Jarabacoa!

I should be working on my report, but...I'm out of it and I just did another salt water flush, so instead...I will record the amazing weekend that I shared with my roommates!

We decided to go up to Jarabacoa for the weekend. It's in the Cordillera Central, i.e. the "Dominican Alps"...um...yeah. I don't know about that description, but it was sooo amazingly beautiful in so many ways. The town itself didn't have much to offer, besides amazing papaya juice and frappchinos. But we found a good, cheap hotel and the people there helped us find a cheap (and hot) guide to take us around to the waterfalls.

It was sooo nice to be out of the city. I mean it was still polluted and whatnot up there, but there was so much green lushness. It was wonderful. Our guide took us to the first waterfall and it was beautiful (pictures are in the next post since I'm retarded). Then he led us up a path. I didn't think we were going to be doing any hiking which I was a bit bummed about, but then...we HIKED! It was intense! This wasn't like my favorite trail at Middlesex Fells. This wasn't a place you could go trail running. This was like pulling yourself up on vines and preying to god you didn't lose your balance or else you'd fall I don't even know how far down. It was truly wonderful and convinced me that I need to do the three day hike out to Pico Duarte, the highest mountain in the country and I think in the Caribbean. And when we got to the waterfall...WOW. It's the waterfall that part of Jurassic Park was filmed by and it was gorgeous. Abosutely and completely gorgeous. There were only a handful of people there and barely any trash. We went swimming under the waterfall and I wish I could bottle the fun we had. I really enjoyed floating and looking up at the rock around the waterfall - it was covered in moss and crazy textures and it was simply exquisite. And then when you walked into the spray, it was so powerful that it almost knocked you backward. We were saying that we were getting a really cheap microderm abrasion treatment. And when you were in the spray you could see an almost complete rainbow. (I haven't recorded this anywhere - I saw a rainbow the first day I came to the DR. I knew it was going to be a special place for me.) We went to a third waterfall as well, but the second one beat out the others because of the work we had to do to get there.

Today, we didn't do much. We went out for a nice breakfast (more lechoza juice!) and then chilled and watched Michael Jackson videos and documentaries, wandered around for a bit, ate more, drank frappachinos, sat in a different parque Duarte, etc. It was truly an awesome awesome trip and I love my girl roommates. Pictures in the next post!