Samana!

Friday afternoon, I left for a 3-day weekend trip to Samana with Kelsey, a teacher at my school, and her friend April, who is a nurse with Students International in Santiago. April has a SUV, so we were lucky enough to be able to drive there-- it took us about 3 1/2 hrs to get there. April found a really nice and clean hotel, with air conditioning and wi-fi. Ah, priorities!! :-D

Saturday morning we found a restaurant to have breakfast, and our plan for the day was to go to the Bridge to Nowhere, and then go whale watching in the afternoon.

The bridge...

 The view from the bridge.... 

The view from afar... the bridge we walked across.... 

I don't have any pictures of what it looked like once we crossed the bridge, but you climbed up stairs and walked along a path there as well.

We made our way back to the main part of town, and headed out for whale watching.... 

It was really hard to get pictures of the whales, b/c they were farther away, and they moved really fast. We did see one baby whale breech-- which they come up out of the water, and saw a fin, but the rest of the time, we just saw the tops of them. It was still really awesome to see them up close. We were out on the water for about 4 hours. The tour was very informational, with giving a lot of acts about the whales-- in English, Spanish, French and German!

After we got back, we were pretty exhausted-- ate dinner at a restaurant, and headed back to the hotel. 

Sunday, we left around 9ish to go to Salto Limon waterfall, which is the tallest waterfall in the Dominican Republic. There are a couple of different paths (shorter and longer) to get there, but we took about a 45 minute path/hike up/down to get there. I didn't seem to take many pictures along the way, but it had a lot of pretty views along the way. 

We saw a smaller version of a waterfall along the way...

And these were some of the stairs going down, when we were really close to the waterfall (it was only when we got close that we actually had stairs.) 

And then we were finally rewarded for our trek...

By the end of the hike, my shoes were covered with mud-- and I thankfully had brought a pair of flip-flops to cross some of the water areas. We went back to the hotel briefly, and looked for a beach that we were going to go to, along with eating dinner there. Kelsey found Playa Anadel...

I had the best fish ever, and then afterwards we decided to go for a walk....

The pictures don't quite show all the rocks that I/we had to climb over, -- but it was not a sandy beach to walk on.....

When we finally got to the end (about 30-45ish min there), there was an absolutely gorgeous view...

 For me, it was an absolutely HUGE ACCOMPLISHMENT that I did not hurt myself climbing over the rocks, and wading through the rocks, especially with my flip-flops that I wearing (I was wearing Adidas ones that were spongy and when I walked in the water, they were weighted down...). I've never been the most limber/coordinated person in the world, and the entire way I was praying, Please don't let me hurt myself!!!  :-P
Needless to say, by the end of that, I was completely exhausted, but felt very accomplished for doing that!!
Monday morning we drove back, and stopped at 2 dams along the way. One of the dams was called Hatillo, and the other I forgot to write down. Some more pretty views...

Can't have a complete trip without a pic of a cow.... :-D 

All in all, I had a lot of fun, and it was awesome to see new parts of the country--- though today (and I was yesterday as well), I'm pretty sore from all the hiking I did!

On a slightly different note, I'm still working on the whole Amazon thing.. It's still not resolved... ;-(