The DR in 15 pics

My buddy Glenn´s house in the north close to the city of Altamira. Showing off his nice motorcycle helmet. Gotta love PC rules - perfectly fine to ride a motorcycle as long as you have a 20 year-old dilapidated helmet they provide.

Glenn with two members of his community.

The view from Glenn´s site. If you look really close you can see the stadium that 2005 Cy Young Winner Bartolo Colón built for the area. He grew up here and played on Glenn´s community field where he learned the game. The Caribbean is just beyond the last mountain range, you can see it from higher up.

The beach at Puerto Plata.

I left the beach and headed to Ryan´s site in the south near El Cercado and the Haitian border. This is Ryan´s house made from palm wood.

Hiking in to Ryan´s site the rivers were still high from Tropical Storm Noel. After crossing I noticed my toenail was ripped loose so I had to remove it which kind of limited my mobility for a few days.

The view from Ryan´s house.

Ryan with community members.

A community meeting (of sorts). This public school was started by the government several years ago and has never been finished.

Val flew in and we enjoyed a day of sightseeing in Santo Domingo, especially the La Colonia district which was the first settlement in this hemisphere.

A statue of Christopher Columbus outside the oldest church.

And his brother Diego´s estate, now a museum.
Baseball is so huge in the DR, a lot of the Majors best players are from there. We enjoyed a game between rivals Santiago and Santo Domingo with fellow PCVs.

Val and I killed a few days at the beach at Juan Dolio.

And the whole party finally reunited for the last day. Here is the MTU crew, Glenn, Val, Ryan and I.