Day 7
Today we were excited about our Outback Safari tour. Right after breakfast at around 8.30, our guide Ernie and Scooby (Driver) picked us up. We found out that all the other people on this tour were from Canada except us - well it made us seem more interesting perhaps. The weather was great and Ernie was a fun bloke, also very knowledgable showing us different plants along the way and talking about the area.
We first got to visit a house of a Dominican family. This family weren't the poorest, nor did they have many luxuries. They are paid by the tour companies to have hoards of tourists march through their kitchen and living room for an hour each day. 
Hard to believe that 12 people shared this house, although they seemed happy enough. Dominican coffee was served to those who wanted it, then it was time to move on. After more alcoholic stimulant of course - the recommended drink being "Scooby Special". Basically this was a bottle of 7up, top off, pour out a bit, add some rum, mix it up a bit - very good though. The journey continued. Some of the roads we navigated could hardly be described as actual roads, they were downright ridiculous and had us falling about the truck at times, well we would have if it wasn't for the seat belts. God knows how the "barman", Ernie perched on the back serving us drinks actually managed not to fall off.
The school was next. Words can't describe how far from a western world school this was. 
Three classrooms, barely furnished, as well as an "open air" classroom, everything tatty and old, although as usual lots of happy smiling faces. This was a brief stop, so as not to cause major disruption to lesson time, but just enough time to take a few photos and say a few words to the children. We had brought some school supplies from home as we knew how desperate they are for them, simple things we take for granted, pencils and paper are very much valued.
We move on to the next stop which is a local rum shack. After all the scooby specials, many are desperate for a toilet, and there are two here of sorts. It could have been worse, the doors might have had locks on them. The rum store sells Rum of course, and at a price one simply cannot resist - we buy a couple of bottles of Bermudez, produced locally in Santiago. It's not the "best" rum on the island, although it is apparently the oldest and it does make a good cuba libre. Oh, the price - just 90Pesos a bottle - less than 2US Dollars at the current exchange rate. For exactly the same price, you can also buy (and we did) 25 locally made cigars or a kilo of Dominican coffee. We also picked up a bottle of 75.5% Bermudez white rum too, referred to locally as Dominican Gasoline.
We move on again for lunch at a place full of wildlife. 
We meet a crocodile, turtles, iguanas, exotic birds etc. Lunch here is buffet style again, and we sit with the tour guides and have a bit of a chat and more drinks of course. We then walk through the gardens down to a river where we climb aboard a small boat.
We wind through beautiful countryside while the guide explains in a humourous style all we see. We hand over our camera for him to take a photo, and it drops onto the bottom of the boat with a thud....fortunately it survives and he takes our picture. The river flows out into the Atlantic ocean and we end up on a beach where we got on the jeep for a short ride to the next beach for boogie boarding. 
Just then though, a man in the jeep named Curtis fell over. At first we just thought he had fainted due to the heat and drink, we really weren't sure what was happening.
When it became apparent it was not just fainting, the jeep rushed off to the hospital with him while we waited on the beach. All our belongings were on the jeep so we couldn't do much. An hour or so later, when it was time to leave, the guides announced that he had suffered a heart attack and passed away. We felt very sorry for his wife Donna and their children and cried a bit. The trip back was very quiet, many of us thinking about what had happened. Later we played pool, had dinner and went to bed.
