One more night (With a nod to Phil Collins)

I thought the previous post would be the last one. But it turned out that our flight home was first delayed, multiple times, and then after hours of confusing messages, was cancelled altogether. At that point it was not a bad thing, as the previous message had been that the flight would leave at midnight, getting us home in the middle of the night. We wound up at a very nice hotel near the airport. We could only stay there until 4:30 am because our flight was rescheduled for 7am the next morning. At least half the passengers were Dominican, although certainly some of them were U.S. residents returning to the States from a visit home. Some no doubt changed their plans, as the plane was not at all full on the way home. The flight itself is only about four hours, one of the reasons that we chose the location in the first place. We got home at about 10am and were able to catch the Logan express bus back to Danvers, just 10 minutes from home. This is our new best way to and from the airport, inexpensive and convenient. Just one problem, and I didn't know this until afterwards: The bus driver was texting while driving on the highway. Loring took video. This makes me very nervous, and conflicted about whether to report him. I don't want him to lose his job, but I also don't want to put anyone in danger. I think I will send a message without identifying him. Maybe they can issue a strong warning to all the drivers. Now that I have created this additional post, I want to share a couple of things that I didn't fully describe before. One is the images of two different parades of people, on the two different sides of our house in Las Terrenas. Part of the appeal of this house is the two different environments that the house sits between. I've written about this before, in these current postings, and also, looking back, from our previous trip three years ago. The front door of the house is on one of the main streets of town, replete with restaurants, bars, shops, condos, hotels, etc. Our primary sense was the loud sound and view of a never ending parade of vehicles, some cars, many more motorcycles, and an equal number of ATV's. And a very occasional bicycle. You have to wait for a break in the traffic in order to cross the street. It's overwhelming in sound and sight, but also quite entertaining. It's best appreciated by sitting at a cafe, or in our case, the local ice cream place. Some bikes have a sole rider, most have two, some have three, including a kid or two. The ATVs as well, and it's quite a mix of what seem to be natives and visitors. In some cases, I am assuming, it is long term expats rather than short term visitors like us. On the other side of the house, past the outdoor living room and garden, is a small gate, and past that, the beach.The door is nearly unnoticable from the beach. Even after two weeks there,I could mostly spot it by seeing our two lawn chairs sitting in front of it. It was covered by a lot of foliage and coconut palms. Although the morning we left, Julio, the owner's caretaker, came by with another man and a boy, probably his son. As we were waiting for our driver to take us on the three hour though not many kilometer trip to the airport, they were hacking away at branches. So now probably the gate is not as obscured as during our stay. I'm sure they must do that on a fairly regular basis. We spent many hours sitting on the beach between our other activities of walking up and down the beach, playing in the water, having breakfast and lunch (pretty much our only times indoors, just the preparation because we ate at the outdoor living room table.) and walking barefoot down the row of small restaurants to eat at our choice of venues for dinner. And during those hours reading and reclining on our beach chairs, we also observed a parade of sorts, a quiet intermittent procession of other beach goers. There were children on the weekends and afternoons and evenings. And many adults walking up and down the beach. Most must have been staying in locations not on the beach, but nearby, because our house is the only one on the beach itself. They were a mix, many Spanish speaking folks, but also a surprising number of French speaking people. Just the occasional American or English speaker. One of the servers in the fanciest beach restaurant, a bit upscale than any of the others, was French. But she said she'd lived in the DR so long that she didn't feel French anymore. And we remembered from our other trip that there'd been a restaurant owner who was French, although she did't seem to be there anymore. We read somewhere that there was an influx of Europeans in the 1970s, so maybe that explained it. The restaurants mostly had signboards on the beach with menus. In some cases they had menus in English, but mostly they were in Spanish and French. Sometimes I had to look at the French to help me understand the Spanish! And sometimes the English translations were pretty entertaining - ie. one described the various methods of cooking fish, " to the beach, to the pepper, to the fungus. The children on the beach were often unsupervised by adults. WE thought this was wonderful, that it was safe enough for their kids to be "free range." Some were probably children of the people running the restaurants, but I am guessing that some were from further away in the town. I will end with an encounter one night while we were eating dinner. The restaurant next to us was closed for the day. In the small space, several adults were sitting, playing music, and one woman was dancing with some children, teaching them steps to a line dance. It was quite delightful. We stood up to watch and Loring took some photos and a video. The dancing woman came over to us. It was kind of hard to hear her over the music, and with the language difference. We were'nt quite sure what she was trying to tell us. But gradually it became clear that she didn't appreciate our taking pictures of the kids. She wasn't unfriendly, not at all, but was clear that she didn't like the idea. We kept talking. It turned out that she was from there, but lived in Belgium. She asked our names, and her name was Joanna, the same as mine. Loring offered to delete the photos, but she didn't seem to want that. Our meals came and we sat down to eat. I don't remember if they kept dancing after that. I really wanted to talk to her some more, and hoped she would be there the next night. But she wasn't. It really got us thinking about if we were exploiting them by taking their pictures, presumably to post online. That's what we think she was trying to tell us. The video and photos were great, but I guess I won't post them because of her feelings. I will end here. In another six weeks we will be off on our next adventure, to Tanzania and South Africa.