When you stay at one of the member hotels of the Palace Resorts, they offer you $1500 of "resort credits" that you can spend toward the resort credit shop, salon, spa, golf or excursions. They also included two excursions for free in addition to the $1500 credits. One of the free excursions was a snorkeling trip. I took my water camera that day and it didn't work :( I was so sad! The other free excursion was called "The Dominican Experience." For the Dominican Experience, we loaded these cool safari trucks and took a drive through the Dominican countryside to get a better idea of how life really is in the D.R. We stopped at a school, a plantation, and went to see the mountain, where our tour guide told us that they supposedly filmed "Jurassic Park."
Nisha and I chose to only do the two free excursions because we didn't want to waste our time at the beach. This was a vacation, after all, not a site seeing trip. We were even apprehensive about going on this tour, but I am so glad we did. I loved being able to see how the people live and remember how incredibly blessed we are to live where we live.
At the beginning of the tour, we stopped by this school. This little boy came out and gave the women flowers. Our tour guide told us that the children go to school for only about 4 hours a day. They all wear uniforms and many of them live 45 minutes away from the school. The kids often have to hitch hike their way home every day.
I think that the Dominican countryside is beautiful, and much more green and lush than the places I've seen in Mexico.
Their homes and buildings were generally small and built from scrap materials, but the colors were beautiful. I love that every house was painted in bright colors.
This cute little boy was happy to see us. I loved the Dominican people. They were very friendly and I think they are beautiful.
We learned a lot about the history of the island on our tour. Our tour guide, although a little crude at times, was very knowledgeable about the history of the people and the island. These thorny trees were used to torture African slaves by tying them to the tree, when they were first brought to the island by the Spanish. I can't even imagine.
This guy was standing by the side of the road waiting for the tours to come by so he could show us his creepy tricks and earn some tips.
I thought my kids would get a kick out of him.
We finally arrived at the mountain ranch. Can't you just picture T-Rex right there?!
At the ranch, there was a shop where we purchased over-priced souvenirs, saw some animals and relaxed in hammocks. They also offered lunch, horse back riding, and a zip line.
This was my favorite part... the hammock and the view.
On our way back to the resort, we saw lots of people trying to hitch rides.
All in all, the tour was great. We learned a lot about the island's history and the culture of the people, and the scenery was beautiful!
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