September 1, 2017.  Right before our family paddle out to the reef.

Yup! That's a swing AND a pool at the restaurant. And to think in the States we go out to dinner to just eat.

Hudson  and one of his new best friend, Sebastian from the Cayman Islands. They ripped up the surf until the sun went down.

Double Decker.

You're not getting the full ride unless you're riding them all the way to the beach.

Waiting for CHINOLA!  (AKA passion fruit juice).

Viv and Hud began CIRCUS SCHOOL last week and the two of them are both completely hooked.  Their weekly class includes floor exercises,  trampoline work, and trapeze.

"He'd fly through the air with the greatest of ease. That daring young man on the flying trapeze." (This photo was actually taken from ANOTHER trapeze, separate from the Circus School, that Hud checked out a few weeks ago. Yes, there are actually two flying trapezes in Cabarete, which is kind of bizarre considering the size of the town.)

Back to school! In addition to joining the circus, Viv began 2nd grade and Hud 5th grade last week.  Homeschooling has started with a bang.

Watching the action on Kite Beach.

One of our favorite  fruit and vegetable stands in downtown Cabarete.

The Ives family from Telluride, Colorado were in Cabarete for some kite surfing and of course, to determine which family  deserves the title "Noodle Battle Champions of the Caribbean".

Vivian cast her vote for her favorite fourteen year old boy on the planet. (Good work, Nate Ives).  Josh, Vivian is still taking considerations for favorite fifteen year old boys (I think you've got a solid chance).  The Ives joined us at the best pizza place in the world, La Chebola.  This restaurant is owned and operated by two Spanish guys that have been friends since childhood. They work all day at their other full time jobs and then go make pizza all night, six days a week.  Their pizza is undoubtedly the BEST we have ever had on this planet.  This no joke.   Even Jen, who typically avoids carbs like they are poisonous, will happily inhale a giant calzone at La Chebola (and then eat the kids' crusts).

Winding down with a little ukelele action

Cafe Fresh Fresh.  Jen is all about a place that  serves a yummy salad in a huge bowl for $4.00.

Picking up plastic trash on the beach.  Hey world, did you know that plastic lasts billions of years and when you discard it it floats up on a beach somewhere and makes it look like crap, so let's stop using plastic. (OK now that that's settled  you should finish looking at all the other cute photos below.)

Viv is all about windsurfing!  Actually, we all are.  It's definitely one of our favorite family activities.

Hud  makes everything look easy.

Sometimes German tourists get their kites stuck in palm trees. ..

...and then a local kid with some sweet tree climbing skills and a lack of acrophobia climbs up and makes everything happy again at the beach.

"Smile, guys!"

Baseball!  To be honest we were never remotely fans of the sport, but when you're in the DR and your pal Hansel is pitching a playoff game, you go.  And what an amazing scene: there's a cockfighting arena behind us, a banana plantation adjacent to right field, and a cow pasture behind center field. There's one umpire who's charged with the daunting responsibility of keeping the whole thing from going off the rails, which is not easy considering that the fans watch from THE PLAYING FIELD and walk out to the ump when ever they question a play, joining the team who just cleared the bench to also argue the play. (This occurs constantly). The atmosphere at these games tends to get seriously heated up, but that's ok because "Hansel is so hot right now! Hansel!" (The Zoolander quote we can't help repeating every time we hang out with our buddy).  And oh yeah, Hansel not only pitched the whole game but also scored the game winning hit!

7 AM, dawn patrol.  Hitting the waves before the wind picks up, always a good way to start the day.

Hola Amigos!  It's been 4 weeks since we returned to the boisterous and BITCHIN', ridiculously RAD, hella HOT and ludicrously LOUD Dominican Republic.  Cabarete and its surroundings still feel like a buried treasure that we are uncovering bit by bit, and it's so much fun to keep exploring here, having tons of new adventures and meeting lots of wonderful and fascinating friends.  We feel lucky to be here and we try our best not to waste a single day-- there's a lot to see and do and we want to devour it all, lick the experience plate clean, if you will, like a 6 month pregnant woman at a Las Vegas buffet (I've BEEN that woman so I feel it's appropriate for me to make the analogy).

Facebook and Instagram (and even blogs like ours) can lend people's lives a rosy, glossy veneer.
A slice of life that is Fresh from the Package.
Tidy.
Sanitized.
But you know as well as I do that all of these picture-perfect snapshots do not begin to scratch the surface of the whole enchilada. And let's be real about enchiladas: they look delicious, but there's always a gross little pool of cheese grease under all that sauce.   In the interest of honest writing, I feel it's important to mention that not every waking minute of our adventuring is pure bliss.

