Paraiso

Enough heavy pontificating.  On to our next adventure in this amazing country.  I'm going to entitle this post Paraiso because it's not every day you get to visit Paradise!

The road trip to Paradise (located in the Barahona Province) was pretty long, nearly four hours.  Annika was entertained by the colorful parrots she bought with her souvenir money for a while.  Then she resorted to bugging her sister.

Personally, I found the driving to be plenty amusing.  To quote Elephant and Piggie, Más Plátanos!

Oye, basura.

I love how the little towns boast such bright and colorful signs.  Our actual destination was Playa Los Patos or Duck Beach, located just five minutes past Paradise.  Could the actual place be as pretty as the painting?

Um, yeah.  We definitely felt like we were living the dream!

The beach was beautifully developed with a boardwalk, huts, and other structures that were brand new.

Instead of sand, the water front was made up of these beautiful smooth stones.  Annika even found an urchin.

Gorgeous surf too!

Okay, I'm going to be honest: in retrospect, these pictures make me nervous.  After about fifteen minutes of splashing around a local woman came over and explained how this area isn't very safe for swimming because of a strong riptide.  While the kids were disappointed to miss the big waves, we quickly moved to safer ground.  Still, it was amazing while it lasted!

Fortunately, Playa Los Patos boasts a beautiful fresh water lagoon that feeds into the ocean.  This calm water is perfect for swimming and wading.  With the crane just hanging out in our photos, it really did feel like Paradise!

Here you can see where river meets ocean.  Apparently that's part of causes the strong undercurrent.

Eli skipping rocks and Annika catching tadpoles.

Big kids like to play too!

Alas, school has Talia back on her laptop here.  Hello, APUSH.  If you have to do homework, this is a pretty nice place to dig in.  

Awesome tree with a pretty important message.  I love the "get-with-it-already" tone.

Hey, now here's an awesome reason to take a pause for homework.  Check out these piña coladas!  Talk about delicioso!  We made the rooky mistake of not checking the cost ahead of time, so they literally cleaned us out of cash, but the indulgence was totally worth it.  At least they knocked some off the price when we pointed out that ours didn't have any rum.

My favorite gents with the photo-bombing gals.

A great place for romance.  Love you, Peanut Butter.

Before leaving we spent a little more time admiring the surf and skipping rocks into the ocean.

Some lovely (and silly) family photos.  Oh Talia, what we would do without you!

Remember when I explained how Playa Los Patos is almost in Paradise but not quite?  Well, on our way out, I watched a man spray paint the brand new restrooms to mark which side is for women and which for the men.  Ouch!  Jason pondered the reaction of the architect.

With a sigh of both appreciation (and disbelief at the paint job), we started the long road home.  We paused in Paraiso to take a picture of the larimar necklace I purchased the day before.  A brilliant turqouise gem found only in the Dominican Republic, it matches the color of the ocean perfectly.

The kids were still hoping for a little more time to swim in the ocean since it wasn't safe at Los Patos.  After asking around, someone suggested Playa el Quemaito because it also had coral to explore.  Swimming and snorkeling?  Count us in.  :)

We had to share goggles, but everyone still had a chance to see the striped angelfish darting around the reef.

Playing with the rocks.

Sea and sun--the perfect day!

Well, almost.  Talia got sick on the long drive back.  At first we thought it was the twisty roads, but she got sick again...and again...and again.  Poor child!

We got close, but I guess true Paradise won't come until the next life.

Santo Domingo Journal--March 2023

I found this journal entry that I wrote from Santo Domingo.  It describes some of the emotions what I wanted to express in my last post, so I thought I'd share.

