Sunday – Jeep Safari

Calling it a jeep safari is a bit of an exaggeration.  There’s no off-roading speeding through the mountain-side jungle.  Just a big open-boxed truck without seat belts to haul up to 20 people at once.  Still I was not disappointed.  Elvis was our guide.  Found out later he went to college for languages, in exchange for this public education he worked for the government (tourism) for 6 months.  He’s been working the Jeep Safari for 18 years.  He carried fun with him, was very good with the children and very good english.  We drove up over our mountain to meet highway 5 on the other side.  Their main highway running north and south. There was a landslide at one point causing traffic to narrow to a single lane.  Intersting part about the landslide is that the mud and dirt on the highway had been their long enought to sstart having well-establish plants grown on it. We drove down to “InBay” a small city along the way where we departed from the highway.  The city was busy with cycles and people walking.  Kids too as it was not a school day.  School in InBay (and possibly all of the DR) is only half a day.  Partially to allow twice as many kids into the smaller schools.  Some grades run as many as four shifts.  We stopped at a local artisan shop, where we saw a cock-fight.  There are sharp spikes growing higher up off the rooster’s foot that they use to strike eachother.  This is Bryce holding onto one of the roosters and releasing him on the count of 3.

Our roosters wore “boxing gloves” to cover these weapons and protect them (and us) from the real violence.  cock-figthing is big sport in the Dominican Republic.  Felt socially embedded Like bull-fligting in spain. Elvis said betting can be as big as $80,000 american on a match.  And the most expensive rooster is worth $100,000 american. The bloodlines of champtions are sought after.  The artisans worked there with limestone, petrified wood, and volcanic rock (imported from Haiti).  Our next stop was Mama Dora’s coffee and cocoa shop.  Elvis cut open a fresh Cocoa shell for us and we tasted it.  Sweet with a hint of chocolate.  Mama Dora made us natural coffe and natural cocoa.  We all loved it.  On the way out, our vehicle was stopped on the narrow road by a man whos son had spilled his produce off the donkey he was walking with.  It was scattered all across the road.  We jumped off the truck and quickly helped the man reload his fruit.  The donkey was very calm and let us scurry about him without a worry.  Elvis said the fruit was a bitter orange that they used to make vinegar.  Further down the road we ran into another donkey walking on his own carrying a similar load.  Elvis said he would stop exactly at the door of the owner.  Smart beasts.  Next stop was lunch before we headed to the waterfall.  After a nice lunch of chicken, pork, rice, beans, plantains and papaya we were off.  The highlight of the ‘safari’ was definitely the waterfalls at the national park.  We found out later that these waterfalls were used in the filming of Jurassic Park.  We left all our belongings at the truck guarded by Elvis.  Manuel carried a camcorder and made a DVD of our adventure which we later purchased.  I can post some of those shots later.  Our guides Nelson and Frantini were brothers.  They were essential in us sliding or jumping 7 of the 28 watefalls at the park.  For many of the falls, the way we went up was the same way we went down.  Just with them guiding where we stepped and hauling us up to the next level.  Our brothers were exhausted when we reached the seventh level.  The way down took much less time.  The water had formed natural water slides and all we needed to do was cross our arms and legs and enjoy the ride.  We wore protective helmets and floating vests for extra protection.  Maeve was not old enough to go down the water slides, but was able to swim in the first pool below the falls.  She made a new friend, Olivia, from Canada and was watched by Olivia’s grandma and mother.  They were easy-going Canadians riding in the same jeep as us.  The day was a complete success and a blast for all.  I’m sure the DVD is something we’ll enjoy watching over and over again, especially in the dead of winter. 

Arrival and Day 1

Getting here was a little complicated as we booked our flights “late”.  Being Easter week, we needed to be creative to keep costs down.  Had to fly into Newark, New Jersey and overnight there.  Which meant we had to go through security again.  I checked with a United Airlines worker hoping he would say we didn’t need the full 2 hours without check-in bags, but he suggested arriving the full 2 hours early.  We had a quick breakfast at the hotel and made it through security in 30 minutes, leaving us more than an hour to kill.  We had even more time to kill at O’Hare as we hit no traffic from Madison.  Just a bunch of expensive tolls (nearing $10).  Still have to pay one of those online as we ran out of change.  Flying out of Newark we saw the statue of Liberty and the downtown New York skyline.  Downtown New York looks so tiny from the air.  Flight to Dominican Republic took less than 3 hours.  Small (smaller than Madison) airport receiving us and a quick $10 tourist card for each of us and a near non-existent customs and we were in the country.  A driver holding our name awaited us.  The drive from the airport made it clear we were no longer stateside.  Dogs and chickens roaming free, tons of 70’s style cycles with helmetless riders, and men standing in the bed of moving trucks.

