The Condo on the Beach

A generous friend of ours knew that he was giving up his lease on a condo at the beach at the end of June and wasn’t going to be around to use it. So he offered its use to some of his friends. So thanks to his kindness and the grace of God my wife and I had the privilege of spending a few days at a condo at the beach with my mother and our daughter. This was looked forward to with great eagerness since we had not been to the beach since last August.



There are two major bus lines here in this country. The more modern, sleek, expensive line is the Metro which we have always used for our jaunts to Santo Domingo when we visited our daughter. The Caribe bus line is a bit shabbier and less expensive. So we have affectionately dubbed it the poor man’s bus. This is the bus we chose to ride for our two hour trip to the beach since the terminal was closest to our destination.

The green and yellow Greyhound-style bus stopped when we reached Sosua, a popular North Shore tourist town, and we were informed that this was the place to get off. As the bus sped off leaving us in a cloud of blue smoke we realized that we were nowhere … no terminal, no stores, just somewhere in a little town on the side of a road with two large suitcases and one Grandma who was going to be overcome with heat exhaustion any moment.



Cherish grabbed the first taxi she saw in order to get us off the road … an old car with seats that looked like they came from a hillbilly’s shack. Carol was a bit concerned because the trunk wouldn’t close and figured that the luggage would bounce out on the pot-holed roads. But we made it safely a few blocks to a local air conditioned grocery store. While the women did some shopping so we would have food at the condo for the next few days, I stayed out in the small oven that had a sign on it that said “taxi” in order to protect the luggage. The taxi cab driver kept wiping the back of his neck with a dirty white towel while trying to make conversation with phrases such as “sol caliente” or “mucho calor”.

Although the car looked like the winner of a demolition derby, the driver was a nice man and agreed to take us to the condo, which was probably three miles outside of town, for 300 pesos (about $9.00). Beggars aren’t choosers so we took him up on it. The next time we needed a taxi we found a large SUV with air conditioning for the same amount of money which we used for the rest of the time.

The view from the condo balcony was like something from a picture postcard. However, two details were left out in the condo description which made a huge difference to us. One was that it was on the third floor in a building with no elevator. The second was that only one of the three ceiling fans worked, and that fan only on low. None of the two air conditioners were functional. But some of the times a breeze would come off the ocean which made it tolerable.

We couldn’t get enough of the view. I noticed that about 90% of our time was spent on the balcony just sitting in the chairs and watching the scenery. The beach was basically a private beach

but it had its traffic … local condo dwellers taking a stroll, a woman and her son looking for shells, a horse and a rider from the nearby Sea Horse Ranch, a miniature Chihuahua barking at a sand crab, and, of course, the endless rhythm and sound of the waves. The whole experience was quite mesmerizing.



The condo is roughly half way between two popular beach resort towns … Sosua and Cabarete. In my mind I loosely compare them to Cannon Beach and Sea Side, Oregon which we used to visit regularly when the kids were smaller. Sosua, like Cannon Beach, is smaller with snorkeling and a museum of Jewish history. Cabarete is like Sea Side … lots of go-carts, night life, windsurfing, and activity. As a result Cabarete was our choice to visit the next day when we decided to do our souvenir shopping for Grandma.

We hit the streets around 10:00 that morning and were done in an hour. To be honest, I think Grandma would have bought anything just to say that she was done so that she could get out of the heat and humidity. I asked the lady of a small souvenir shop if Grandma could sit in her plastic chair under an overhead fan while Carol and Cherish were finishing shopping. She agreed. The back of the seat was cracked and it was wired together with baling wire but it was sturdy enough to give Grandma some temporary respite. When They came later to show the floppy beach hat they bought me so I wouldn’t look like a tourist, they looked around at the jewelry and bought some bobbles. So this lady’s generosity paid off a little bit.



When the shopping was over we made a beeline to the beach which is only a block or two from the main street no matter where you are. The little alley we chose as a path to the beach dropped us into a little place called Guinness Irish Pub, so we found a table and ordered something to drink. We sat under a large fan around a heavy wooden table for the next hour sipping on some very fancy tropical drinks with umbrellas stuck in them.



Eventually we moved just outside the pub onto some beach recliners under the palm trees to set up sort of a base camp. If at least one person stayed with our paraphernalia, the rest could walk, look for sea shells, and wade in the ocean … whatever.



