Donkeys and Dresses

After a full day out in the sun and enjoying Los Haitises, we decided we wanted to have a night out in the town. For the first time since we visited Santo Domingo, our second week in the DR, we got dressed up. We wanted to go dancing after dinner, so all of the girls did their make up and wore dresses. Once the gang was ready, we headed out the blue iron gate and down the dirt road. Luckily, it had been a beautiful day without rain, so the mud puddles weren’t too big. We hadn’t gone too far when we noticed Jess wasn’t with us, so we stopped and waited. When five minutes turned to ten, Natalie decided to go back to see where she was. After Natalie being gone for a minute or two, we start to hear yelling in the distance.



When we look around the corner, Paco, the donkey from our hostel, is bookin’ it towards us! Someone is yelling for us to stop him, but stopping a determined donkey isn’t an easy task. We blocked him from going down the dirt road, so he turned into a near by field. Brenda, in her bright yellow dress, went running after him. Luckily the neighbors were outside and gave Ryan a rope to better his chances at catching Paco. I know they got a good laugh in watching the Americans chase down a donkey. With Brenda on one side, and Ryan on the other, we were sure they were going to get him…and then Paco out ran both of them and went the other direction. At this point, the neighbors are laughing hysterically, along with all of us entertained on the sidelines. Finally, one of the neighbors took the rope from Ryan and got it around Paco’s neck. After much continual struggle, we finally got Paco on the other side of the blue gate, where he belonged. Once we were all reunited, we asked Jess how in the world Paco got out. Turns out, Susie, the puppy with a white coat and the newest member to the hostel animal family, kept crawling under the gate and following us, so Jess went back in and put her in the kitchen. In the mean time, Paco saw his opportunity to escape, and he took it! Jess felt bad of course, but we found it quite amusing that the one night we got dressed up, we ended up chasing down a donkey.
Because of the whole donkey ordeal, it was already getting dark when we left, and we didn’t want to make the 30 min trek into town at night, so we decided to take moto conchos. So fun. A few of the girls had never been on a motorcycle before, so they were a bit hesitant, but once we reached our destination, they we glad they took the risk. Dinner was fabulous.

The restaurant was right on the beach, and the food was great. When we were done eating, we took a stroll on along the coast. It was such a great way to end a wonderful day. There was one thing that paradise didn’t have, though…Matt :[