from the end back to the beginning

At the moment me and Juanita are sitting in the ¨business center¨ of our newest hotel, we got into Santo Domingo about 2 hours ago and are now still up at 2 am trying to figure out what the h&!· is going on. We made it to our hotel all by ourselves, which is a feat for the two directionally retarded twins here. After a very interesting 15 min talk to the front desk clerk we realized that our ISV group is not here. ISV isn´t nearly as organized here in the DR as they were in Costa Rica.

We finally got our hotel room, after Juanita got the hook up from the front desk clerk, we could have our own personal tour guide of the DR if we so choose, for ¨however long we like¨ according to Andres, and in our deliriousness as we are down in the internet room blogging our overly friendly new Domincian friend from the front desk brought us some drinks . . . organge juice, we are just hoping there are no roofies slipped in there, they are almost gone and we feel fine at the moment.

Tomorrow we will be off on a totally new adventure, and totally different from Costa Rica, we have no idea what we are doing or where we are going.

We left costa rica after spending two days on the beach at the Ocotal beach resort. We took a sail boat, a new expierence for both of us, to head out to the ocean for snorkeling. The day before was the big 2-0 for Juanita. We spend the day traveling in the morning but it ended well with a wine and cheese party at sunset overlooking the ocean. We had cake also and sang happy birthday to Juanita. The one downside to the night was when Lupita lost her wallet in the ocean. The stop before Ocotal was Monteverde, one of our favorites. We went horseback riding, where Lupita found her love of horses. She felt an immediate connection with her horse Chicky, they were meant to be. Chicky took his own path whenever possible and tried to cut off all the other horses. Juanita got the slowest horse in the group that wouldn´t do anything but go about minus 2 mph. Zip lining through canopy forests was next, during which Lupita being very tired did everything the zip line guides told her not to do, put her hand in front of the pulley, used her left hand instead of right to guide and then freaked out half way through the zip line and didn´t make it all the way across. But the highlight of this zip line trip was the tarzan swing, during which Juanita found, once again, her innate ability to scream like tarzan. Okay, maybe just like a man, but in any case the whole group was laughing.

At this time we think it is completely relevant to explain the first activity in Monteverde. In general we did not enjoy this activity and here is why
1. there were no clouds in the "cloud forest"
2. we paid a guide to show us the animals . . . we saw one bird that he didn´t even spot
3. we got yelled at for giggling because "other people in the group are actually interested in the animal-less, no cloud hike from hell" . . . last I checked we weren´t in grade school anymore
4. autumn, an annoying girl from the group, was rude to us because she was the one interested in the hike . . . but what did make it better was when Alex, our friend from the group, called her a bitch, trust us it was funny.

And now we leave you as we are being seranaded to sleep by Andres, the overly friendly front desk clerk and Mariah Carey. Sure hope there´s no roofies in these drinks.

Love you all.
J and L