March 2023 

I am literally sitting on the rooftops of Santo Domingo, looking out over the ocean as I take a moment to journal.  As incredible as it sounds, this journey has actually been more challenging than I envisioned.  While the country is beautiful, it is also struggling.  While the place we are staying is nice, there’s this undercurrent of things falling apart that I can’t quite articulate very well.  Skyscrapers abandoned halfway through construction.  Cracks and peeling paint.  A noisy generator that runs constantly.  Electrical outages.  And above all, SO MUCH litter.  There is trash everywhere, filling all the gutters and lining all the streets.  Santo Domingo has a lovely wide sidewalk that runs along the water front, but the garbage is so ubiquitous that is rather ruins the experience—assuming you can actually get to the ocean walk.  It runs  along a busy four lane highway with no safe pedestrian access.  Talia and I tried to cut across while out for a run and finally gave up after five minutes, finding a different intersection.

Driving here is INSANE.  I envisioned madness, but this is an entirely new level, unlike anything I’ve ever experienced!  Traffic lights are sparse and generally ignored whenever they do exist.  You just kind of honk and nudge your way through whenever you feel like it, making as many lanes as you need to accomplish the job.  Within the city, the bottlenecked madness is almost hilarious as it crawls along.  But out on the faster moving highways, it is completely terrifying at higher speeds as people pass each other even with oncoming traffic.  On a two lane road, you’re expected to just move over onto the shoulder and make room for three if need be, even if the vehicle passing you is a minibus or fat truck with plátanos bursting out either side.  Oh, and did I mention that there are mopeds everywhere, zipping through the narrow spaces as they pass on the right and on the left, often with three passengers, no helmets and no lights, even at night.  They are plentiful on the highways, where they just drive on the shoulders when they can’t keep up with traffic.  People too!  Walking along and cutting across lanes and lanes of traffic.  Driving is a white-knuckle game of Frogger where you constantly pray that you don’t die or kill anyone.

I think for me, the hardest part is the undercurrent of poverty.  Okay, let’s be honest.  It’s not an undercurrent—it’s a tidal wave washing over everything.  In many ways, it exceeds what I experienced in Zimbabwe.  Here, I feel both aware and a bit embarrassed of my extreme wealth.  It doesn’t seem fair that I was born into such an easy situation with ready access to a great education, clean water, and good healthcare.  It’s easy to complain about all the garbage, but what would our nation look like if we had to buy bottled water for safe consumption?  What if we didn’t have reliable trash service?  I don’t know all the reasons for the DRs pollution problems, but I’m guessing it’s far more complicated than being too lazy to find a trashcan.  Also, you have permission to slap me if I ever complain about my house having too few bedrooms or no pantry.  Our family is so blessed, through little merit of our own.  I feel certain that God loves the child born into a corrugated metal shanty just as much as he loves any of my children.  Yet the opportunities available to these children are certainly not equal.

Being here, I’ve thought a lot about Annika.  First of all, it’s such a miracle that she has recovered enough to be here with us.  But even more, it is a miracle that she is here with us at all.  Our Santo Domingo AirBnB happens to overlook the Centro Cardiovascular—the best cardiovascular hospital in the country.  Yet I doubt that even this hospital could provide Annika the level of care she needed to survive.  I feel both so fortunate and undeserving of the privilege of living in a place brimming with resources to save her.  I am unbelievably grateful.  A couple nights ago she was dancing on the rooftop with a giant stick, gracefully moving her whole body to a beat only she could hear as she spun, twirled and leaped. My heart was overcome with gratitude for her vitality—for her little heart that tried to quit but has been given new life and keeps on beating.  I am so thankful for time, time now together as an entire family.  Time before Brooklyn heads off to college and things change.  This trip hasn’t been easy, but I’m so grateful we can share these experiences together.  I’m grateful to the people of the Dominican Republic for sharing their island with us.  It’s very obvious that we are privileged foreigners, yet with few exceptions they have welcomed us with warmth and grace.  Finally, I’m grateful for our Savior Jesus Christ.  He’s the only one who can clean up all the messes, purifying our hearts and calming the chaos of nations.  The Prince of Peace brings love and hope to all people, everywhere.