Day 2 - Dominican Republic

We woke up after sleeping in a little later than we expected, hopped in a taxi and headed to church. We got there 10 minutes before sacrament meeting ended, so we decided to join them for Sunday school. Typically we just attend sacrament when we are in another country, and for some reason it always seem to be  on a fast Sunday. Going to sacrament on fast Sunday in another country is always an amazing experience. Although we never understand what they are saying we can always feel the spirit strongly. You can feel their emotions, which always makes it enjoyable, comforting and memorable.

I was a little worried we may not have that same experience only going to Sunday school, but I was wrong. An American missionary sat right behind us and quietly translated for us. Although we couldn't understand their words, we were still able to feel their spirit and emotions. Several of the members shared their conversion stories and testimonies which made it a great experience. They also passed out scriptures at the beginning of class and little did they know, Rick doesn't speak Spanish. Rick did a great job reading his Spanish scripture, although it did take quite a while.

Against everyone's recommendations, we decided to drive through the country to get to the Samana peninsula. The driving was a little crazy in Santo Domingo but we had recently driven in Jamaica so nothing  seemed worse than that. The difficulties of driving in Santo Domingo were: streets weren't named making it difficult to know where you were on the map, most streets were one way, cars ran red lights, drove on the wrong side of the road and often would drive at night without their lights on. Other than that, no sweat!

They built a brand new road that lead us all the way through the country to Samana. It was the best looking road I have ever seen in a third wold country. It almost made me forget I was actually in a third world country. I quickly remembered once we hit the peninsula and found the two lane road that was half cement and half dirt with a million pot holes.

We stopped off in Samana to grab a bite to eat and enjoy the beautiful scenery. We ended up grabbing a slice of pizza off the pizza truck. To my surprise it was pretty good pizza. I haven't had much luck with good pizza in third world countries, but Dominican Republic has a lot of Italian and French people so pizza is easy to find.

We then drove out to the tip of the peninsula to a little town called Las Galeras. We checked in to our little white bungalow set in the jungle a few blocks from town and the beach. Our bungalow had a living room, bedroom, bathroom, kitchen and a nice big wrap around porch out side. We stayed at Karin y Ronald's. We ate at the out door restaurant they had there since it was getting pretty late. We had pasta with shrimp and a tomato sauce with coconut milk base. It was yummy.