La Romana - a glimpse to the local life and more rain

As we mentioned in our previous post, we went to La Romana as our last place in DR. After 5 nights, we noticed that we should've listened to Chantal and went to Bayahibe instead. We had thought that La Romana would have more to offer and that Bayahibe's attractions would be only through resort bookings. Well, La Romana was not really a nice city to stay in. The city was dirty and it looked like it would be falling apart. People in the city looked grumpy and behaved like they would not have any interests in the world. We don't know how it really is, but we heard that it's very difficult to form relationships with the local people and that they are often very lazy. :/

Interesting-looking buildings in La Romana

Action, waterfalls and life in Las Terrenas

Hola chicos! :)

Time for some action and enough with boring beach life! :P We got a reminder in Las Terrenas about being careful in the ocean. We tell more about it later, but here's one picture ;)

From Cabarete we took a bus, almost a guagua (local minibus) to Las Terrenas. It was a semi big bus and it wasn't that cold as the bus from Santo Domingo to Cabarete. But...the driver was probably deaf as rest of the Dominicans, because they have some thing about listening to music as loud as possible. Yes, we had the pleasure to listening to bachata and salsa really loud the whole way :P 

Hurricanes and "kitesurfing"

The image of Dominican Republic is usually sunny, warm, beaches of white sand and especially in Cabarete, kitesurfing! Well, these were our thoughts also. When we arrived in Cabarete our Airbnb host Ralph told us that it's not raining often and that it's mostly sunny and quite windy even when it's off-season. The next day we had quite heavy showers and it was cloudy. We heard Ralph and his employee talking something about hurricanes and we asked about it, and yes, there was hurricane Matthew close to DR. That was not a good news for kitesurfing. When we went to Gokite, the staff said also that the winds can be anything and that it can't be predicted how Matthew effects them. Markus left all his kite gears to Gokite so that they would be there ready if the wind picks up. The first day gave some hope! There was a light wind (6-7m/s) and Markus got some kitesurfing even if it was light it was better than nothing. The second day the wind picked up in the afternoon and Markus went for a few hours session to kite. This time the wind was already much better, around 9-10m/s and perfect fore Markus new 9m2 Core Kite. And if there are no stones on the beach, Finn hit the fin ;) Markus dropped his board so that the fin peeled the skin from Markus' foot. It didn't go deep, but deep enough for few drops of blood and a bit blue foot... The foot got time to heal, because that was the last day with wind in Cabarete. For real! Four hours of kitesurfing in 10 days in Cabarete! :/

Still optimistic about the wind!

Overview of Cabarete area - what to do, where to go :D

So, it was time to switch from one country to another. We woke up quite early (around 4am) and took an Uber to the airport in San Jose, Costa Rica. We flew with Condor, a German air carrier and most of the passengers were flying to Frankfurt. Some of the crew members seemed even surprised that we were going to stay in Dominican Republic and not continue to Germany. :p Anyhow, the flight went well and we landed in Santo Domingo. Markus bought a prepaid sim-card at Claro to have access to internet more often. The procedure of buying the card was not very smooth. It took maybe 30 minutes to get a prepaid sim-card and we couldn't test whether if it works or not at the store because of the "big walls". We had to go outside the building to test it. Well, it's working fine now, which is good. 

Since we were not going to stay in Santo Domingo but going directly to Cabarete in the North, we had to find our way to a bus station. Markus negotiated a taxi price from 40$ to 20$ from the airport to Caribe Tours. This is from where many long distance buses leave. We were lucky and the faster bus left only 25 minutes after we arrived to the station. The bus ride took a bit over 4 hours and cost around 380 pesos/person, so less than 8€/person. The chairs in the bus were comfortable, but we noticed a cultural difference in the behavior of the fellow passengers. Everyone was listening to music or watching telenovelas or whatever - with no headphones on!? Seriously, is it just us or is that rude to other passengers?

Finally some crocodiles in Jaco, and leaving CR

We left the nice and relaxed town, Puerto Viejo to Jaco. We had few reasons to switch place and one of them was crocodiles. Jaco is known of its massive crocodiles! The second reason was that our favorite hostel Kinkaju closed its doors for three days. It was a long drive to Jaco, around 5h but it felt quite easy thanks to good roads and we drove non-stop except for our stop over at the crocodile bridge. We had been told that there are tens of crocodiles hanging around the river bank under a bridge. It sounds a bit weird that some animal would just be in one place all the time, but when we came there, it was a quite amazing sight. There were crocodiles in the river, on the river bank and in between. Biggest crocodiles were close to 5 meters long and in every way massive. Luckily the bridge is high enough above these fellows, but Edda thought that the bridge rail is way too low :p We saw around 36 crocodiles from the bridge, and all of them are living freely in the wild, it’s  not any zoo or farm. We came to the bridge in the last minute. We had around 10 minutes to check out the crocs before a big thunderstorm came on us and we had to run to our car.

I'm not fat! Just big boned! 

Cahuita & Puerto Viejo, Part 2: Chocolate, storms and some surf

After Cahuita we stayed 3 nights in Puerto Viejo. We found a very nice hostel – Kinkaju just walking by it. It was a few blocks from the main street, so just perfect – quiet but close to everything. It was clean, had a good kitchen, great Wi-Fi (not common in CR ho(s)tels!) and most importantly – amazing staff! Jenny and Arno, who were working in the hostel were extremely friendly, helped with suggesting different activities or places to see, were interested in what we do back in Finland, how the life is there, etc. They even organized a get-together with us in the hostel on one day. Everyone brought some snacks and something to drink and we just hang for a few hours talking. Really nice stay and we highly highly recommend this hostel!