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Published: March 8th 2012
Ahhh I am coming beach!!
Can't believe it's been a month here and I haven't gone to the beach!Well this was the first weekend I didn't do any work at all! And much needed too because I've been here in Haiti for a month and haven't yet gone to the beach...poppycock. And being up here in Cap Haitian, the beach is much more accessible than in Port au Prince. I hopped on a moto and took a short ride over the hill, and voila! Paradise lays before me. I walked through the entrance of a hotel to the beach to plop myself down and was promptly informed I had to pay U.S. $5. Hello?! I'm cheap. So I walked down the beach to go hang with the local haitians, and as it so happened quite a large group of Chileans. They give me bread, cheese, beer, and chocolate - this sounds like a waaaaay better deal down here! So I had a lovely afternoon swimming in the water (okay, so NOW I'm in the Caribbean!) and slacklining - it never gets old....everyone wants to try it. If I come back to Haiti again I will bring 5 slacklines and have slackline classes, hoorah!
Sunday was also an adventure day. I took a tap-tap (the public transportation here=pickup trucks
with a roof and benches inside) with Charles (fellow SOIL staff) to Milot about 20 km away where we proceeded to hike 8km up a huge-ass mountain to the largest fortress in the americas, commisioned in 1805 by Henri Christophe, a key leader in the Haitian slave rebellion. I think we were the only ones to hike all the way to the top from Milot, as many U.N. trucks rolled by, filled with Peacekeepers and their family on a day off sightseeing. However, you can only drive so far on the road, and then everyone has to hike the last kilometer or so, but we were in our walking prime and passed them all up 😊
The fortress is magnificent atop the mountain! Huge! We walked all over it, exploring dark corners (or not so much because it was a little sketchy....) and old rooms. There are 365 cannons and 1000's of cannonballs stockpiled outside. Large cisterns and storehouses were designed to provide food and water to 5,000 defenders for up to a year. You should have seen the toilet - you sit on a seat and your poop drops 200 feet to an exposed mountainside (I would have
And I brought the slackline!
Slacklines first trip to the beach, congrats! taken a picture if my camera hadn't run out of batteries...). Anyways, we explored some more and I encountered the most American tourists I've seen here in Haiti so far, then we chilled outside for a bit and headed all the way down the hill.
Super fun weekend adventures....and I really need to get to the beach more....
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