December 8, 2024
DOMINICAN REPUBLIC - LA ROMANO
My neighbor David Austin and his visiting girlfriend, Suzanne, put together a bike tour of Cotubanama National Park , Bayahibe Beach and Chico Cave for six of us. Above Jim Maas is on the right and Jim Arsenault on left. Joe Wheeler,was also on excursion, but did not join in for picture. Bayahibe was a nice beach town, that we biked all around and then we hiked to Chico cave and went down for a dip in cool spring water. At the edge of beach, there were blow holes, that gave us some refreshing sprays.
Another great day exploring the South Pacific ! Today as soon as our ship docked in Honiara , and we were cleared by customs, I was off with 9 other residents, to get in 2 small speed boats and head out to Simon's Nature Reserve in the Solomon Islands . It was about an hour long ride across the Iron Bottom Sound but so worth it to experience this special place!
Fun fact - Papua New Guinea is the most linguistically diverse country in the World! It is estimated that there are at least 826 Papuan languages. Some are spoken by just a handful of people, while others by 100,000. (Thanks - Basia & Wikipedia for sharing this information).
Tully is a small sugar mill town about 2 hours south of Cairns and we traveled here with a group of about 20 other residents to go white water rafting in the Tully River at the Gorge in the National Park. It is the beginning of the wet season and the river was running at a high level, so the rapids were class 4 out of 5. We had some trepidation, but were excited for the adventure! OMG so much FUN!!