The house we are staying at separates us from everyone.  Quite upper end here on the DR.  Including a cook and her helper, Nellie and Rosemary, a night watchman, Ramone, an on-site maintenance man, Willy.  Another, Sandy, that I don’t know his official title and their manager, Gabino.  Gus stopped by yesterday and set us up with a few tours… Paradise Island and Jeep Safari and horse riding.  He also drove me down to Ocean World on the back of his 70’s style cycle and got me setup for Friday tickets to swim with the dolphins.  Interesting to see how much tourism supports here!  The house itself is impressive.  It’s got to have 20 (or more) different rooms.  After the Ocean World cycle ride, I walked by a room with the door cracked open and saw Willy relaxing watching some TV.  Here’s a shot poolside.

  

The house sits hillside with a commanding view of the ocean and ocean breezes in every window.  Yet still only a quick 15 minute walk to the beach.  I bumped into an older gentleman yesterday morning when going for my run.  He approaches me and offered that he’d built the property we were renting.  His name was Leo (Allotta).  He was born in Italy, worked for and retired from IBM.  Bought his house here back in ‘76 for $23,000.  Rented it when he didn’t use it and found he could make money doing that.  In retirement he decided he could build (as the contractor) properties and sell them internationally.  He’s built and sold 17 properties at this point, and certainly is making some money, but seemed to be doing it also just to keep busy.  Quite and impressive businessman.  He knew most of our staff personally, including training Gabino years ago on MS excel and giving him his start into managing others.  Gabino now manages the staff for all Leo’s 17 properties as well as others.

Gus, who set us up with all our excursions, was well connected.  He personally phoned a taxi driver who he knew spoke English, and called in a couple of ladies to do bead the girl’s hair and do their nails.  That was interesting in and of itself, as the lady who first arrived turned out to be the boss of the lady who later arrived to do their nails.  Another middle man.  You could see the influence Gus had having access to high-end Dominican spenders in these hillside mansions (and he has access to at least 17 of them, probably others).  Much better odds of making a sale for him in coming to the clientele that rent mansions like this than hustling excursions on the beach.  His access then equates to the power to pass that money onto others he knows.  I find that a very interesting dynamic.  Gus has lived his whole life in the DR, and as I sat riding on the back of his cycle as he expertly balanced and avoided the many loose rocks on the unpaved drive up to our mansion, I thought of him as a teen riding a cycle learning the skills that would one day earn him a good living in the DR.

I was surprised to hear also that much of our help is educated, from Nellie’s husband who teaches school, our taxi driver’s wife is a professor at the university, to Sandy who teaches languages at the university.

We spent day one poolside, just relaxing and hanging out.  Kate, Jane, Bryce and Zeke went to the grocery store to buy supplies with Nellie.  Maeve, Theo and I played in the pull.  And got sunburns despite coating down with sunscreen.  For supper we walked to the beach.  The weather turned quickly and we were caught in a bt of a downpour.  We stopped at a beachside restaurant that didn’t take Visa and found out later that we ate at the most expensive restaurant in the area.  Oddly enough they were playing songs from Grease and Zeke and Bryce sang along (as they are acting in a production of Greast for Spring).

Wandered home to finish our night with a movie on DVD.  Madagascar 2.  Love those penquins.  You didn’t see a thing.

Maeve’s pre-DR birthday

 

Maeve is one lucky girl, not because she got a lot of great gifts for her birthday today, but rather… she turned 6!  And 6 is the minimum age to swim with the dolphins at the equivalent of Sea World in the Dominican Republic.  We leave tomorrow, overnight in New York, and arrive in DR Friday morn.  Dolphins here we come.

