Hours of travelling

Our last two weeks, we've spent travelling. End of September we spent 1 week in the DR to have some holiday and today we came back from a weekend in Limbe, up in the North of Haiti.

I actually needed to leave the county, so I needed to cross the border to the DR. We could have actually just walked across and after 5 minutes gone back, but we decided that 7 days of holiday would do us good. This holiday was a city holiday. The hotel we stayed in was close to the Zone Colonial, they have a shopping street with lots of cafés and restaurants. We went there every day to eat. It was soooo good, not just to eat rice and beans, or rice with black bean sauce…. Before we left we decided rather than to stay in a 5 star hotel we would choose cheaper hotel, to save money which we could then use to go out for dinner more often. The cheaper hotel meant that our breakfast was very limited (every day the same two choices, rather than a buffet style and huge variety). Also the difference was, the hotel did not have a pool, but our plan was to visit the very big expensive hotels and pay for a day to use the pool, this would be still cheaper.

A few days before we left Haiti, we were thinking of upgrading our room, because the other one had a whirlpool in the room J. We tried to change rooms, but we were too late.....
Google Map, distance from Port-au-Prince to the DR
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On Google it says, from Port-au-Prince to the DR they are 323 km, doable in 4 hours, 42 mins this doesn't include the traffic and the border crossing. After 8 hours of bus ride and waiting at the border for around 1 ½ hours (getting out of the bus: going to the immigration office to get the stamp to leave the country, getting in the bus, driving a bit, getting out of the bus to go to the next stamp. Many people had big suitcases, so they needed to go to the customs office to get their bags checked, luckily we just had our backpacks, and we did not need to do that.) Picture taken before we crossed the border into DR. 

When we arrived at the hotel they gave us the room key 306. As we walked through the door, we could not believe it because they gave us the room with the whirlpool in the first place. We used it almost every day.

We did lots of travelling in little buses trying to find beads for my jewellery making ministry, looking at old buildings....

.... but what we really enjoyed were our two days at the pool. One day it rained almost of and on for two hours, but we didn't mind, we were sitting under the big umbrellas and reading. Pictures of us using and enjoying a swim, the nice view and the lovely chocolate cake :-)

I better stop now. Next week I will tell you more about our travels up to the North to join a Self Help Groups meeting in Limbe were I had a speaking engagement. Thank you for all your prayers and thanks to God, because he protected us during all our traveling. THANK YOU GOD!