February 10, 2012
Wildlife
Calvin is the gardener here at the small building we're staying at - or that's his official title but it seems to us he does near everything. He speaks English with the same fluency that we speak Spanish, which is not at all. It turns out though, that some things don't need words.
Hank had heard from another Canadian family (this place is filthy with Canadians) that there was a turtle living near here. We searched for a few days, having only the clues from someone else that it was a turtle, and it was in some sort of box, somewhere off the path. Mum looked, I looked, Erin looked - and we couldn't find a thing. Naturally, it was Hank who had the tenacity to keep looking, and he eventually found the box, which was more of an open concrete square. (This is one of the troubles with us trying a few Spanish words, and them trying a few English - things can get slightly shifted in the translation. Last night at dinner the cook told us that the dessert had "scratched" coconut. Turned out that he meant "grated" which makes sense, sort of, and is exactly the sort of mistake we would make in the other direction.) Hank was pretty sure that he'd seen the turtle go under the water there, but after we'd all squatted by this pool for a bit, we were seriously beginning to doubt him. We were asking all those insulting questions that grownups ask kids. "Are you sure it was a turtle?" "Are you sure it wasn't something else? Maybe a plant?" (When I think about it now, I'm not surprised that kids sometime lose their patience with us.)
We went back to the pool nearby, and only Erin hung in there with Hank, and after a little while, Calvin happened by and saw them lurking there in the bushes. Maybe he remembered being a kid, or maybe he just knew there was only one possible reason why a kid would be squatting by a fetid pool of water, or maybe it's the way that no matter where you go in the world, it seems like kids are just better understood and more welcome than they are in North America, but Calvin walked right over and reached down into the water... 
and came up with the turtle. 
Hank was thrilled and vindicated. Today's Spanish word? 
Tortuga!
February 9, 2012
Nobody is Scared
There is a gecko in my bathroom. 
This is more or less fine with me, and absolutely fine with Erin and Hank. It is not, however fine with my mum, who was briefly cornered by said gecko.
When Erin told her that she couldn't believe she was afraid of something so small and harmless, my mum replied in true McPhee form.
"I am not afraid of the gecko. I am simply very uncomfortable around him."
February 8, 2012
An Adventure
It's fun to be here with Mum and Erin, but I have to say that for the pure adventure potential, you need yourself an 11 year old boy, and Hank's my man on the ground. Yesterday we decided to go on an adventure, and after slathering our pathetically Canadian winter skin with sunscreen, off we went. We had only two goals. Find out what was beyond the little point near our beach, and buy some food. We're cooking for ourselves here for most meals, and that means adventuring to find out what people here eat, what it's called and how to prepare it. So far we really only had coffee, tea, the box milk, bread, cheese and three apples that we're pretty sure came from Canada, they were so old and yucky. Apples, clearly are not a Caribbean thing, but we were so tired and confused that first trip to the supermercado, that we bought them just because they were familiar. They were expensive too - so yesterday I was on a mission to find out what produce was local, cheap and good.
Hank and I struck out for the point - walking along the beach and seeing all that we could see. In the afternoon the wind comes up here, and the kite surfers come out in throngs. Hank stopped periodically to survey and count them. .jpg)
(If it matters to you, as it did to Hank, you might like to know that there were 56 kite surfers) On the way we found a stand that sold iced tea (which is nothing like at home, but "still very good" according to Hank.) When we got to the little point, it turned out that there were three big rocks, and a guy selling shells. This was not at all disappointing, since for some time as we walked towards them, we thought there was just rocks. Rocks with shells was very impressive, comparatively speaking. 
Still, we hadn't found any fruit or vegetables at all and the gentleman and I figured that maybe there were only restaurants on the beach, not stores, and so we struck our way through a posh hotel, and out to the road. (There is only one road in Cabarete, so if something is not on the beach, it must be on the road.) We walked along (discovering that the bushes next to us were chock full of a million spiders, which we decided to be very careful about, since, as Hank pointed out "we aren't from here and we don't know what's dangerous." I was pretty sure they weren't dangerous, but a little danger is a good thing on an adventure, so I didn't disabuse him of the notion.) After a while we both of us were surprised to come across chickens. 
Chickens, right there at the side of the road, walking around and doing whatever it is that chickens seem to do, with baby chicks in tow. (The baby chicks were a particularly good part of the adventure, and Hank took this picture so that we could show his Gramy and Mum.) 
We both agreed that if we were chickens, we would think that the side of the road was a sub-optimal place to trot around with your babies, but again - we conceded that we know little of the motivation of Dominican chickens (or chickens in general) and that maybe the side of the road was the very best place to be. "We don't know" Hank posited, "what is lurking off the road."
We kept walking, and saw a little stand up ahead on the road, and as we got closer, we talked about what it might be. Probably a food place, Hank thought (probably because we were looking for a food place) and we started thinking about what we hoped to find. I wanted avocados (it seemed like they might grow here, and I love them) and Hank wanted a coconut. "A coconut?" I asked him.
