Well a day to relax so to speak, it is Sunday and as we would find out later this posed a few dilemmas, the kids left the hotel at 9.30 this morning destined for the training clinic which was being held at the same venue the regatta was, and wouldn't you know it in comes the wind probably blowing a good 15kts.
We decided to rent a car for the day and get Kazuyo to town for a bit of retail therapy, all sounds easy!! We ask at the hotel reception how to rent a car they said easy we will ring them, you talk to them and hey presto, so Rob talks to them and 10 minutes later they should be at the hotel to pick Rob up and take back to their depot, and I go back to our rooms and wait for Rob to return. An hour later I begin to worry as Rob should have been back in 20 minutes. I ask Kazuyo if Rob had come back she said no not yet, I ring the rental company from reception and in broken english I get the response no Mr Robert Fry cancelled his booking, oh no its getting worse. It makes you realise how vulnerable you are. I tried ringing Robs mobile it wouldn't go through, I wasn't really sure what my next move was. It turns out after an hour Rob gave up waiting and walked down the street to the nearest rental car company and hired a car direct, a sigh of relief when he turned up. Now we have a car we are off we are armed with a map written in Spanish and heading for Santo Dominigo. You thought kiwis were bad drivers, we have nothing on these guys, you try cars driving down the wrong side of the road, traffic lights mean nothing, their taxis seem to be mainly 1980's Toyota Corollas that wouldn't even pass for paddock cars at home. There is a few photos below of some of the sites we saw whilst driving, quite a laugh. Anyway after a few wrong turns we arrive at the mall we had been told was pretty good. We are wondering around and the shops seem to be closed, we asked the security guard if it was siesta time, his reply "no mate it is Sunday we don't open on Sunday's". What do you do other than laugh.
This place is a city of extremes you drive into the yacht club and the car park is full of Porsches, Harleys, Range Rovers etc etc, you drive out the gates and head 100 mtrs down the road and kids are all over you at the petrol station begging for food. There are houses in ruins, rubbish everywhere, quite an eye opener.
Back to the sailing, in talking to the kids they had a big day out on the water 10.3am to 6pm. There is about 12 kids doing the clinic, a couple of brits our 4 (including the honorary kiwi Max) the guy who won the regatta, a couple of South Africans and a few locals, so a good level of sailors. Chris has been able to participate in the training camp also, so he is also picking up quite abit about the venue and local conditions. Most of the day was spent on upwind boat speed. The conditions today were much more typical of what you would expect to get here, so great for our guys to be out in that, they even had to hike. Sitting at dinner you could tell they were tired, when the kids start asking you if they could go to bed you know they are tired (and this is at 8.30). So another couple of days for the kids at the clinic and a few more hard days for the parents sitting by the pool. Till tomorrow..
3 aboard no helmets travelling on the motroway about 60km/hr, this is a common sight everywhere
The family outing, on the back seems to be Mum, Dad, the son and the baby plus the pushchair, passed us, we were doing 105km/hr.
Seems like they have the same laws as us, no talking on the cellphone whilst driving!!!
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