Las Terranes

Last week Terry, Hazel and I took our first ever family vacation. We went to Las Terranes, a new destination for us. We were supposed to go with friends of ours, Dan and Katie, and their two little girls. They had been there before and really liked it. They knew where to go and what to see. Unfortunately, a week before we had planned on leaving, Dan came down with Typhoid. We were all trying to convince him that the best place to recover from Typhoid is relaxing at the beach. After a week of meds, no recovery and then finally a new diagnosis of Dengue, they decided to stay home. Because the apartment had already been booked and Terry and I couldn't really go any other time this summer, we decided to forge ahead and venture out on our own.
Unfortunately for Terry, this was supposed to be a surfing trip for him and Dan and they were just being nice and letting the wives and girls tag along. So, every morning, Hazel and I drove with Terry to some remote surfing beach to watch Terry sit on his board and wait for the perfect wave...that never came.



But, the beaches were absolutely beautiful and Hazel seemed to overcome her recent fear of the ocean. We had a great time walking along the beach, playing in the sand and swimming.







On Friday we took what we thought would be a nice afternoon hike to go see the waterfall El Limon. But, as we should have known, even the simplest things can turn into big ordeals here in the DR. It's a really, really, long story but the short of it is that Terry met this Dominican man in town (yes, he should have stopped there) who he thought he was helping and who told us he was a guide. He said that he had a sister who would cook us a Dominican fish meal after we went to the waterfall. Sounded nice. We told the guy many times that we didn't want to take horses because I was pregnant and we were told from friends that it was possible to hike the trail. So, we showed up at his sisters house and there were 2 horses waiting for us. Terry got on one with Hazel (against my protestations) and I walked behind. This, as you can guess, did not make me very happy. Things started to get better when we got to the actual trail and I could focus more on hiking than the jerk who was leading us (while riding my horse). The waterfall was stunning, as usual, and the meal afterwards was great (although we're pretty sure that's why Terry's been sick the past week), and I"ll say no more about the jerk.
I did ride the horse for about 10 minutes up the steep part until we got to the look-out. Please don't even begin to count the number of things that are wrong with this picture.