, what a fun surprise!! The Dominicans don't do waffles, pancakes or the traditional breakfast, but what they do, they do well. The mangu, salami and fried cheese are heavenly. I would eat them all day every day...if I knew how to actually make it.
I think the most fun of the trip was adventuring once more with Courtney. There is something so special about seeing familiar faces. Seeing someone you love that you haven't seen in a very long time is much like releasing a breath you never knew you were holding.
We had the chance to go on several excursions through the hotel. Some I would definitely recommend such as ziplining and the beach trip to the local pebble beach which were very hot stones, but it was nice not having to worry about getting sand everywhere. I probably would not recommend the bike/hike to the waterfall, since that ended up being more of an adventure than either of us had bargained for. The hike was hard to its own as we had to scramble over slippery rocks, but the hardest part ended up being the bike ride. We found out along the way that the path started out as dirt, but after a couple of meters, turned into solely loose irregular shaped rocks and the way included many steep inclines and dissents. For anyone who is a biker you should know that riding uphill on loose rock, it is near impossible to get traction and riding downhill on loose rocks, you better hold on tight because braking or turning are pretty much out of the question. I did blow a bike tire for the first time ever after careening down one such hill. Luckily and I have no idea how we managed, neither one of us fell down, though after my tire blowout, we did begin walking up and down most hills so the predicted 2 hour hike turned into 3.5 hours.
I love exploring this country and finding more and more things to love about it. So often we get trapped into our little bubbles that we don't take the time to lift our eyes and see the world that God has created for us. I love seeing God's power and strength in water, his peace in the wind, his steadfastness in mountains.
Psalm 8:3-4 says it best, "When I consider your heavens, the work of your fingers, the moon and the stars, which you have set in place, what is mankind that you are mindful of them, human beings that you care for them?
May you remember especially in this Easter season that Jesus wasn't simply a good man who died on the cross and whom God chose to raise to life again. May we remember the absurdity, yet truth that God, the most powerful being who created everything we can see, taste, touch, smell and hear, chose to humble himself to be like one of his own creation, as handicapped and powerless as we are, to save us. When we consider the work of God's hands and witness everything He has created and how powerful and glorified he truly is, how outrageously ridiculous is it that He would care for the likes of us?!?
