Wednesday January 23
The Dominican Republic was pleasant and it was nice to
disembark after being on the boat longer than expected. We meandered through
the “sanitized” faux village on the Holland America-owned pier to get to our 4
tour buses which stayed together as we meandered through Puerto Plata, Dominican Republic, which is
in the northeast part of the country. We explored a bit of this lush island,
drove on severely pot-holed roads up to the top of a hill with a statue of
Jesus that was presumably created by the same person who made the famous statue
in Rio de Janero, Brazil. But before exploring the statue we walked up to a
different “peak” where we found a newly-placed geocache that our tour guides
had prepared for us (they are now planning to create a few more geocaches and
include them on their tours for visitors who are interested). After visiting
the loo and the statue we descended via what turns out to be the only cable car
in the Caribbean. Then off to a fort, a nice lunch of the national dish –
chicken, rice and beans – a short walk in the city and then a return to Amber
Cove. Alas, there wasn’t really anywhere else to explore so we completed the
on-site caches, explored the shops at the pier, and returned to the ship. It
was, as noted earlier, quite pleasant, and confirmed that there are many places
higher on my bucket list to explore than Dominican Republic.
Thursday’s scheduled at-sea day started with a
well-attended reviewer panel with the 6 reviewers on board hosting a Q&A
session for the other cachers. It was fun, and very nice to have several
cachers who I hadn’t met before go out of their way to thank me/us for being
reviewers and for a good session. I think it was after this session that I decided to book my cabin for the October Mediterranean Cruise (http://travel.landsharkz.ca/category/upcoming/)....now to find the right roommate
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