Quack Pack 2

We just spent a wonderful week in the Dominican Republic visiting Kathleen's cousin Anna. It was short for an international trip but we did pack a lot in. In Atlanta we dropped the kids off with a sitter and then headed to the airport. Since we weren't sure how long that would take we ended up at the airport pretty early and just walked around. While we were wandering a stranger offered us some pizza saying that they had bought too much. Given that we could figure out how he could have a motive to hurt us and we were inside airport security we decided it was probably safe to eat. Free dinner! We flew in to the capital, Santo Domingo, and arrived fairly late. Luckily we had Anna to come pick us up at the airport, meeting us with fresh empanadas and fruit juice! After resolving an issue with the Uber that had been towed for illegally parking in a place Anna told him not to park, we headed into the capital to a fun hostel, called "Island Life", where we spent the first n...

One of the most exciting parts of our trip to the Dominican Republic was visiting Kathleen's cousin Anna in the village where she has been living and working with an organization called COPA. We arrived in the evening to Anna's friend Diego making a wonderful dinner to share with us and the other people living in Anna's compound. Anna's cat Chinola helping Diego with cleanup. Photo Credit: Cousin Anna  The next day was Monday and Anna needed to go to the school where she worked. Luckily we were able to walk around school with her and see classes in session. COPA runs two schools. One is in Bombita.  Anna lives adjacent to that school. The other is down the road in La Hoya. We were fortunate enough to have the opportunity to check out both schools. Anna and Kathleen had fun comparing these schools to the school where Kathleen worked in Guinea. Dominican schools have a long way to go before they provide children with the level of education expected in most first world cou...

Photo Credit: Cousin Anna Anna scheduled a whale watching tour for our second day in Sabana De La Mar. We woke up early  to catch a "guagua" to town where the boat would leave. In the Dominican Republic a "guagua" is any form of transportation that will take multiple people. This could include anything from a minivan to a bus and doesn't have to be public transportation. In our case it was a small bus, only slightly bigger than a mini van. We arrived early for the tour and waited at a very empty restaurant area. Luckily the people who helped Anna book the tour sent us with a woman named Reina to show us where we needed to go. Otherwise we would have been very confused. While waiting we were greeted by some shockingly friendly (and overfed) street puppies. There are street dogs everywhere in the DR. Although against CDC recommendation Kathleen loves to pet them. If you approach slowly and respectfully and kneel down nearby they will often tentatively come up to b...

Our first big activity in the Dominican Republic was Los Haitises National Park for which we had a guide named Halle. We woke up early in the morning to catch a moto-taxi, or "moto-concho", down the 10 kilometer road to the park. The trip up the unpaved road was gorgeous! Unfortunately we were all hanging on too tight to get any pictures. We started our day by going on a kayaking tour, which we wanted to do early because we were told that that would give us the best chance of seeing manatees. While we didn't see any manatees it was still an amazing trip. It started by going down a small river through the mangrove forest, similar to what we experienced in southern Florida. But it was much more fun to be out on the water. There were many of the same birds as in the Everglades as well as crabs that were living among the roots of the mangroves. Unfortunately we once again don't have very many pictures of this part of the day, this time because we were all trying to avoid...