Last day in DR :(

My 11 days in the DR have come to an end. I had a great time both with the medical mission and my recreation days. I have 30 minutes to write before my plane to JFK leaves. The very small airport here (POP) has a wonderful view of a mountain. It is also very close to the ocean.

I went to sleep early last night and for the first time since getting here had trouble sleeping. My brain was fired up with concerns about my personal and our nation’s “issues”. I have heard almost no details about the war, the first airstrikes were the morning I left the U.S. but I did hear about the Ayatollah being killed and us losing a bunch of soldiers and a few $B in aircraft. I watched no TV the last 2 weeks except for a few World Classic Baseball games, go DR (3-0 so far).

I had a nice 40” swim in the pool, I had to share it with one other swimmer.

I would have gotten in one last ocean swim but it was low tide which here is not so great for swimming as the reefs are very shallow and close to shore in some places.

I had a healthy breakfast, it has been hard to not gorge at EVERY meal of endless buffets at the all inclusive resorts.

I went for my last tropical beach stroll and collected a few small shells. There are not a lot of big ones here on the North coast of the DR.

Then I packed. It was very easy as I did not have the 40lbs of medical supplies I traveled here with. I had to inflate my swim buoy and some plastic bags to fill all the space.

My driver Tobi collected me at 10:30 (he had driven me to La Isabela for the day on Saturday and into Puerto Plata one day).

On the way we chatted some more about the city and country. I took a few random photos.

I got a nice photo of this tree and it reminded me that I wanted to know what kind of tree it was. There are a lot of them here and even from a great distance one can see the bright red flowers amidst the green hills.

The iNaturalist app gave a quick ID

When I did my waterfall hike/slide adventure many of the trees were nicely labeled and indicated whether they were native or introduced species. This one was brought over from Africa, like Bananas and Coffee. Cocoa, tomatoes and corn went the other direction.

Just as we were about to turn into the airport there was a brief delay ….

There are LOTS of cattle on the Island as they have become a replacement for all the land that used to be used to grow Tobacco.

The cute little airport is very clean and new looking. There are less flights than before Covid changed the airlines preference to mainly Santa Domingo or Punta Cana now.

There were some giant fans to cool us as the terminal check in area was wide open to the parking lot.

I was there very early and was quite disappointed there was not a coffee shop in the airport for a last cup of the wonderful Dominican Cafe. There was a bar that had an espresso machine… and of course Pizza and Burgers for the American tourists.

Both of the resorts I stayed at had many Canadians and Dominicans and some Europeans, but not too many Americans. The flight to JFJ though was all loud Americans. Just like my flights home from Fiji and Japan, I was amazed how noisy Americans are after spending a few weeks away from them.

I deleted FB from my phone for the trip to avoid getting news from Trumpmerica but I did post a few photos most days that also shared to FB.

Today someone texted me this annoying comment from 5 days ago they saw on my FB feed.

1. YES! I wanted to be thought of as a Canadian and not a supporter of fascist, racist, imperialist, mysogonist Trump!
2. I don’t comment on his pro-Trumpy, MAGA misinformation so why does he feel the need to pollute my post with his 💩!

Plane boarded on time and I almost finished up but had to wait for the JetBlue WiFi to kick in to post.

Bye bye DR ….

Please share, comment, “like”, subscribe (free). I tried to keep this short and plan for my blogging about the rest of the trip to NOT do one for every day. Instead I’ll just do one about the medical mission, one about the DR, one for my tours, etc.