When I noticed that Grandma had been gone a while I decided to find her. Five minutes later I saw her in the distance stooping over to pick up another small shell. I should mention here that after two days of combing two beaches, there seems to be no sizable sea shells deposited on these beaches here on the north end of the island. There’s probably a scientific reason, but all a person can find are small shells … which Grandma found plenty of.



When I caught up with her I noticed she had her hometown newspaper with her. The local newspaper in Caldwell will put your picture in the paper if you take a picture of yourself holding the paper in another country. She did this the last time she visited us in Venezuela and she wanted to do it again. So I suggested that this beach would be a great location for her picture since it is world famous for windsurfing and kitesurfing.

Just as she posed with the newspaper and I was ready to snap the picture with the curve of the tropical beach behind her, two topless female sunbathers walked slowly into view on their way to the water. Resisting the urge to snap the picture as joke, I lowered my camera and said, “You’ll have to wait a minute … look.” When she turned to see what was happening she was properly embarrassed. We Idahoans are just not adjusted to the European influence that we see pop up occasionally on the beaches here.



For the couple of hours that we hung out on the beach we had to constantly contend with the private vendors wanting to sell us their wares … homemade sweets, picture albums, sun glasses, jewelry. There was one woman that passed us maybe four or five times with a basket of fruit on her head with a large knife standing on end. She was a large black woman and she must have walked five miles in the sand just in those few hours we were there.

The way these vendors caught your attention was varied. My favorite was a round faced younger woman selling some kind of a picture album. She came directly to Carol saying, “oh, my, you are such a beautiful woman.” Then pointing to her wares she added, “To look is free!”

Locating a restaurant on the beach we decided to have a late afternoon lunch so we wouldn’t have to cook when we came back to the condo. It took a long time for them to take and make our order of chicken nuggets and a DR special, but this is typical in this country. We used our time to talk and watch the beach sights. Grandma's favorite sight was the native boy hired to rake the sand in front of our table and then wet it down with a garden hose. With the little bit of ocean breeze blowing on that garden hose mist, it made her feel cool. All enjoyable experiences associated with this visit had to have the descriptor “cool” attached to it.

Carol ordered an interesting shrimp dish where each shrimp looked like it had just been taken out of the ocean. In fact, it was just like the crayfish we dissected in biology class this year. I could identify the antennae, the eyes, the thorax, and the swimmerets. As it turned out, my scientific observations were not very appetizing. We finally had to ask the waitress how to eat something that looked like a miniature lobster. She didn’t know! So we just cracked it open with our fingers and peeled it like a very tough egg. Sometimes we feel like the country hicks we are.



The man with the air conditioned SUV taxi picked us up at Cabarete and dropped us off at the condo to relax for the rest of the evening after a full day. We played a crazy card game that Grandma taught us called Hand-and-Foot and took a dip in the pool before bed time. About that time I began to wonder what the common people were doing.



Designating our last day at the condo as a “do nothing” day we simply enjoyed the last few hours of this trip to paradise by relaxing. That evening I heard many excited screams coming from the beach. It was nearing evening and the waves were the largest we had seen since being here … presumable from the storm that had passed through the day before and treated us to the most fantastic thunder and lightning show we can remember seeing over an ocean.

The amusement park sounds intrigued me so I went down to the beach to find a group of about six people trying to ride the crashing waves. So I joined them. I discovered that if I swam past a certain point where the waves were breaking that a person could bob up and down on the crest of each big wave giving a sort of roller coaster thrill. It was so much fun that I forgot that I was out of shape. I paid for my hour of water aerobics for the next two days of sore muscles.

When Grandma came to investigate some time later I knew it would be too turbulent for her to come into the water, but I wanted to talk to her, so I began to swim to the shore. I rode a wave in and was deposited about 20 feet in front of my mother. However, I lost my footing and fell down.



She was talking to a couple of the girls who had been there originally. When I made it to my feet I looked up at them to say something clever to regain my dignity. Suddenly the eyes of all three of them became very round with panic as they looked at me. Just as I lifted my hands to shrug with a gesture of “What?” a huge wave hit me broad side on my back. The wave was taller than I was and I had no idea it was coming.

The wave crashed me forward in a tumbling ball of legs and arms, and then when I thought I could take a breath it dragged me back into the ocean across the sand filling my swim suit with handfuls of sand and feeling like sand paper on my skin. I knew consciously what was happening but I couldn’t control it.

