Return to the Dominican Republic

It is Sunday. We left Boston Friday morning on a four hour direct flight to Santiago DR. This is our second trip to the country. We rarely go to the same place more than once, always wanting to discover new places. That is with the exception of Paris, where I can never go too many times. Eight years ago, though, we did go on a second trip to Guadeloupe, right on the cusp of Trump's first inauguration. We didn't go to the same airbnb, but to one a few doors down, also right on the ocean, that we had seen on our previous trip. It was upstairs from the bar in the TV show Death in Paradise. This trip we are returning to the same house we stayed in three years ago. But we are not there yet. It was only available on this coming Tuesday, the day after tomorrow. And tomorrow is the inauguration. I was determined to not be in the US for that. So we are here in Cabarete for four days. It was a good choice. We are staying at the oddly named Ultra Infinity Hotel. There is a long stretch of beach here, and we are on the far end. Further down, the beachfront is occupied by myriad hotels, restaurants, and bars. It is all pretty low key. But on our end it is pretty quiet, and the waves are calmer too. There is a constant parade of people walking along the beach, and they all turn around right at our hotel, because there is an old concrete pier jutting out right past there, a bit hard to walk over. Our apartment faces directly onto the ocean. We have a nice balcony with comfortable furniture, Our bedroom overlooks the water, too. There is a kitchen and a second bedroom, which we don't need, except for serving as Loring's dressing room! There is ample closet space, but peculiarly, almost no drawer space. We have found that to be true at many places we've stayed, hotels and b&bs. There must be a reason why, but we haven't figured it out. So I have used the closet, and Loring uses the bed in the spare bedroom as his. Breakfast is included, and there is a wide selection of choices, including a number of different omelettes, pancakes, french toast, waffles, and more. There is a choice of fruit juices, including passion fruit, pineapple, watermelon, orange, and lemon. And fresh fruit is served with each breakfast entree. Pineapple, canteloupe, watermelon, papaya, apple, a different combination each say. The first night we ate here at Ultra. I had a conch dish, Loring had fish. Quite good. Last night, we walked down the beach quite a ways before deciding on a restaurant. The setting was great, table on the beach, away from the loud music that most places have. The food, though, was disappointing. My shrimp dish with passion fruit sauce was ok but not great, and had crunchy pieces that weren't appealing, that I think might have been the passion fruit seeds. And Loring made the mistake of not specifying that he wanted his grouper steamed, not fried. It was very dry and not great. And the service was very very slow. We are used to slow service in many places, but this was extremely slow. The service staff was very friendly though. But I don't think we'll go back there. Tonight, we will eat here at our own place again. Yesterday, we walked down the beach quite a bit and stayed at a spot with our towels spread out on the sand. Most places had lounge chairs, which we assume were for rent. But we found a spot between places where we could spread out. We walked back to in front of our own place and went into the water, me for the first time. It was calm and pleasant. But no sooner had I immersed myself than a police officer blew his whistle and motioned for us to get out of the water. There was a local man and his two kids next to us. They got out too and he asked the young cop why we had to leave the water. His answer was that his boss told him so, and he didn't know why. The local man was friendly and spoke good English. He said that he worked at one of the local hotels, the Majestic if I am remembering right. He made a joke about being loco, a play on being local. Loring thought the only reason he could think of was that there had been a shark sighted. We don't know, and today there was no problem. There are tons of wind surfers and even more kite surfers, dozens, and maybe more than a hundred. Loring noticed that they also were all gone mid afternoon yesterday, perhaps also told by the cop or someonne to leave for whatever reason we had been. But they were all back today. There are venders walking up and down the beach, some with jewelry, some with cigars, others with merchandise undiscernable. They are hardly hustling, in fact seem kind of lacksadaisical. One guy was texting on his phone while carrying whatever was his merchandise, not paying any attention at all to potential customers. The visitors here are a very mixed bunch. There are some other Americans, some French speaking, many that seem Dominican or at least are Spanish speaking. Lots of families with young kids, but also many couples and groups around our age. Since it's the weekend, we aare wondering if there will be less families tomorrow. We'll see. Well, Loring is bugging me about heading down to dinner, so I guess I'll stop here.