Barcelona7 – Tuesday - Picasso

The kids wanted to head to the beach on our final day in Barcelona but I just didn’t have the energy for it and was looking for something more low key.  Kate had wanted to go to the Picasso museum and Zeke and Jane said they were interested too.  I didn’t want to let Theo stay in all day and watch TV, and since the Picasso museum was free to kids I thought what better place to let them get a little walking out.  We made it there simple enough and after a 20 minute wait in line, we were in.  From the get go I planned to stay exclusively with Theo and Maeve and let Kate enjoy PIcasso with the older kids at her pace.  No photos were allowed so I don’t have any shots of the pictures that were remarkable.  The collection started when Picasso was just 11.  Already showing signs of greatness.  He was a recognized painter by the time he was 18.  I tried to keep Picasso interesting for Theo and Maeve, explaining that he had a passion for painting.   Including when his family went on vacation to Malaga (near Fuengirola) where he took his paints with him.  I told Theo and Maeve that his parents probably told Picasso to stop with the painting the same way we told Theo and Maeve to turn off the TV.  We stopped and enjoyed any painting the kids noticed.  Theo thought this gal was not to be trusted.  Explaining later that she had narrow eyes and a bit of a smirk to her smile.

The museum had a couple of displays where the same painting was displayed multiple times over.  Each time Picasso had altered the painting slightly or not so slightly.  In particular, a painting he submitted for a competition while he was in school, showed how he had rearranged his father, mother, a nurse and a baby around a bed until he got the composition just right.  Changing the angle of the sick mother’s head, or the color of the bedsheet or cabinet. Both the kids and I enjoyed that one.

They also had a great audio-visual showing all the variations Picasso had done on Velazquez’ Las Meninas, that showed the original Velazquez work and how Picasso’s work related to it.

And now brace yourself… Maeve, of course, had to wear her Flamenco dress out again on the last day.  Caught this near perfect shot of her at Picasso’s museum…

The night before, on La Rambla, the we’d been trying to tell her to put a hat out and make a little money for us doing some Flamenco performances.  She was game and was upset when she noticed that none of us had remembered a hat or worn a hat that night.  But when we got down there, she lost her confidence.  I think she would’ve made a killing.

As we waited for some last day shopping by Kate, the kids practiced taunting passers by into taking a photo, then covering Maeve up and asking for a Euro before allowing the shot. 

Zeke said they got no takers, but one guy wanted a shot only to walk away when they asked for a Euro.

After shopping we headed back for lunch and downtime.  Later that night I took Zeke, Theo and Maeve up to Montjuic to see the Magic Fountain that I’d seen nights before on one of my runs.  Unfortunately I hadn’t noticed that the fountain ran only Thursday through Sunday.  We sat for awhile, with a fair number of other confused attendees.  Then gave up hope.  Zeke asked one of the vendors in Spanish and found out that the show was only certain days of the week.  Oh well, at least we got to see the 1992 Olympic Stadium, and this beautiful communication tower sculpture, and get some ya-yas out.

Barcelona6 – Monday – Sagrada Familia

This is the day we’d been waiting for.  The Holy Grail of Barcelona, Sagrada Familia.  OH, did I mention that we learned that while Hitler was visting with Franco in Barcelona, Himmler was sneaking up to Montserrat on his personal quest unbeknownst to Hilter, trying to find the Holy Grail as he thought it would ensure Nazi victory, and a Wagner opera had cited the final resting place as a monastery that was similarly named.  How’s that for tying up some major portions of our trip into a single tidy ball?

I also forgot to mention that Napolean destroyed Montserrat too.  That darn Napolean.

Here’s a great segue shot to Sagrada Famila.  Maeve standing as we wait to enter, with her ‘camera’ in hand, a camera she’d bought at Montserrat.

  She spent the beginning of the audio tour taking pictures of many sights at Sagrada Familia.  It turned out to be a great purchase, if only for that purpose.  We enjoyed our status of first in line, as we’d worked so hard for it several days prior when the Belgians had to purchase our tix for us.  We also enjoyed knowing that as always, there was already a HUGE line around the corner and the place didn’t even open until 9 am, a few more minutes.

We entered on the Passion Facade end of the church.  This end was architected by Gaudi, but designed and sculpted by Subirachs.  I LOVED them.  Especially the stark figures and mournful faces.  This is Peter after he denied Jesus three times as the cock crowed.

