How we spent our Easter vacation

The Dominicans don’t hunt for eggs here, they prefer debauchery and Easter is their favorite time of year to pursue it. They pack the family into the truck with tents, beer, and rum and head to the beach to check out the action. So yesterday we decided to bike our way over to Playa Rincon. No one in town knew how far it was, but the estimates of a few miles sounded like good exercise. And that was the last time I smiled for the next six hours. The hills rolled more up than down and passing trucks would jeer us more than cheer us on. When we told them where we were headed they called us crazy and made motions to peddle faster. We passed by some lovely countryside but I was too focused on keeping my legs moving to notice. It did concern us a bit when we stopped on the side for some water and a local on a scooter with a red cross on his shirt told us not to stop in a remote area because it was “mucho problema aqui con mafioso”, much problems here without other people around. So that gave us some incentive to keep moving since most of the area was desolate. When I stopped in a small gathering of houses at the top of yet another hill, two girls asked me if I was out of gas. All I could do was to try to hold back my panting. They shook their heads when I answered yes we were going to Rincon. Some locals made it a point to walk past us up hills. The joke was lost on no one except us. When we hit the dirt road and I started bouncing violently from rock to rock with my non-suspension bike the passing vehicles enjoyed the entertainment. I could feel the flab on my arms and the chub in my cheeks gyrating to a Euro house beat. After surviving that trial we finally reached the beach only then to swerve through what felt like quicksand. The 2 hour, and what we think was nearly 10 mile, ride was hellacious on our meagerly padded bums. We devoured our grilled fish and coconut bread then loitered around to see if there was any open space on the boats returning to Las Galeras. That’s right, the boat. Because we knew the way back would be twice as far. Luckily we didn’t know the word shame in Dominican.