Well, this Monday marked the third full week that I’ve been on this island.  Again, many things have happened since my last blog post.  I’ll try to recount some of them.

Last Thursday was a Catholic holiday, and this Monday was a National holiday, so the whole country effectively had a five day weekend this weekend.  Our study abroad office closed, and everyone planned trips to different parts of the island.  Some friends and I went up to the north coast to a little tourist town called Cabarete.  It is not touristy in the normal sense, but it is a an international famous spot for Kite Surfing, a water sport of which I was not acquainted with before I arrived in Cabarete and saw nearly 300 kites flying above the beach.  Kite surfing is exactly what it sounds like: you hold onto a big kite, attach your feet to a smallish surfboard, and skid across the waves.  It was a lot of fun to watch, because people do tricks where they jump in the air like 10 feet and seem like they are about to be taken away by the wind, but I never tried it.

We stayed in a cheap hotel for all four nights, and mostly hung out on the beach, swam, and explored.  One day however, we had an adventure that merits a couple paragraphs for itself:

I had read in my travel guide that one of the fun things to do in this area was to go see waterfalls.  One waterfall in particular, Las Cascadas de Damajagua, was actually a set of 27 waterfalls, all connected, that you could hike up and then jump down.  With a rough idea of where these waterfalls were and no idea what the experience would actually be like, four of us grabbed a guaguita (a small public van) west.  Another guaguita took us to a small town and then another dropped us off in the middle of nowhere when we asked where the “cascadas” were.  The conductor pointed down a dirt road as the van pulled away.

Imagine, at this point in the story, that the scenary looks like something you might have seen in a Vietnam War movie; or, if you have ever been to Southeast Asia, like that.  Tall grasses, mountains surrounding you, heat, humidy.  We walked down the dirt road for a while until we came upon the visitor center for the waterfalls.  After paying 10 US dollars and changing into our bathing suits, we were given life vests and helmets, and told to follow a guide named Felix across a rickety bridge and into the middle of nowhere.  We waded across a river and hiked on flat ground for a while, wading through what seemed like the same two streams over and over again as they crisscrossed over our path.  Finally, we came to a beatiful pool of blue sparkling water and a small waterfall.  Until this point, I was under the impression that we were going to hike up alongside the stream and the waterfalls, like on the rocks alongside.  But then our guide asked if we were ready and dove into the pool.  As we jumped in after and started swimming, my friend Alex turned around and said “This is so cool!” which began a series of realizations on our part that eventual lead us to the conclusion that this was the most amazing experience we have had yet in this country, and one of the coolest things any of us have every done period.

So now let me explain to you what this was actually like:  You swim upstream, against the current of a small river that is cutting deep but narrow canyons in the hillside.  Sometimes, you climb right up through the water.  Sometimes there are wooden ladders.  Sometimes you hoist yourself up using ropes.  Many times the guide had to pull us up because the current is so fierce that it dares to pull you under.  One of the reasons why it was so awesome and exhilarting, on the way up especially, was that it is something that would never be allowed in the US.  First off, it’s HARD.  It’s way harder than your average high ropes course.  Second, the safety procautions if this existed in the US would be 100 times more.  This is one of those things they would make you sign multiple waivers on, letting them know your family wouldn’t sue if you DIED climbing up waterfalls.  Third, it was exhilariting partly because they DIDN’T tell us what we were getting into until they were yelling at us to grab onto this rock or step into this gushing stream of water or hoist ourselves up by this rope.

After getting to the top of 12 waterfalls (we would’ve had to pay more to do all 27), we began the jumping down process.  We didn’t actually jump down 12, because some of the waterfalls had pools below that were too shallow.  It was really scary but AMAZING, the highest jump we did was like 20 feet.  There were also two natural slides that we slid down, where they told you to sit here and fold your arms in and lean forward, the water shoots you down and plunges you under the water.

Throughout this whole thing, we were swimming through canyons that are almost like caves, little sections of it had overhangings and the whole thing was just beautiful.

After the whole thing was over, we walked out to the road, tired and soggy.  A guagua never came for us, so we ended up hitchhiking part of the way home.

Well, that’s the big exciting things that happened.  Today I started working at my internship, where I’m doing some really fascinating work with a U.N. plan for developing the D.R.’s society and govenment.  More on that later.  I start classes at two more Universities on Monday.  Now, to organize my life.

Love,
Jonah