La Guásuma

Our weekend trip to las Galeras started on Friday after diving. We rented a car, and drove off. René offered to drive since he’s quite experienced and the road can be in a pretty bad conditions sometimes. Everything went seemed good, too good. After a couple of kilometres we realized we had to tank the car first, so we drove to the next gas station we found where they told us they couldnt give us fuel, because our car needed gas. We were a bit shocked, however we drove to a real „gas“ station and let our car be filled. We were a bit sceptical, we could all already see our car blowing us all up because of a gas leak. Nevertheless we were quite relieved when we started the engine and nothing happened. We drove for 1.2 hours over Samaná to get to Las Galeras and to check into out pretty roundhouse airbnb with outdoor kitchen and fresh pineapples in pur garden. It was only 6pm and not dark yet so we walked to the beach Playita, which was only 200 metres further down a small road. We bought a piña Colada and walked along the beach and the Rocks up to Punta Playita. Afterwards we walked for about 30mins to get to Las Galeras and went to a Restaurant. I really wanted seafood therefore I shared a Paella Marinera with Hektor, which isnt really dominican but still better than the Pizza‘s the other „tourists“, our friends, ordered. I didnt say anything but HOW CAN SOMEBODY ORDER PIZZA, in a country where there‘s such good food and variety. HOW? Whatever, we were quite tired and went to sleep in order to get up early the following day to visit playa Frontón.
At 6am in the morning we were woken up by birds who had made nests in our roof and insects which were so loud, it felt like a concert. Not a nice symphony played by an orchestra though, way more like hardrock sounds. None of us could go on sleeping so we stood up and wanted to cook pancakes. Unfortunately the gastank was empty, so my friends only had cookies and I had an energybar, which I had brought for emergency situations like this one, and an apple. Then we left with the car. The description plus de navigation app told us it would take about 20 mins. Well, the road was basically destroyed, there were very deep holes all over it and we had to drive extremely slowly. We peobably woul‘ve been faster by feet. We even had to get out twice, to check te depth of a hole which was filled with water. Eventually we got to the point where we couldnt go further. We parked the car and decided to walk from there. It took us a 1 and a half hour hike through caves, along the ocean and through the deep jungle to get to the playa Frontón. On the way we saw people cutring coconuts from trees and like typical dominicans they pffered each one of us a coconut, which we could first drink and then eat afterwards. It was a crazy experience to walk through the rainforest, I had never seen something alike. When we got to the beach we were stunned by its beauty. We got hungry a few hours later, luckily we saw some people cooking food in some pans on the ground on open campfires and ordered 2 dishes. They even let me help them. I only got to cut cucumbers though. The food was very tasty: we had fish, chicken, plátanos fritos, arroz con abichuela and salad with cucumber (the one I cut), tomato and Avocado. After lunch we slept for a few hours and then started heading back. Again ot took us two hours so in the evening we were really tired. Therefore we didnt go out but cooked peperonata with salad and pasta (for the others) at home instead and played some card games.Read more