El Centro

On Sunday we went to the nationalpark „Los Haitises“. It is located on the other side of the Samaná bay and can‘t be visited alone, only with a guided tour. Rowena and Hektor organised everything for us so we just had to be ready and 7:30 in the morning outside of our appartment. We got picked up by a private bus which drove us to Sanches, where we took a boat across the whole Samaná bay. First we stayed on the boat and drove into some caves, where we could also jump into the water and awim out, I was the first one to jump in, the others followed. We swam until we got to the shore of a small island woth nothing but palmtrees on it. The tourguide gave us some information on the place and made us eat termites. At first I thought it was super disgusting but I convinced myself that I can‘t judge until I havent tried. So the guide broke off some termite „earth“ from the tree and a couple of termites came out, he took one and put it into my hands. It tasted like nuts, quite crunchy, it won‘t make it to my top 5 favourite dishes though, but at least I can tick it off my life-bucket-list. (I have to write a new point first haha) afterwards we got off the boat a couple of times to go to caves where first nation people had made drawrings. I have to admit, as artists they wouldnt have gained a lot of money, it looked more like the painting of a 3 year old on a wall with pencils. We drove on to a mangrove jungle where we waitet in silence for a couple of minutes. It was fascinating. We had a lunch break where they let us try rum, so we drank some santo libres (Rum with sprite) at around 1pm. Eventually we drove back and they brought us back to las Terrenas. We spent the afternoon at Cosón beach, playing card games and esting Ananas locals had given us. There were so many sandflies though that we had to leave at some point. Sandflies are like mosquitos but they hurt more and they come in groups of thousands. They can cause severe sllergic reactions to some people. Unfortunately Teresa is one of them, but this is a different story.Read more