Mud and Motors

Tuesday was an excursion day, and it turned out to be a dandy. We had booked a dune buggy tour through the Air Transit rep the previous afternoon. To avoid missing any serious beach time, we took the morning run and were ready to go at 7:30 am. The girls were so excited to start the trip they were dancing while we waited at the lobby (see pic to the left). We were met by a "troop transport", stopping at another resort to pick up the other recruits. From there we headed 15 minutes down the road to the compound with the buggies. Had some fun on the way with the people from New York. Two good guys. I was putting on sun screen and they said, we already did that, our wives don't let us out of the house without sunscreen". I told them "We don't get any sun in Canada, so this is all new to us." We ended up running into them a few days later at a resort up the beach.

At the compound, we lined up on benches, heard the safety drill, appropriate warnings about what would get us kicked off the buggies, and signed a waver saying they were not responsible for any injury and that we would pay for any damage we caused. They also strongly recommended buying a scarf to put over our mouth and nose. This was a good purchase.

Each couple was given a two seater dune buggy and we proceeded to go through all kinds of back roads, woods roads and paths until we arrived at a beautiful secluded beach for stop one. The stop is sold as a key part of the trip, but essentially amounts to a full frontal assult by local vendors of various trinkets and art work. There was someone selling beer at three bucks a pop, and a bunch of young kids giving the girls flower pedals looking for a buck tip. The girls bartered with the braclet vendor and each made a purchase. I settled for a beer and a swim in the ocean, while Larry chose to take in the spectacular views.

We headed back out on the buggies again running through a series of woods roads. Our buggy kept stalling out, so they would get it started up, and as we were well behind the rest of the group I got to wind out at full speed . It felt a little like Mario Go Cart for a while, dodging rocks, running up embankments and moving in and out around other vehicles. Finally, they got tired of ours stalling, and we switched to one of the spotters buggy. WOW. Power steering and souped up engine bigtime.

The second stop was at a cave where you could dive into a pool of water completely sheltered from the outside. Karen and I gave it a go. The water was surprisingly warm, and the objective was to splash as many of the other swimmers and onlookers with a deluge of spray from my cannonball. As with every location in the DR, there were more shops and vendors to try and take your money.

But the big thing on the drive was the mud and water. The roads, if you can call them that, looked like they had been bombed, with large craters and potholes several feet deep. You hit these things at a high speed, and when they were filled with water, literally every inch of your body gets covered in mud. Knapsacks, shoes, scarves,hats, glasses, you name it, it got covered. This went on for about an hour as we gradually worked our way back to the compound. When we pulled into the lot at the end of the ride you could see the horrified looks on the faces of the women in the next group, who had worn nice clothes. Not only did they realize the ride was going to ruin their duds, they also had to climb into the buggies we just used, without them being rinsed off.

After washing off as best as possible in the outdoor showers, it was back to the resort for an afternoon of relaxation at the beach. Great excursion, well worth the $65 a person.