No offense to Gaudi, but I enjoyed the Passion end more than his Nativity end.  Personal preference perhaps.  We learned that only in 2010 had the vaulted ceiling of the cathedral been finished to a point where the entire space was enclosed and could now (if they chose to stop the continual construction) could have a service.  I’d love to go back at some point and hear the 3000+ chair choir fill the room with song for a service.  And word is they will finish the final interior touches in 2010 and actually start having services by year end!!  Incredible.

We took the elevator up one of the bell towers.  Currently there are 6.  When done there will be one for each apostle.  Plus a major central tower for Christ and one for Mary and a few more totalling 18, I think.  The trip up the tower allowed us a great view over the other towers of the church and over the city…

It’s hard not to enjoy the natural curves nestled everywhere in the construction, including this stairwell we came down on the tower.  Notice Zeke’s face neatly framed by the spirals…

The museum later explained the mathematics behind many of the curves incorporated into the church.  Here’s a panoramic showing many of those curves.

Later we crossed over to the Nativity Facade.  Gaudi completed the Nativity facade himself.  His express wishes were for the Nativity Facade to be joyous and the Passion Facade to be bare and stark.  On the Nativity Facade he included many animals as signs of life.  Here’s the kids playing I-Spy as Kate and I enjoyed our audio guides. 

They found salamanders, turtles, bulls, geese, turkeys, and others.  We then worked our way down to the museum below the building.  Here’s Zeke studying a drawing of the completed building.  Note the massive central Jesus tower.  Which will have a lighthouse style light in its rotating cross!    (OK, maybe that’s a little gaudy).  In fact, I noticed what looked like neon signs built into the interior pillars of the church.  Only one was installed when we visited, but it looks like they had the electrical laid out for one in each pillar.  Also gaudy.

When we were leaving, Kate and I decided we must circle back and ensure we had some good photos of the Passion sculptures.  Especially Jesus tied to the post.  Just loved those faces.

Got this final photo at the schoolhouse on grounds after we’d spent too much at the gift shop.  Note the wave in the roof and walls.  A natural wave pattern neatly worked out by the architect to allow for max space with minimal materials.

We sat and had a little snack in the street outside.  The menu itself, said they were adding an 8% charge just to eat in its presence.  I kid you not.

We finished with a little shopping, including finally getting the Flamenco dress and shoes and hair piece Maeve had been wanting and headed for home.  It was embarassing even walking with Maeve as she was drawing so much attention.  She wore it out later after lunch when we went down La Rambla again.  Many people stopped and talked to her.  Muy Guapa.  Some asked to take her photo.  Suffice it to say she got her fill of attention,

Barcelona5 – Sunday - Montserrat

We decided to make a day trip out to Montserrat to experience some of the mountains. It was not as I was expecting.  I was expecting craggy peaks like the Pyrenees, but these were more worn and rounded.  The name Montserrat actually means serrated mountain and describes the parallel serrations in the stone formations of the mountain.  After a quick breakfast, we hopped the metro to Espanya metro station and found the R5 train line toward Montserrat.  A website had warned us that it might be hard to find, but coming from the metro it was actually easy.  A man there spoke English well and explained that the package deal did not include the air cable car, but instead used the funicular (i.e. train up the hill).  We’d also read that the views from the air cable car were not to be missed, so we opted for that route even though it cost more.  Our train arrived in about 45 minutes, 35 of which Theo played ipod Touch.  I made him put it away for the last 10 minutes and look out the window at the beautiful scenery.  He begrudgingly obliged.  The ride up the mountain was a bit of a disappointment.  The car was quite full and we were left with only a view down the mountain. 

On the walk up to the monastery a helicopter was taking off and flew directly over us.  I was quick enough to snap it before it flew off, and I think it turned into a neat shot..

I was expecting a small tucked away monastery in the mountainside, but instead we found a whole village.  Including a grocery store and everything.  Lucky for us, as we’d forgotten our water and we wanted to do a 3 hour hike to the top of the mountain.  Turns out even if we’d brought all of our water it wouldn’t have been enough, as we bought a 6.25 Liter bottler of water at the grocery and went through the whole thing on our hike.  The information booth lady told us we had the option of riding the funicular up and saving most of the climb part of the hike.  With the 4 kids, we thought that was a no-brainer.  The funicular up had a glass ceiling to allow for views.  Here’s Theo enjoying the view in the funicular.