"Yes," replied Hank, with a great deal of seriousness. "A coconut so we can open it and drink what's inside. You can do that."
"I know you can do that Hank, or rather, I know it can be done - but how do you do it? I don't know if we should buy a coconut. I think they're hard to open."
"We could google it."
"True."
We walked along the dusty road with the chickens until we were at the stand, and lo and behold, it was food. There were eggs, sitting out in little flats, (that made total sense. All those chickens had to be doing something) and there were indeed avocados, and tomatoes, and cucumbers, and little bananas, and pineapples. Little oranges, and something that looks not quite like a lime but might be (I don't think it is, but neither Hank nor I had any idea) and this pale green vegetable that we had eaten in a restaurant the night before that was really tasty. I don't know what they're called, but they're used like potatoes here, even though they're not really all that starchy. We bought one because we knew they were good, and we thought we could figure out how to cook it. Most exciting of all. Coconuts. Big green fresh coconuts, sitting right there. Hank and I immediately began to debate the merits of buying one (if you can't get it open, what's the point VS holy cow Stephie it's a coconut I don't care if we can't open it) and eventually the guy who owned the stand took the coconut out of Hank's hands, tapped it, taught him a new spanish word ("dura") and mimed drinking from the coconut. Hank's face lit right up, and right there, the guy got a machete (machetes are very exciting all by themselves) and whacked away at the coconut, then stuck a straw into it, and handed it to a very thrilled Hank.
I paid for the fruit and vegetables (I think that when they tell me the price, I'm supposed to be negotiating. Haggling isn't really a Canadian thing, and it doesn't come naturally to us as a people. Every time someone here tells how much it is, I just give them the full amount, and then they all sort of smile at me like I'm a happy accident that's wandered into their day. Must work on this.) and we walked back the rest of the way along the road back to the house, where we showed off our spoils, 
and were welcomed home like the conquering heroes that we felt like. 
We found out what was beyond the point, We counted kite boarders, we found food, we saw chickens, and we got a fresh coconut. It could not possibly have been more exciting. Not in any way.
PS. Today's Spanish words: Dura = Hard (that one made sense, once we thought of "durable") Pina = Pineapple (also made sense, once we thought of Pina Coladas.) Pollo = chicken, Cuanto = how much )
PPS. That was the best pineapple I've ever had.
February 7, 2012
From Cabarette
We got up yesterday, my mum, my sister, Hank and I at 3am, and went to the airport. We spent the day bleary and exhausted, staggering through Toronto, then Newark, then finally landing in Puerto Plata - and the minute we landed we all had our energy back - or what passed for energy until we could sleep, which was enthusiasm. We were stereotypes of Canadians landing in the Caribbean. "It's so warm!" "It's so green!" "Look! A palm tree!"
We got in a cab, and immediately noticed two things. One, we don't speak Spanish. We knew this of course, but it was still a shock to realize that me, with my twenty or thirty words of Spanish, was going to be our resident and incompetent translator. I have words like hola, adiós, Buenos dias, gracias, de nada, beinvenidos, como estas, aqui, agua, frio, calliente, cerrado, banos - which means I can get beer and bathrooms with a reasonable degree of politeness, but is absolutely not enough to say "We would like to go to the house with the pink front by the hotel near the beach after Cabarette" which frankly, is the address we had. (Not quite, but like I'm telling the internet exactly where I am.) Through a series of butchered Spanish words, we managed to get there, mostly rescued by Hank, who somehow remembered the word for "pink" and that nailed it.
(I have a feeling we have Dora the Explorer to thank for that.) The second thing that we noticed is that people here drive, by Canadian standards (which is saying something) like LUNATICS. They should all be dead in the streets. No speed limits here, no rules, no nothing. Just you in a beat up honda with all your luggage, speeding down the road and dodging guaguas (little buses, full of people and chickens and boxes) and people on little motorbikes, all weaving and shouting and honking. Nobody is dead in the street though, so it obviously works for them and they have the skills to handle it, and we just have to breath through it. 
We got to the little beach house that will be our home for the next little bit, and marveled at the view, the green, the palm trees and the sea, and got a little bit settled, and then Erin and I got brave, and went to the supermercado (supermarket) in Cabarette. (The frightening ride in a cab is here implied.) We saw tropical fruit and a few vegetables we didn't recognize, and tried to buy milk, which turned out to be a little tricky. There was white stuff in jugs in the cooler, but it turned out to be yoghurt, but after searching for a while, I remembered that the word for milk is leche, and asked for it. We were pointed to sealed boxes sitting on the shelf next to canned beans.
We ended up buying coffee, tea, boxed milk, sugar (that was confusing too) good bread, what we really, really think is cheese - then panicking and deciding to retreat until we could regroup - we grabbed six cold beers and left. We'll do better today. We had a beautiful sleep last night, listening to the sea pound right by us, and this morning I've found a good knitting spot, and made wonderful coffee. 
It's going fine and I love it.
