Swimming in Santo Domingo

I had been planning to leave Santo Domingo last Saturday, but instead decided to stay an extra day in order to visit a river with some of my friends on Sunday. The plan to go to a river and swim was discussed with several of the girls I had met in Tena, but in the end I just ended up meeting up with Wendy. She brought along her boyfriend Fabricio and her friend Maribel. The four of us met at my hotel at 2 PM and then headed off on a bus for the 20 minute ride to Los Piramides, an area with several swimming holes in different rivers. The bus brought us only as far as the town of Julio Moreno, and from there we jumped on the back of a pickup truck for the rest of the ride to the river. I took this first picture in the back of the truck, Wendy is on the right and Maribel is on the left. The road was really pretty...through rolling hills with sugar cane and banana trees. Los Piramides is east of Santo Domingo, in the Andean foothills.



The river was very crowded since it was Ecuadoran Labor Day Weekend...the water was great though, and we had a lot of fun. Wendy and her friends are real cool so it was fun hanging out with them. We ended up hitching a ride back into Santo Domingo with some teenagers in an SUV type vehicle. I had dinner with Maribel at a cheap parrilla place...really good grilled steak, rice, beans and plantains. Food on the coast has better flavors overall. We were all gonna go out on Sunday night, but that ended up not happening. I left on Monday morning after a really good breakfast of humitas with sugar, coffee and blackberry juice. I was headed for the coast, to Canoa, to meet up with Mark and Shelley, friends I met at the Black Sheep Inn. That will be in the next entry.