Day 5: If I die, I want to be buried in Las Terrenas!

For breakfast I had an egg, bacon and cheese pannini at the bar in my most hated hotel in the world! :) The pannini and the bar was muy bueno though :) My sleep was ok and I thank my tiredness from the day before for forcing me to sleep like a baby...

My second plan of action was to get to a new hotel so I checked out some hotels close to town and found one that was OK! I am now staying at Hotel Guayacan which costs 1100RD pesos a night. The hotel has a standing shower, ceiling fan, it's clean and well kept but there is no safe to store your stuff when you leave, so I end up carrying my passport and money wherever I go. It's family owned and operated so I felt good staying here.  The girl working at the front deal speaks good English so I could ask her for more detailed information. The location of the hotel is right in the middle of the city center of Las Terrenas and 2 doors away from La Bodega, which is the main place to dance here.

I haven't had a hot shower since I arrived in the Dominican Republic 5 days ago.  It's probably worth mentioning you don't really need a hot shower when it's really hot here.  I'm sure the fancier hotels have hot showers but a cold shower in hot weather is good enough.. at least for me:)



One nice thing about traveling in the Caribbean is that there is so many Scotiabanks here. Scotiabank is my primary bank in Canada. However, today I was locked out of my account for entering a wrong password ONCE! I made a quick call to the long distance number on the back of my card to ask them to correct it. Its a good idea to phone your bank before you go on a trip like this to let them know what your plans are so things like this won't happen.  I felt good knowing I could have also walked into a local branch and they would have been able to help me out as well.

In the afternoon after settling into hotel Guayacan, I ate at a restaurant called Paco Mer, which is hidden behind the cemeteria and right across from my place.  You need to walk around the cemeteria in the middle of the town to find it. It's owned by a very nice French couple and I ate arroz (rice) and a fish called dorado. I ate 20 yards from the water on the beach and there were no other people around! That's something I don't understand.. There is HARDLY anyone on the beaches and restaurants! I guess it is low season here??

Lunch at Paco Mer





Owners of Paco Mer



After lunch I took a walk around town. I'm kinda getting fat(ter) from eating and not dancing much... Walking around town, I saw the security guard from where I was staying the night before. He told me he was so happy to see tourists because it gave him a job. It felt good talking to him and I offered to buy him a beer. Why not? As we were talking he told me he had 5 kids and asked if I could instead buy some powdered milk for his 2 month old baby instead of beer. My BS detector started to go off but I decided to buy the milk anyways.. whatever! The milk wasn't cheap either. He told me he had 5 kids and I told him not to have any more kids (in a nice way).  In the Dominican Republic, everything is about money..

The rest of the day was spent chilling at the beach and relaxing.  I could get used to this :) Tonight, I will go dancing..

For dinner, I ordered take out pizza at a place called Cacao's Pizza and guess what? The pizza place was right across from the beach (",)