Santo Domingo
Bike riding and tender nethers.
I received a message on my watch this morning. My stair climbing had changed from an average of 4 flights a day to 20. I said I was using the stairs more. It asked if Barb was making me.
I took off my watch.
We arrived in Santo Domingo later in the day and because of that, and a larger ship arriving earlier, we got the best dock.
Let me ‘splain.
The main port is at the mouth of the Ozama River. The cruise port is on the east side and there is a secondary port on the west side. The town is on the west side. If a cruise ship comes in, it is assigned the east dock where duty free is and where getting to the city requires a taxi. This was our original dock, however a much larger cruise ship, the Costa Fascinosa also was docking here today and they were assigned the east dock. More passengers, more revenue for the taxis. As a result we ended up on the west side of the river, 5 minutes walk from the old town. Score! (I can’t really pull that off, can I?)
We had a bicycle tour of the old town today. About 16 of us, of various ages and abilities, ranging from senior citizen to really senior citizen, on bikes that I’m sure in some cases weighed more than the rider. The bikes were all steel with no shocks and brakes that worked when they wanted to. My back brake never worked and my bicycle seat kept sliding down which had the disadvantage of making my knees come up to my chest when pedaling, but on the bright side the pain of the uncomfortable seat shifted to a different part of my groin.
The tourist police would stop the traffic to let us by, the motorcycles ignored the police - bikes be bikes am I right? - so they’d zip through the line (and I use that word loosely) of tourist bikers struggling to keep of control of their bikes over potholes, loose stones and traffic control cones.
To make things even more exciting we were traveling very slowly, because keeping a bicycle upright is so much easier at very slow speeds.
Which is why I didn’t find out about my non functional break until the first downhill.
Along the route through the old town we’d occasionally see crew members on a day off. They’d hide their faces, possibly because it was a day off, but I suspect because they were embarrassed by our lack of athleticism.
We saw two sets of young puppies with nursing mothers, community strays, but they appear to be taken care off, they had water dishes and food.
I put my watch back on for our jaunt around town. Later the watch wanted to know if I wanted to record my bicycle ride. I said yes. It asked me if I was actually on a bike. I said yes. It asked me if I was on a bike willingly? I said yes. It asked me why I don’t ride one of the many bikes we have in garage.
I took my watch off.
The temperature was 27C with 71% humidity but on the bikes it felt more like 50C and 100%.
Afterwards, when we had returned the bikes we decided to skip the rest of the tour (which included an ice cream stop and shopping) to walk across the street and buy some Haggen Daz ($12 each for two scoops) and then walked back to the ship (10 minutes away).
Tonight was the deck barbecue. We sat with Coleen, who we met on board and lives about 40km from us and three other folks from New York and Seattle. The barbecue was great and the highlight was a berry crisp which was very tart.
Afterwards we bombed at the music trivia (fill in the missing words from the lyrics; apparently the entertainment director wanted the actual words not the less than polite words I sang, even though my version still rhymed) and watched the sail away from the top deck with only one other couple. Most of the others were one deck down where the bar was.
All in all a good day.
Tomorrow La Romana and a snorkel submarine ride.