We knew we’d made a good choice with the funicular as it just kept going and going and going.  Here you can see the height we gained… (the village is in the middle of the photo far below).

The kids each spotted interesting things along the way.  Maeve smelled some pretty flowers, Theo found a munched on leaf, and they all enjoyed building rock towers at some point during our hike…

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At the midway point, Kate and the little ones were beat.  And the info lady had warned us that the final 25 minutes of ascent was much more strenuous.  Kate gifted me and agreed to head down with the kids.  But Zeke had the legs and interest in going to the peak with me.  Zeke and I made pretty good time heading up without the others.  And spent as much time as we thought possible enjoying the view from the top, where we were actually able to see the communication tower on mount Tibidabo back in Barcelona! 

We stopped a little lower down at our own private spot to just snack on some corn nuts and soak in the tranquility and view.  Here we are soaking it in (note the aforementioned corn nut in Zeke’s nostril)

Zeke had been carrying a stick and a rock with him.  I didn’t know what he had planned, but he insisted that he needed some time before we continued back down.  He ended up creating this rather impressive floating rock formation.   On the way down, I had to laugh when we came upon these rock formations from Theo, Maeve and Janie.  Kate made sure I didn’t miss them by adding the kids names on leaves.

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We tried to keep the pace quick on the way down.  We started “racing” down any of the steeper stairs to make time and were jokingly referring to our old monikers back in Ronda… Goat boy and Goat Sensei referring to our sure feet.  Here’s goat boy posing at the bridge just prior to getting back to the village.

We peaked into the church and had another opportunity to light a candle for my mom, and also an opportunity for me to talk about another one of those quirky points of the catholic religion.  The train ride home was completely packed and we all had to stand for 45 minutes.  OUCH.  Kate was holding Maeve for half of that as she conked out.  And who could blame her.  Her little 4 year old legs made the whole hike.  I had to ask Kate aferwards if she’d even ever asked to be carried.  Nope.  WOW.  Sleep well Maeve.

Barcelona4 – Saturday – Roman ruins

Saturday was the 2nd day of our hop on/off bus ticket.  A quick breakfast and we were off and running.  Unfortunately, we didn’t take the time to work out a good plan this day.  So we winged it and ended up with a workable day.  We also ended up bumping into some old friends, but I’ll get to that.  On the walk to our bus I saw this ripped out newspaper picture in the window of a delivery van and had to take a photo, excuse the glare.  Hard to believe it’s been about a month since we watched the game back in Madrid!!!

  It reminded me of the start of our trip back in Madrid and the pride we’d seen the Spaniards exhibit over their team.  We hopped the bus after playing our morning ritual of try to remember what the scary clown was wearing (a game I started to keep Theo engaged in something other than trouble), just in case any of us forget…   On the bus route,  Maeve spotted this fanciful elephant.  She was saying ‘goodbye upside down elephant’ as I shot this photo.  You can see the words Caixa Forum on the building behind the elephant.  Caixa is the largest bank in Spain and their name was everywhere in Barcelona, including the Science Museum we’d gone to the day prior.  I’d planned to get out at the 1992 Olympic stadium and walk around it a bit.  As it was on the Montjuic (jewish mountain) hillside, it was also an opportunity to get a nice view of the city.  But I missed that stop.  After some “discussion” with Kate we ended up staying on the red route and transferring to the green route down at the beach.  Our new green bus pulled out then started backing up.  The driver came up to tell us the bus was broken and made us get off as he apologized.  We decided to walk the beach a bit to see what the man-made Barcelona beaches looked like.  Despite it being high-season, they weren’t as busy as the Fuengirola beaches we were at a couple of weeks earlier.  I’d read too that much of the sand on the beach had to be trucked in again each summer following the winter storms.  But the beaches made a lot more sense with the new Barcelona tourism town.  At the beach I had to go out of my way to ensure I got a shot of the big fish sculpture, adding Maeve just to increase the cuteness factor.

  In fact, she’d heard that so much from me over the trip that she started explaining the whole theory to Kate.  Dad needs me in the photos because I make the photos more cute.

