Day 3 - Dominican Republic

We woke up and decided to hike to Playa Fronton which is a gorgeous beach that has no roads to it. Ronald told us it was a two hour hike over the mountain top to the other side. He was kind enough to draw us a little map. We headed out and enjoyed the jungle hike. Several hours later we came to the top of a ridge and were a little unsure where exactly we were on his map. For a short while we were bush whacking down the side of the mountain. I put a quick stop to that and we headed another way along a trail. We ended up on the other side of the tip of the peninsula. We tried asking the old man who literally lived in the middle of no where, and he pointed us in the opposite direction. After almost 4 hours of hiking, we finally came to the right ridge and sure enough through the leaves of the trees we spotted a beautiful paradise - crystal clear water and a white sandy beach. We climbed down the cliff and enjoyed the amazing beach of Fronton. We snorkeled around, swam in the water and relaxed on the beach. 

The beach was lined with coconut trees and rocky cliffs. My sweet husband knows how much I love "buko" baby coconut and the juice straight from the coconut, so he was deteremined to get me one. At first he tried using a long bamboo stick to hit the coconut off the tree but it didn't work. I insisted he didn't need to get me the coconut but he was determined. Once again (he did this in Grenada as well) he climbed the coconut tree just like a native would and dropped me down the buko. He then spent the next half an hour banging it against the rock to get it open (we didn't have a knife with us at the time). Together we enjoyed drinking the coconut juice and eating the coconut on the beach. You can't get a better husband then that!

It started getting late and the hike up the rocky cliffs and through the jugnle no longer sounded appealing to me so we caught a boat ride back to Las Galeras Beach.

We then bought some fresh fish off a lady on the beach. We shopped around at the local market and picked up some bread, onions, garlic, rice, pineapple and limes. We headed back to our bungalow and made delicious pina coladas (Rick got a few more coconuts from the tree and we made clean ice the night before). We also made a delicious dinner.

We sauteed the onions, garlic and some toasted coconut pieces. We then added the fresh fish, coconut juice and sauteed it for awhile. At the end, we added a little milk to make it creamy. We squeezed lime juice on the fish as we were eating it. We decided to experiment a little with the rice. We added coconut and pineapple pieces before we cooked it. It had a sweet coconut, pineapple flavor. Our finished meal consisted of a creamy coconut fish, sweet coconut and pineapple rice with bread and homemade pina coladas. It was absolutely delicious. We enjoyed our dinner on the back porch mosquito free. 

As you may know, there are a lot of places in the Caribbean that do not have hot water. In fact it can somtimes be difficult to find hot water in the Caribbean. Our bungalow happened to be a place with out hot water. Although not ideal, it wasn't a problem. Rick doesn't mind the cold water and I lived in the Philippines and was very well use to taking bucket showers. We heated up some water and took a bucket shower before bed. 

While in the shower we noticed a white frog on the ledge of the shower. I had never seen a frog like that before so I was unsure if it was real. Rick made jokes about the frog hanging out in the toilet at night since the toilet was the only place in the house that constantly had water. Sure enough in the middle of the night, I got up to go to the bathroom like I always do and when I turned on the light, the little white frog was splashing around in the toilet. From then on I kept the toilet seat down when not in use.

I learned a few things living in a third world country for a year and a half. When entering a bathroom in a third world country ALWAYS peak your head in first, check the walls, behind the door and in the toilet before squatting down. You don't want to be squatting down when you discover a flying cockroach, rat or frog is in there with you.