For example, there are things from home that we really miss. A big one for us is SKIING. Skiing runs deep in our family culture (we put Moog on skis at 22 months for crying out loud!), and although we are definitely enjoying this endless summer, we are still missing our favorite sport. One day in Maine last summer the four of us were on a walk and found ourselves at the top of a steep gravel pit.  We looked down from the high, rocky edge and were all silent for a moment, our thoughts unified.
Hud said it first, "I'd totally ski that."
...to which Trav replied, "Pick your line."
And Hud enthusiastically proceded to tell us exactly where he'd turn his skis all the way down that hill, what tricks he'd do, how fast he'd go.  We all stared at that little potential ski run, WILLING it to be snow-covered, imagining our feet with their long, slender appendages, and we heaved a collective, wistful sigh.

There are other missing pieces in the puzzle of our traveling lives.  I for one, miss art, and specifically THEATRE.  I miss being involved in creative projects, and I miss and having daily conversations about theatre and about all things weird and wonderful with my funky, art-centric community.  Since we began traveling, I've learned that the majority of the world is NOT art-focused the way Telluride is, nor are the arts so universally celebrated or prized (or even discussed!)  I miss having theatre in my life and I'm going to do something about it.  I reached out to the director of the Mariposa DR Foundation, a non-profit organization in Cabarete that provides educational and cultural experiences for girls.  I am going to start volunteering drama classes for the children there, and I can't wait to start.  Teaching theatre is what I know best and what I do best, and I need to be giving back to this community while we're here.  And I also know that teaching drama again will be a really good way to feed my soul.


One of the hardest things we've found on our travels is how to process the daily horror show we subject ourselves to via the political and social news from home (read between the lines: Trump).  So many times in the past weeks, we've found ourselves banging our heads against the wall in total frustration and despair.  We've felt helpless, watching so much hate and ineptitude spew out from our "leader", damaging spirits, pulling our country apart at the seams. We've spent a lot of time sharing stories we've read online and commiserating about how unbelievably awful it all is. For a solid week, the US news consumed us, and the results were not good.  So just today, Trav and I made a pact.  We can't begin our day reading the news anymore.  It starts us off on the wrong foot.  We can't change what's happening there.

We need to stay focused on the here and now, and the here and now is this sailing trip.
It's Hud and Viv, and striving, with every cell in our bodies and every spark of our imaginations to make their days here remarkable and filled with love, each and every one.
It's homeschooling creatively and surfing with gusto, and starting Spanish lessons.
It's cleaning the plastic off the beach every day.
It's buying medical supplies for the security guard who is covered in cuts and who lost fingertips from a motorcycle accident and who can't afford Neosporin.
It's asking people we meet to tell us their stories, and it's listening to what they have to say.
It's reminding ourselves that we worked hard to get to this point, that we don't have an infinite amount of time to be traveling, and that making the NOW count is our priority and our obligation.

That's it for now.  Thank you for your listening ear (or, I guess, your READING EYES would be more correct). We appreciate you! Thank you! xo  







  

The view from our deck in our new home-for-now, Kite Beach, Cabarete

Waterfall near Jarabacoa, DR

Climbing around on big, slippery rocks in Jarabacoa.  The man in the red shirt is Juan, our guide that day.  See Hud helping Sadie up the rocks?  Sweet boy :)

This cabbage truck was piled high with more cabbage than I ever thought humanly possible to load onto a cabbage truck. PS This is a cabbage truck.

This is how Viv always falls asleep in the car.

In the DR, laundry is hung out to dry everywhere you look and the air is habitually detergent-scented.  I love the smell of clean laundry!

It's hard to tell from this photo, but Trav & Hud were chasing each other around with the stalks of giant gladiolas (flowers) that they found on the ground.  This episode lasted 20 minutes and involved a lot of flower-whipping. We were in the mountains near Constanza.

For non Spanish-speakers, the signs read "Strawberries and  Jam" and "Exotic Garden".  We pulled in to buy some strawberries and jam and the couple who owned the place invited us into their home, showed us around, and spoke to us enthusiastically in fast Spanish that we tried our best to understand.  They were the definition of hospitable and gracious.  When you purchase jam at Jardin Exotico, everyone has a seat in the living room and then you are offered something to drink and once you are relaxed then the commerce of strawberry products can take place.  The order is placed and a few minutes later the strawberries arrive from one room and the jam from another. The whole transaction takes about 15 minuets and you learn that the owners' adult son lives in Orlando, or that his name is Orlando, depending on your level of  Spanish comprehension.   (And the jam was delicious).

Here's Trav, fixing the wind generator in Moxie's crowded cockpit  Trav has become extremely adept at fixing anything and everything on our boat.  It's pretty impressive.  The wind gen supplies power to our batteries, along with our solar panels.