After checking out the beach we hopped onto the green route and finished the eastern extent of the beaches via bus.  The green route passed through and then back through a rather significant park.  We’d planned to spot it from the bus and then hop off on the way back through if it looked like a place the kids could get their ya-ya’s out, as Kate puts it.  We didn’t spot any good playground equipment but there was enough shade and some water features, so we gave it a go.  At the least we could eat our lunch.  By sheer luck we bumped into these hillside slides that looked like you could really get going on them.  The stainless steel looked hot in the sun, but for the most part, they were protected by shade trees.  Zeke’s shirt slid well on the slides, but the cotton that Theo, Jane and Maeve were wearing was not working well.  I happened to have a slick shirt on too, so I donated it to the cause.  Here’s Zeke and Janie in my shirt bombing the hill.

A family had a puppy with them, the dad struck up a conversation with me.  It happened to be the puppy Nit’s first day outside.  Kate said she’d been watching him and he was scared of the pigeons.  His boy was learning English and tried a few phrases on me and the kids.  Hello, my name is **forgot it**.  Zeke shot a little Spanish back at him and I asked the dad about Catalan as Barcelona was his home town.  Yet another Spaniard that spoke excellent English!  We got a picture with them before they had to leave.

After lunch we hopped back onto the bus, destination Roman ruins.  These were ruins that were “discovered” underneath Barcelona.  It was a neat experience to ride an elevator down a few floors and step out into the ruins of a Roman city.  The buildings and streets above supported by large steel beams and huge cement columns.  Incredible to think what’s under the old large cities of Europe.  Especially those that at one point had fallen under Roman rule and then built right over the top of that civilization.  In fact, later at the Picasso museum I saw the same phenomenon.  They’d excavated some below the bag check lobby and then put glass floors in so that you could see the large ceramic containers they’d found.  Amazing history in those cities.  Anyway, we made it a few rooms into the Roman ruins, when who should we bump into but Bob and Trisha.  They accompanied us the rest of the tour and we exchanged more travel stories.  The kids especially seemed to enjoy telling them their experiences.  We all thoroughly enjoyed the Roman ruins, especially the terrific audio guide which attempted to explain exactly how the Roman city was laid out. INcluding a laundromat, public baths, church, and winery.  The most incredible fact… the Roman laundry used to have containers up in the street that they asked the public citizenry to pee into as they needed the urine for laundry product.  In fact, they were only allowed to do this after paying a tax to the government!  We weren’t allowed to take photos but I snuck this shot of Janie and Kate flanking Bob and Trisha.

After talking about the Roman baths with Maeve I attempted to drive my point home as Maeve is quite fond of baths.  And we pretended that we had to walk out of our house to the public bath, then walk home.  After the Roman ruins we all split up.  Bob and Trisha heading for the old city, Kate Jane and Zeke heading for home, and Theo Maeve and I heading for the fountain.  Theo and Maeve having evidently gotten enough energy from their sweet treat to do a little more trekking.  In the end I took a wrong turn and didn’t make it to the park with the fountain, but we stumbled upon a group of about 8 old men playing bocce ball with heavy steel balls.  One set a darker silver than the other.  We sat down and watched.  The men were quite animated.  It was quite clear they enjoyed kidding eachother, even if I didn’t know what they were saying.  It was also clear they’d all been doing this quite a while, as they could throw their ball underhand and land it in the air 20 feet away directly on the opponents ball which would send both of the balls flying to a sidewall. I said it was time to move on, but Theo begged to watch ‘just one more game’.  I wanted to watch more too, but it made it a lot easier to sit and stay knowing they were enjoying it too.  Can you spot them watching in this photo?

The last game we watched one of the teams had lined up all their balls past the pallino (the small ball that your balls need to be closest to) and on their last throw they simply pushed the pallino back to their row of three balls.  The opponent threw down his cleaning rag, crouching closely to the three balls as he counted uno, dos, tres, following that with some words that must’ve meant something like ‘how didn’t I see that coming’ at least that’s what his tone and actions said.

We walked home and met up with the rest of the crew.  Kate had gotten them a sweet treat of candy.  I told Theo and Maeve they weren’t allowed to have any as we’d already violated the single sweet treat rule of thumb and they’d helped me with a 4 pack of ice cream bars I’d bought at the grocery.  Thank goodness it didn’t seem to ruin their supper.