131103 BAHIA DE AGUILAS

Bahia de Aguilas is the name given to a 8 km beautiful isolated beach near the SW corner of the Dominican Republic not far from the border with Haiti.  This is the highlight of our blog this week.

Our adventure began with a trip to Batey 5 to attend a closing of a water project we had at the school there.  It was fun watching the children all wanting to participate and try out the new water facilities all at once.

 

 

  The purification part of the water system consists in the installation of a fiber cylinder to filter out the particles, the 2^nd filter is a carbon filter to improve taste and the last is an ultra-violate system to kill all kinds of “bugs”.

The new system also included installation of large water storage tanks on the roof

After the closing ceremony in Vicente Noble we drove to Barahona and had lunch then on to a hotel named “Playazul” built on the edge of the ocean.  It was a great place to rest and relax a little.

We played a few dominos while we were there.  The Crismons taught us a new game called “Mexican Train”.

 

Sister Crismon is an artist and really enjoyed sketching what she saw.

We found an area alongside the road that was a regular graveyard of hundreds, even thousands of conch shells.  It seemed really odd, but they were lying all over the ground.  Most were not worth picking up, but we did find some really nice ones.

Saturday morning we drove 2 hours to the Bahia de Aguilas.  We didn’t really have very good directions and were beginning to doubt ourselves when we started driving down this long dirt poorly maintained road, but we eventually came a little fishing village called “Las Cuevas” from which we hired a boat to take us to the Bahia de Aguilas and then to prepare us lunch when we came back.  The following are some pictures, but they just don’t do it justice.  The scenery is outstanding and the white sandy nearly secluded beach surrounds shallow crystal blue water.  The water was a perfect temperature for swimming and snorkeling.  We spent 2 hours enjoying ourselves, then our boat took us back to a native meal of fish, rice, cabbage, tomatoes, avocados and tostones (fried bananas). 

It was a fun adventurous day after which we drove back to the Playazul Hotel and spent the night.  The next day we attended church in Vicente Noble, then drove 2.5 hours home in Santo Domingo.

Wallace transplanted a few tomato plants he had started as seed.

                                

Every Monday we help at the Missionary Training Center here in Santo Domingo. The Elder on the left is Elder Haws from Mesa, Arizona.  He and his companion Elder Stinchfield are  the missionaries we are working with this month.

 

Funny scene we saw on the way home.  A sow was riding in the back of a small truck.  The sow had its snout tied to the truck and a man was lying on the bed of the truck with his knee braced against the sow to keep it from falling over and it was raining (though you cannot tell it in the picture.)