Birthday Adventure! - Alyssa

Happy Birthday to my mother!!!
After a rushed breakfast, we were told to attend a meeting where they could tell us about the area and the resort and what to expect as well as activities to do. The guy was so entertaining! But not enough to keep the attention of Amalie and I, who left a little early ("ohhhh! Looks like my presentation isn't interesting to these two girls who would rather be at the beach!!") to eat (Amalie missed breakfast) and get a couple of other things done. He told everyone to watch out for sharks, but not just the kind in the ocean.
"There are different kids of sharks around here." He informed us all. "They will try selling you other tours and other things that aren't up to American standard. Don't go for it just because they say it's cheapy cheapy!"

We didn't want to pay the 50 dollars a person for the Air Transat tours that we were with, so we talked to the front desk lady who knew someone that did taxi tours. He wouldn't just be taking us to the tourist places, he would be able to show us around the closest town and drop us off places and wait for us until we were ready to come back. There was just one sum for the whole excursion that was a lot less than the other tour.

Right after lunch, we got into the taxi and headed out to Higuea. Our first stop was a little overpriced tourist shop that we quickly decided was not what we wanted. We the headed to the basilica, and he waited while we walked inside to admire the large church. It was nothing like those ones in Scotland and Europe, but for the Dominican Republic, it was extremely grand. I think my mom and Sheira were more into looking around and admiring it that Amalie and I were though... We felt finished in a bout half of the time they took.

When we got outside, our moms headed to the baño while Amalie and I walked over to some shops nearby. They were all just Catholic cross necklaces though, so we decided to walk back to the vehicle and wait. Just then, it started to drizzle. From last night's experience, we knew what to expect so we suddenly started booking it back to where the car was. Sure enough, in the 3 minutes it took to get there, we were already pretty soaked. By the time we were all in the Taxi, a little boy had come up and asked Sheira for coins. She smiled and took out her wallet to give him a quarter. Suddenly, 5 more boys seemed to fabricate from thin air, she put a coin in each of their hands. A dollar in one and quarters in the others. One boy was quite upset though when he found that his coin was less than the first boys. He asked her for a dollar, but the car had already started moving by then.

We were taken to a couple other unwanted places (our guide couldn't speak much English so he kept taking us to the wrong place) before we finally stopped at a little market. Walking down, we came across quite a few people who were more than willing to point us to where the best shop was (I work over there. Cheapy cheapy!) And even acquired a guide along with a few little shoe polishing boys. We did end up buying some lilikoi (a certain kind of passion fruit) that was pretty cheap which tasted delicious. When we opened the taxi door, a little boy saw our drinks in there and asked for a "soda". Of course it was Sheira who said yes and handed it to him, the second of the three was snatched by another boy and the third would have been snatched as well if she hadn't grabbed his hand stopping him. She then handed the last one to one of the two sweet boys who had followed us around for the whole time and had caught my mom once when she tripped.  

When we arrived back at the resort, we headed straight to our rooms and ordered some room service to tie us over while we rested. What we ordered is NOT what we got. We had asked for two chicken Ceasar salads, two nacho and cheese plates and two plates of seasonal fruit. What we got was two salads with SARDINES on them, and two plates of nachos with a milky cheese flavored thing we could dip them in. Once we were finished, we sang happy birthday to my mother in the most horrible off tune voices we could muster, only to find out that some other people outside had heard us and probably thought we were just drunk. We found this out when they yelled up a "Happy Birthday to you too!!!"

When we finally went to dinner, we ate, took breaks with talking and ate some more. Just as we were about to leave (we had been trying to stall, but my mom was ready to just get up anyways) the servers all came in singing and yelling this happy birthday song that I had never heard before and brought a whole half of a cake for us to eat! My mom was laughing and bright red by the end of it, but it was worth it. This has been quite the birthday day!!