Donde esta Citibank?

We seemed to be fully immersed in Dominican time.  Our plan was to leave Santo Domingo around 12:00.  We finally headed out of town around 3:00.  Part of the delay was the search for Citibank so that we could get money in pesos for the rest of the trip.  We headed to the Colonial Zone and asked several people where we might find Citibank; they all gave us directions which we followed.  When we got to the spot and there was no Citibank, we would ask the next person.  Finally, with great wisdom, Brendan yelled from the back of the van "just go to another bank!"  El hombre es muy intelligente!  We parked the car and there was the man who had helped us park the day before!  He walked us to an ATM machine and we were successful (after a few tries) in getting our pesos.

What time is it!?

We still had another issue to solve before getting on our way.  Our van had several seat belts that didn't work and one of the seats slid back and forth as we drove.  After arguing with the rental car company for the past few days with no results we decided to just get a new van from a different company.  This meant we had a two vans for a short time, which meant I had to drive through Santo Domingo. Brendan was my brave copilot.

Finally, we were on our way!  We headed out of town along with the pickup trucks on the highways carrying many people.

no seat belts and no seats

And after a couple of hours the landscape changed dramatically.  Now we saw open space and cattle and horses.  The noise of Santo Domingo was way behind us.  We discovered that the actual roads were not what was printed on our map or in the gps, but we found our way with occasional detours that would take us through small towns where boys would wash our windshield for a few pesos as we were stopped at a traffic light and the motorcycles buzzed around us.

Our gps-not really too helpful!  Cattle in the road.

Finally around 7:30 pm, and we don't seem to get anywhere before 7:30, we arrived at our hotel for this part of the trip.  We went to bed that night knowing that the next day we would go to the National Park in Bayahibe.