HELLA HOT!

It is really hot here and it is only 10:30. I hope it rains today.

Well, any weight that I might have lost from all of my walking and exercising on the beach at Las Terrenas has probably come back to me just this morning. I've had three meals already.

I started off with what I thought was breakfast at the little joint on the corner near where I'm staying. I think it's called Paco's or something like that. My stomach was not quite awake yet, so I just had fruit, toast and coffee. I went for a little walk but it was too hot (it was only 7 a.m.) so I headed back to my room. I read in my guide book a little about the things I could see and decided I wanted to go souvenier shopping.

All of the guidebooks and online guides I've read caution people not to wear shorts because you will "stand out" as a tourist, so I changed from the shorts I wore to breakfast (because frankly I don't care about standing out, but the guide book also says that some places are off limits if you are in shorts or tank tops) and I put on these nice light cotton pants I got at Banana Republic before I left.

I decided I was going to start off at Plaza Colon, where the "first" church in the "new" world is (along with a statue of Columbus himself).

There is a nice cafe/restaurant there and by the time I got there I was hungry, so I had a pineapple juice and a pork sandwich, which was toasted white bread with roast pork, tomato and lettuce. It was pretty good and not too much food. Meal number 2.

I walked down the street that runs alongside Plaza Colon and passed a few gift shops. All of them had the same mass produced junk in the windows. Lots of colorful little figurines, faceless dolls, pen holders with dolphins and waves and palm trees. Some people tried to encourage me to enter, which for me is an automatic reason to keep going. One store didn't seem to have anyone in it but as I looked inside I saw a man sitting behind the counter as if he were a jaguar waiting to pounce. I kept walking.

I walked around some of the old streets for about two blocks and was so hot I decided to head back to Plaza Colon where I found a bench under a tree and sat for a bit. There was hardly any breeze and it was pretty hot.

I decided I would head to this internet cafe and spend some time here cooling down while I give the maid time to clean my room. On the way I passed more gift shops with more junk. In one shop I went to see some small paintings I had looked at before that I was thinking about buying. I thought they were Haitian paintings, but when I looked again I saw that they were painted by some German guy who has lived here for 30 years. Somehow buying paintings made by a German ex-pat didn't seem right. Instead I went to the little bar in the shop and got a coffee and a piece of cake and sat at a table looking out on the street. Meal number 3. It was only 10:00.

I decided I am going to go back to my hotel and put on my shorts and maybe even a tank top. I don't really care at this point what the guy books say or what people think. It is too hot to be wearing long pants, and way too hot to be wearing a jacket, but believe it or not, I have actually seen people wearing long sleeve shirts and jackets!

There are some interesting characters here. I like sitting on Plaza Colon and watching people. There is a group of shoe shine men who sit around and chat, every now and then someone will go over to them and shine their shoes. Then some shoe shine boys come through and try to steal customers from them. A security guard usually chases them away if they become too aggressive. There were some women today who were staring at me and I figured they were prostitutes. One very tall woman with very high heels walked around selling newspapers. I would describe her as a Dominican bombshell (if she is Dominican). I've seen her before, but today she was quite the sight. I really wish I could have taken a picture of her.

She was wearing skin tight jeans which could have been painted on her. Of course they were low riding and they had little diamond butterflies on her butt, which was quite substantial. She was wearing a denim type vest as a top that was cut to her mid-driff and very low cut at the top, it closed with string instead of buttons and had some diamonds (or rhinestones) decorating it. She was also quite substantially endowed up top and when she walked there was a lot of jiggling going on. She had long, wavy hair, and a pierced belly button, and her skin was coal black and shiny.

You'd think that she might be working the streets, but she really seemed to honestly be selling newspapers. I guess some guys buy the newspapers from her just so they can get a closer look. I have to give her credit for looking like she does and working to make an apparently honest living (though who knows what she is really up to).

It was after watching her that I decided that I could wear shorts. I am after all a tourist, and despite my best efforts to blend in here, I have not been mistaken for a Domincan yet (though quite a few people thought I was Italian, and most people don't guess that I am American).

I still have more time to kill, so I guess I will check out the Daily Show and see what my pal Jon Stewart has been up to.