Boca Chica

This morning we managed to drag ourselves out of bed at 10 for breakfast of eggs, tortillas and hot sauce. We had been planning to go to the beach ever since we got here and as we had found no time so far we quickly gathered our things and set off determined that today we would get there!! We walked up to where the tourist info guy had said we could catch the bus but failing to find the bus stop we resorted to asking a couple of locals who guided us to a collectivo stand. After a quick drive down around some roads we hadn't seen before which we though we might come back to visit we ended up at a small depot full of mini buses and were quickly ushered onto a bus which we were informed would be going to Boca Chica. The bus set off quite empty but after several long stops at various street corners was soon completely full well before we got to the other side of the river. The driver of course stopped to drop off and pick up passengers all along the way and as a result it took over 1.5 hours to drive the 20Km or so. We were dropped off a few yards from the beach and were forced to fight our way through the many food and tat stalls which stand between the bus stop and the sand. Not that actually reaching the beach is any relief from this of course as the entire length of it is lined with restaurants and bars each of which had a man outside to come and pester any passing tourists. This made the 3 or so Km beach seem much longer since every 20yards you have someone coming trying to sell you something or give you something free. (provided you buy something else which is much more expensive of course!!) Apart from this the place is stunning, it's an artificial beach really with a rock wall built around it about 2 miles out to sea which means that the water never really gets deeper than wast level at any point. It also means that the water close to shore is a stunning crystal blue contrasting beautifully with the ocean outside the wall which is a much darker and deeper shade. After walking the length of it to find a spot where we felt we could leave our bags we immediately went for a swim in the amazingly warm waters very similar in fact to Miami beach, it was so relaxing in fact that before we knew it we had been swimming for over 2 hours and felt it was decidedly time to get out. We dried ourselves off and walked a short way back up the beach to where we started since there were a few trees here we could lie under without too many sellers pestering us. We slept in the shade for an hour until it had moved sufficiently that we would soon be back in direct sunlight at which point, not knowing what time the buses run until we walked back to the bus stop and caught one to the central terminal where we transferred to an extremely packed bus which took only 30 mins to take us back to Santo Domingo (where the tourist agent had said so clearly the buses do pass there but there isn't an official stop). We walked back to the apartment starting to feel rather burned from the very long time we spent in the ocean and deciding that it would be better not to dance that evening and let the burns cool a little so we took the opportunity to try the last variety of rum on sale in the supermarket with our dinner and had a relatively early night.