Laundry day on Moxie.  Most of the time we use laundromats or pay someone on shore to do our wash, but sometimes we have to do it the old fashioned way. This was the delicates cycle.

Ok people, LOOK AT MY HAIR.  I haven't cut or colored it since August.  Enough said.

There's a HUGE, crumbling, abandoned resort in Luperon that we are all kind of obsessed with.  We like sneaking in and poking around the empty unlocked rooms and dry mega-pools.  It's super creepy and fascinating and sad.  The kids and I tiptoed in at night.  We were all too scared to go any further.

This is our favorite place to eat in Luperon, it's right on the beach and a locals hang-out.  Note the green moto-taxi that brought us- all 4 of us plus the dog fit in there! We love catching rides in those things.

Moto Taxi!!!!!!!! We just can't get enough.

In the DR, motorcycles rule the streets.  I won't even get into how dangerously they drive, because that could be a blog post in and of itself.  But worth mentioning are the impossibly enormous things that people carry with them on their motorcycles.  Like, for example,  5 other people (seriously, the record number of people we've seen on a motorcycle is 6), OR a GIANT steel bar (weaving through traffic at top speeds, threatening to take out anyone and everyone) or this hefty cooler full of fish for sale.  It defies everything you think you know about physics or engines or possibilities in general.

Moog in a tunnel slide, in a place called "Fun World", outside of Cabarete.

We learned something!  If you want to find the BEST sea glass, go to a beach where partying occurs (beer & rum).  This treasure trove was all found in Sosua, a sweet town between Puerto Plata and Cabarete.

Lunch on the beach in Sosua

This is Hud in his first Kiteboard lesson, learning to control the kite.  It didn't take long for both Hud & Trav to become TOTALLY HOOKED on kiteboarding.

Kiteboardin' cutie

Moog, fancy style.

Enjoying jugos natureles on Kite Beach, Cabarete

"Mom and Dad...make funny faces!" says Viv

Pictured here with Hud & Viv is Alba, daughter of the owner of Big Willy's Kiteboarding School who instructed Trav & Hud.  Alba is 4, speaks 3 languages fluently, and is our new BFF.

Giant vats of oil where fish is fried outdoors at a restaurant outside of Puerto Plata. One time Travis almost burned down our kitchen in Telluride when he overheated  a pan of oil while making a late night pop corn snack.  Not sure how this guy does it?  Looks like the key is more open flame.

Lunch in the making, Puerto Plata

Once we'd decided that we wanted to live in Cabarete, we immediately began the bittersweet process of  closing down Moxie for the hurricane season.  This required removing and storing all 3 of her sails (among a million other tasks).  This was a hefty project.

Before we left Luperon, Hud, Viv and I got our teeth cleaned.  The minute we arrived for our appointments, the receptionist gave Hud and Viv a piece of hard candy to snack on (not kidding). For all three of us, the cleanings cost a whopping thirty dollars.  That's 10 bucks a cleaning, folks.  (U.S .Dentists please get the memo: the price of having your teeth cleaned should not compromise your patients' ability to purchase the food that their teeth are designed to chew and subsequently that you will scrape).

We love to buy fruit in the DR!  Pineapples, watermelon, limes, mangoes, papayas, avocados, and more.  Fruit stands line the highways. This was on the way to Cabarete.

The condo building we moved into is full of cool metal sculpture and a has a little fish pond.

Our condo. Check it.  A kitchen that more than one person can fit into at a time. A full size fridge that opens from the front, not the top .  Counter space.  Cabinets.  After 7 months of cooking on Moxie, I feel like I've died and gone to culinary heaven.

First dinner in our new home

Amazing breakfast at Vagamundo, in Cabarete

The boys happily watch the kiters at dusk

The first time that Travis and I rolled into Telluride, Colorado we looked at each other and said,
"This feels right."  Trusting our mutually strong, instantaneous gut reaction led us to 18 happy  years of building a life and a family in a community we now enthusiastically call home.  That was a leap of faith that ended up really working for us, and it taught us an important lesson: when it comes to  following your instincts, no matter how quickly or spontaneously, taking the plunge is nearly always a very good idea (ie: selling all of your belongings, leaving your job and moving onto a sailboat).  Well, guess what, folks? It's happened AGAIN!  That insta-attraction to a place, that immediate feeling of "This feels right", it hit us like a ten foot wave the minute we stepped foot into our new love, our latest obsession...Cabarete.

