Just as I was preparing to feild statements like "we should kill all the faggots," I was rescued. The friendly bus man alerted me that I would possibly have a ride in a minute, at which point he proceeded to run out into the middle of the highway to stop an oncoming minivan bus. I grabbed my bag and hustled out after him, dodging traffic as I went. To my surprise, as I approach the van a hand jutted out the window in the familiar finger-wag gesture that means "no" and a voice said "NO GRINGOS!" Then the door rolled open to reveal a grinning Jose (fellow volunteer and boyfriend of Magee who I visited back in May). As shuffled into the packed van, I heard a delighted chorus of, "Charlie!" and I turned to see a bunch of smiling, familiar faces. It turned out I had happened upon the same bus as about ten of my favorite volunteers along with the usual complement of Dominicans.
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| A dead woodpecker that showed up one day at the clubhouse |
For about three hours, the landscape unfolded in stages before us on the road ahead, by turns urban and rural. We went through pastures and over rivers, though stretches of thick forest and rows of stores and houses. During a stretch of rice paddies, the sky opened up and dumped buckets of rain. As we approached the coast the sun came out and palms began to mix in with the flora until on both sides, they were all I could see. We passed vast orchards of coconut trees containing enormous estates with high walls. In Samana, the road flattened along a waterfront situated on a long bay, enclosed by bridges connecting a string of little islands perhaps half a mile out. After another half-hour of rolling hills we found ourselves at the easternmost tip of the Samana peninsula in La Galera de Samana.
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