So we're back from our trip to Samaná, which is the peninsula on the Northeast coast of the island. It was gorgeous. We actually stayed in Las Terrenas, which involved crossing an hour and half's worth of windy mountain roads each time we had to go into town.

On Saturday we went to Parque Nacional Los Haitises, which required a 45 minute catamaran ride. When we were there we went to Cueva San Gabriel which was a cave with a lot of Taíno (indigenous) writings on the wall. Apparently foreign seasons (from Italian, British, etc. networks) of the TV show Survivior come and shoot scenes in the cave in order to pass it off as whatever exotic location they're actually filming in. The US probably does that too, but I didn't ask. =) Gorgeous cave, though. I'll probably put up pictures. Later. We also went kayaking through a mangrove forest in that park. It was surreal-ly gorgeous. I dont have pictures of that for fear of my kayak tipping and losing the camera.

Then Saturday night we went out after dinner into the town of Las Terrenas, which involved a 15 minute walk from our hotel. On the way back I had my first ever moto concho experience, which I iwll be repeating because it was sweet. It involves riding on the back of a motorcycle used as a taxi. The driver generally smells bad, and sometimes you can convince the driver to take more than 1 person, which maybe isn't the safest choice. But for the first ride, we didn't ahve to go very far and so we squeezed 3 of us on one moto concho. Maybe shouldn't do that again. =) But in this town it was the only option for public transportation, and it's all about saving those pesos!

And on the way back to our hotel on Saturday, one of the guaguas (small busses--maybe 25 passengers?) broke down. So in order to return to Santiago, we had to cram ourselves into the other guagua and only had the additional help of a 15 passenger van. It was a tad too crowded. And for a 4.5 hour ordeal, it was unpleasant to say the least.