It was Trav's birthday and I wanted to do something special for him.  We were on Moxie in Luperon, and I knew that Cabarete was a mecca for kiteboarding, a sport Trav has always wanted to try.  My plan was to treat the family to a couple of nights in a fancy hotel and to sign Trav up for a kite lesson as a surprise.  The only problem was, I COULD NOT find a place that worked for us.  The fancy hotel I wanted would not take a large dog like Sadie (despite my valiant attempts to sweet talk the general manager and the staged photos I sent of Sadie looking smallish and practically catatonic).  Other hotels were booked, others too pricey.  Finally, out of desperation I ruined the surprise and enlisted Trav's help in the hotel search.  We found a condo on Air B& B that seemed ok but for the life of us, WE COULD NOT BOOK IT.  Technological difficulties or red-tape details kept stopping us from finalizing the rental.  We were SO frustrated!  We considered scrapping the whole idea and not going.  Finally, we decided just to drive there and see what happened, and in retrospect, we now know that the reason we could not book a place, was because the RIGHT place in the spot where we are now happily convinced that we are MEANT TO BE, had not presented itself to us yet.

Literally, the first place we saw as we pulled into the Cabarete town limits was the Kite Beach Hotel. The rest of the story is a series of perfectly magical universal-smiling events that fell into alignment like a line of dominoes, tumbling satisfyingly and precisely, one by one.  The "hotel" was really condos.  They took dogs.  The place was stunning and immaculate and affordable.  It had a pool and a cool restaurant/bar.  It was right on the beach, right in the middle of all the kiteboarding action, and the sky was swarming with kites.  It was adjacent to the best kite school ever, which just happened to have availability right that very minute.  We checked in at 3:30 and Hud & Trav began their first kite lesson at 4 pm.  While they kited, Viv and I relaxed on the beautiful beach, and she instantly made a friend.  Post lesson, Trav and Hud were wearing the biggest smiles I'd ever seen on them - they were now officially kite junkies. Trav and I had a mojito at the bar, we all went to dinner, and by 7 pm we had decided to move to Cabarete to wait out the hurricane season.  Easy as that.

And here's where the synergy/synchronicity of this whole thing gets really crazy...
The next morning, we got lost while driving through town.  We turned around on a side street and found ourselves stopped beside a rental agency.  In the time it took us to read the sign on their door, a sweet lady named Maria had come out of the office to greet us.  She thought we might need directions.  We asked if she had any dog-friendly condos for long-term rent on Kite Beach.  She said yes, but she only had one.  We made plans to see it the next day, and weirdly, it happened to be the unit directly above the one where we were currently staying!  The condo for rent had the same view we had fallen in love with, and was overlooking the pool our kids had fallen in love with playing in.  The price was right (a screaming deal! We haven't paid this little in rent since our pre- Telluride days! Plus the place is a monstrous 2 bedroom with high ceilings and a giant deck) and we immediately booked the place through the end of October.  In November, once the hurricane season has passed, we will return to the boat and start sailing again.

Once we put the deposit down on the condo we literally RACED back to Luperon and closed up Moxie as fast as we possibly could.  The process took us three days, sweating in the oppressive heat of the windless harbor.  We rented a car on a month-to-month basis.  We hired someone to watch Moxie, to open her up periodically and air her out, and to keep her bottom clean.  (And she's only 1.5 hrs away so we'll be checking on her now and then as well).    

We've been in our new home for 3 days, and it feels surreal.  After 7 months living in an extremely confined, constantly moving space, all of this room to breathe (and not always be climbing over one another) feels decadent.  It also feels really amazing and new to be stabilized, not rocking and shifting from the wind and waves.  I now sleep in a bed that can be accessed from all sides, and I don't have to climb over Trav in the middle of the night if I need to pee.  We can prepare meals together at the same time, and we don't have to constantly stress about running out of water.  (Although I will tell you, living on a boat teaches you to CONSERVE.  I can't take a shower or wash dishes the way I used to anymore.  I'm WAY too aware of how much I'm wasting. The kids are, too. This is a very good thing.)

The moral of this blog post?  Don't be afraid to trust your gut and follow your instincts. Take the plunge. Society often tells us we need to consider everything from a million angles, to scrutinize all options with utmost care, to write up 100 page pro and con lists and then sleep on them for months...or years.  I'm not one who makes a habit of dispensing unsolicited advice, but I feel compelled to tell you this: I see too many people wishing and planning for things they dream of and long for instead of DOING THEM.  I can't tell you how many people have told us, "I wish I could do what you're doing, but... " What was it that Yoda said?  Something about not thinking, but DOING.  I think people would be happier if they did more doing.  (And now you should look up the correct version of Yoda's quote and follow that, because after all, he is a fictional Jedi, and is obviously a source of guidance to be taken seriously.)  

Thank you, as always, for reading.  And  one more thing!  Will you please officially follow our blog?  If you go to the home page, there's a place on the right where you can sign up to officially follow us.  Once you've done that, you'll never have to worry about missing another episode of Moxie Family Adventures again. And please feel free to comment on the blog page, we love to read what you have to say. xoxo