In Which I Love Beach Massages

With the new year successfully ushered in and our own selves fully recovered from the festivities, Kate, Denny, Kristina and myself took off for Rio De San Juan, a small beachside town that offered a quiet and tranquil respite from the party that was Cabarete. After a bus and a moto ride, we were dropped off at the door of Bahia Blanca, a hotel placed right on the water. Our second floor location gave us brilliant views of the Dominican part of the ocean, especially from the deliciously squishy patio furniture located right outside our room. As it was deemed truly impossible to get up once in said chairs, we spent much of our short stay at the Blanca ensconced in their squashy glory. When we aroused the gumption to actually go somewhere other than those black holes of comfort, we made our way to La Playa Grande (basically, The Big Beach) and slept on the sand or played in the warm tropical waves. And oh! The best part? I mean, aside from all mentioned above, and then the tasty fried plantains they offered beachside (best with gallons and gallons of salt)? THAT would have to be the $6 on-the-sand hour long massages we all invested in. My GOODNESS!! How fantastic. It was also a bit of an exfoliating massage, due to all the sand we had gotten on ourselves and which was basically impossible to remove (though the water spritzer and heavy handed oil application our masuesses believed in definitely helped). (How the hell do you spell that, anyway? Massuessssessssssss???) So I loved it there. A tranquil, lovely little spot, and it would have been a great place to spend a few more days had we had time (though sleeping two to a bed, and having those beds being just slightly bigger than a twin, made it a bit easier to leave...). Rio de San Juan was also the first place I tried a batita, i.e. a delicious fruit milkshake (we all had papaya). The ¨milk¨in milkshake refers to Carnation sweetened condensed milk, which obviously isn´t sweet enough as then they add sugar, and then the fruit. Delightful. Kate lives on these marvels in Pedernales, where she and her Batita man, Brujo, have a longlasting friendship. After a mere 24 hours in the Paradise of Rio de San Juan, we packed and were off again to our next adventure, this time to El Factor, outside of the larger town of Nagua, to give us all a crash course in latrine building. Stay tuned...