The first of many

Well, the flight was easy (and long). I'm now a habitant of the Dominican Republic for the entire summer. Cabarete is gorgeous, and my apartment is sweet. Lots of room, nice cold showers, and a propane stove thingy.

Yesterday was an interesting. I started out with a 2 mile run down the amazing beach. I got to see all the kiteboarding schools and coastally fronted hotels. The city is tiny. Once you duck away from the beach onto the main road, it no longer looks quite as touristy. I wandered around for while, stopped in a few shops and practiced my fragmented Spanish in attempts to locate fresh oranges, (which I couldn't the first day.. an orange is really hard to describe to someone in Spanish if you don't know the word. But I got bananas.) Then to make it home, like everyone else, I had to catch a 'motoconcho'. Pretty much everyone in this country owns a little motorcycle, and if you wave at almost anyone they'll pick you up and drop you off whereever for a few pesos. I paid the gringo rates the first time I got one (like 300 or something). But, now I pay the real rates (like 20-40! that's $1.25 to get all the way across town!)

Then I had a ~45minute trip in a 'guagua' to the city of Puerto Plata. The whole trip only costs 40 pesos (like US like $1.25) in this run-down van packed with people. I bought myself some random housey things and made way back home. I shot back into town a little later that night by motoconcho and got a plate of dinner at this little 'resturant' (their definition of resturant is much different than ours...). It was amazing chicken though.

Today was the first day on the beach. Met lots of people, got lots of riding in. Already made a few connections so I have all my gear kept right at the beach inside of one of the kiteboard school's staff-gear areas. Oh, I also got offered a job as a kiting instructor from the same place that teaches paragliding. $15/hourish to be on the beach, and cuts a full paragliding lesson package cost from $1000 to $500. Yeah, sounds good, probably will happen.

kthxbye