jarbacoa!

looking for mountains? coldness? swings? real fireplaces? places to explore? hiking? somewhere that feels like you are in a completely different country than the beachy DR??

is there such a place? why, yes. JARBACOA.

sharla has some wonderful friends, chad and krista wallace, who opened up their house to us the weekend after thanksgiving. we road-tripped there the friday after thanksgiving. excitement started before we got to the house.. took a wrong turn on the mountain and ended up getting the truck stuck on the path. after many, many attempts to get the truck to go backwards, uphill, between two ditches and around a turn.. garrett and jonathan rocked it (almost taking us out in the process..) aaand we were back on our way up the mountain. got to the house and were all kind of floored. it was absolutely beautiful and i can't even explain the view. wow. after running all over the house, we were introduced to the greatest swing on the planet (look at next blog) where we stayed for HOURS. we were out there until we couldn't see anymore (or move.. haha).
then.. dinner time:

we ate our thanksgiving leftovers we brought on this fun table setting..

the next morning after we'd eaten, read, explored, etc we drove to the bottom of a hike.. that lead us to this waterfall. beautiful. perched on the rocks, we ate our lunch and hiked back down.. we jumped in the car and drove to another area where we began hike #2 to the coffee farm (run by chad and krista.. where dominican joe's gets their coffee!):

..melissa crossing the shaky bridge on hike #2

made it to the coffee farm where we found some hourses and and a donkey ready for us to ride around the mountain. off we went. jonathan and cara rode one of the horses together. melissa and i also shared.. a DONKEY. yep.. a short (but tough..) farting donkey. really, melissa had to hold his tail down to keep the farting under control..

melissa showing off her dirt/donkey sweat/donkey hair booty. she was a trooper- put me in the front on the saddle an sat bareback on our sweaty little donkey.

.. and here is some legitamate dominican coffee, people.

shout out to our farting donkey! yeah. what a tropper.

shal, me, and mel on the way up the mountain. we have decided this picture sums us up rather perfectly..

anne riding on the way back down..

so after our horse/donkey ride, we hiked back down to the car and went home to eat dinner. the wallace's got home (they were gone friday night) and we had some of our friends, layne and caitlin, over.. pizza/game night! fun. perfect night.

sunday morning we relaxed and had church at the house. we headed back feeling woooonderful. could not be more thankful for that weekend!!