Day 6 - Dominican Republic

We woke up and headed into town to do a little shopping before the wind came out. I bought a sun hat and we checked out the amber and larimar. We ate lunch at a little shack on the side of the road. We had traditional rice and beans with fried chicken. You can pretty much get this meal on any street in the DR. It was good and of course pretty cheap.

The wind was suppose to pick up around 1:00 so we headed to the point to find a good spot for kiteboarding. We did a little hiking in the jungle along the water and this was the first time we came across bugs. I got a bunch of bug bites on my legs walking through the weeds and jungle mess.

The guys from the kiteboarding school showed up and everyone started pumping up their kites. Rick cruised right out there into the waves and had a few good runs in before I saw his kite slowly fall out of the air and in to the waves.

Usually when Rick drops his kite you can see the kite and you know exactly where he is. This time his kite collapsed and you couldn't see it. After about 10 minutes I started getting a little worried. I couldn't see him and I knew he was pretty far out there. We had no idea what the water was like out there or if there were any reefs or dangers (no one spoke English so we couldn't understand what they were telling us about the water).

After a long while of waiting and not seeing him I decided to pack up the stuff on the beach and drive down to see if I could spot him. Sure enough I found him way down around the point. His kite had popped in the air and came down. It filled with water so he wasn't able to use it as a sail to get him back to shore. He had to let the current pull him down shore. I was thankful he was all right and he was bummed that his kite popped. We packed up the wet kite and got out of town.

We drove to Santo Domingo in the dark. This was something the books, blogs and friends recommend we don't do - drive at night especially in Santo Domingo. It was definitely good advice however we didn't take it. Once we got to the center of the city it got a little crazy trying to find our way. Many people didn't have their lights on (including motorcycle drivers), they ran red lights, drove on the wrong side of the road and didn't stop at stop signs.

We decided to stay in Zona Colonial again since we loved it so much the first time around. We stayed at a place called Cocoa Boutique Hotel which wasn't available the first night we were there. It was a small boutique hotel with just 4 rooms. It was run by a couple from Ireland and Portugal. It was a beautiful place, everything was white with modern decorations. It was clean, fancy and seemed like a paradise in the middle of paradise.

We stayed in the room called Black Vanilla. It had dark wood floors with black and white decorations. The bathroom was super fancy with a bidet and a toilet in it. The shower had glass doors and hot water with soaps, shampoo and conditioner from France.

We ate dinner at a fancy Italian restaurant in Zona Colonial. It was a late dinner so we were the only ones in the restaurant. We had seafood risotta which was highly recommended in all the travel books. Risotto is one of my favorite foods so it was very enjoyable. However, I still haven't found a restaurant that makes better risotto than Ricky!