Random Thoughts as we leave DR

This is a magical place and we are sad to be leaving. We have loved being in a real Dominican neighborhood where children play and people live their lives in the street.
We will miss the beach and watching the fishermen. We’ll miss the wonderful food, eating meals on the beach with the glorious green sea rimmed with sand and palm trees arrayed before us. We’ll miss the children playing in the street and the domino players slapping their tiles down with a resounding smack.

We won’t miss the constant buzz of motor scooters, motor cycles, and quads, (the four wheeled cycles that are the choice of the French expats) that fill the streets. But we have grown accustomed to these vehicles, marveling at the complete absence of helmets. Parents transporting children on them is common. Today we saw a family of four on a small motorcycle.
We’ll remember the bottle tree a short distance from us and the truck filled with sneakers and shoes for sale that sits just around the corner near the one piled high with oranges and plantains.

We’ll remember the store in the center of town where a man hand rolls cigars with tobacco from Equador and Connecticut while displaying cigarette packs loudly proclaiming that Smoking Kills.

After packing Max’s paintings this morning we went to the little thatch-roofed French cafe at the end of our street for lunch. In an overgrown field on the opposite corner (on Las Terrenas’ main street) a game of baseball has been going on for the past three days. Today it has cows in it. It has had cows periodically since we arrived. Where they come from and where they go is a puzzle but no baseball today. Later this afternoon we’ll go to the center of town for some ice cream, made on the premises of a small shop and take our final walk on the beach.