Both women with Grandma were young and asked Mom, “Should we jump in to rescue him?” Oh, that would have been one for the Moscow newspaper … “RETIRED MOSCOW SCHOOL TEACHER PULLED FROM OCEAN BY 25 YEAR OLD GIRL.” Fortunately Grandma thought I could take care of myself and gave me a second to regain my composure. Eventually I found my feet and made it to shore a bit more humbled.

For a date Carol and I walked up the beach one evening to find a small restaurant that someone told us about. The name of the place was Natura Cabana and was absolutely idyllic. Located under a large conical thatched roof, the tables were elaborately set but no one was there. It was 5:30 when we arrived and a friendly waiter asked if he could seat us. We looked at the menu and placed our order. After opening the bottles of water and pouring it over the ice in our cups in a way that reminded me of pouring champagne he casually mentioned in an accent, “Do you know restaurant not open til 7:00?” (Another situation where we are supposed to know the rules but nothing is posted.)



After a bit of awkwardness he disappeared. Just as we were getting our things together with plans to return in an hour and a half, he came back and said, “I talk with chef and he say he start early for you.” With our gratitude expressed we asked if we could walk around to enjoy the grounds. What we found amazed us!



Unbeknownst to us, we had stumbled into a nest of New Agers. This place is some kind of a spiritual retreat center to help people “maximize your mental momentum and reconnect with your inner self.” Each of the ten cabanas (or bungalows) had a distinctive personality with unique architecture using local materials like cacoba, bamboo, coral, and artistic stonework … all illuminated seductively under the concepts of Feng Shui (whoever that is).

For “greater disconnection and spiritual growth” they even have a Yoga temple … the perfect place for uplifting the spirit (of darkness), practicing yoga, and meditation. I found it interesting to note that it was advertised first as a place to reconnect with your inner self, and then as a place to disconnect. Does anyone understand this stuff?



I think my personal favorite was the Attabeyra SPA (the goddess of waters in Taino culture). This SPA is the center of “spiritual” leisure offering all types of treatments such as massages, facial, mud or chocolate wraps (?), reflexology, and steam baths in their mystic “Mushroom”. The Taino Indians, by the way, was a sub-group of American Indians that lived in the Dominican Republic when Columbus landed here. They had many gods who were always angry and had to be pacified by elaborate and numerous sacrifices. Similar to our own North American Indians, they were an idolatrous culture … certainly nothing to be resurrected and emulated. But then again, that is exactly what the New Age religion is doing … bringing back idol worship and darkness … the doctrines of demons. Even though it seemed so ridiculous at first that it appeared humorous to me, after a few minutes humor was replaced with a deep sense of sorrow.

A comment by Walter Chantery seems appropriate here:
“No one who has God’s spirit can walk through our world without deep groaning of sorrow and distress when the stench of immorality fills his nostrils.’”

It seemed that I felt some of what he was talking about as I walked through those grounds. Coincidently two celebrities had died on this same day … Michael Jackson and Farrah Fawcett . Both were very talented and by outward appearances had seemingly gained the world but lost their souls. It was a somber note to reflect on.

At the restaurant, a pretty woman, who appeared to be on the back side of 30 introduced herself as the owner, expressed her desire that we enjoy ourselves. I could only imagine the unrest she had underneath that pleasant façade. And just think! All this spiritual refreshment and idol worship is yours for the modest price of 130 US dollars per night per person. Of course, this does not include SPA treatments, food, or a 16% sales tax.

On the way home at dusk as we hiked through the sand back to the condo, the sky was ablaze with the pinks and oranges of a tropical sunset over the ocean.



My heart and my mind later went back to the words of a Psalm that I read a few days before:

Not unto us, O Lord, not unto us, but unto thy name give glory, for thy mercy,
and for thy truth’s sake. Wherefore should the heathen say, where is now their God?
But our God is in the heavens: He hath done whatsoever he hath pleased.

Their idols are silver and god, the work of men’s hands. They have mouth but they speak not. Eyes have they but they see not: They have ears, but they hear not:
noses have they, but they smell not: They have hands, but they handle not:
feet have they but they walk not: neither speak they through their throat.

They that make them are like unto them; so is everyone that trusteth in them.
O Israel, trust thou in the LORD: he is their help and their shield. Psa 115:1-8