[toby wilson]

The most annoying thing to me there is the old "hey sir, come and look at my store." There are "stores" for as far as you can see along the beach, little canvas shacks selling a bunch of crap for a ripoff. One of the guys even gave me his phone # and address so I could call him and sell his paintings of Bob Marley for him in the States. You definitely have to watch yourself there.

What I will add is that yes, there is TONS of poverty there, it is sad, even the horses are so thin that their ribs are showing. I also saw a puppy run up to a little boy who was walking down the street with his Father. The puppy came up behind the boy and put his nose on the boy's calf. When the kid felt the wet nose of the puppy, he turned around, took the dog by its rear leg and tossed it into the woods down an approximate 10 foot drop like it was an apple core he was done with or something. The Father didn't even flinch.

The people there are SUPER honest though, at least in my experience. When I was there, my Mother left her beach bag which had her wallet with like $500 in Pesos on our first day there at the beach and when I came rushing back to the beach just knowing it would be long gone, nobody had laid a finger on it, the guys at the local surf shop just pointed to it to show me where it was and refused a reward.

In my experience, the food was great. And pretty affordable too. I guess we just lucked out. If you go, you have to try the Mamajuana shots. That stuff will mess you UP!!! A few of those and we were trashed...

One more Cabarete story while there is no wind:

We got two 2 bedroom condos when we went there (time share). The 'rents stayed in one (My Mom, Dad, Uncle and 2 Aunts) and the "kids" stayed in the other (Me, My brother Todd, his Wife Sydney, My Cousin Kristy and her Husband Tommy). The first night there we decided to play Asshole with the local beer, Presidente "tall boys" 40 ounce bottles. Sydney was tired (and pregnant) so she went to bed. I was the asshole almost all night long (what's new) until I finally beat Tommy putting him in the Asshole chair.

Now I could finally tell someone to drink so I jumped right in and told Tommy to drink. Tommy then told me that I could not tell him to drink and that only the president (Todd at the time) could tell him to drink. We all explained the rules of asshole (again) to Tommy and then Todd said "just for that back-talk, drink twice HEAVILY!!!" Tommy took his lumps in stride and started to swig away. As soon as he was done, you could tell something was not right. Tommy just stared at us for a couple of seconds before EXPLODING with a burst of puke all over the WICKER coffee table and all of Todd's Genworth (the company he works for) playing cards.

Kristy, Todd and I just looked at each other in amazement, then at Tommy and busted out laughing (at 2am no doubt with the windows open in a condo complex). Tommy then started to laugh, then shot up another dose of puke all over the coffee table. Todd and I were laughing so hard at this point uncontrollably that we both started crying.

Kristy saw that Tommy had puked again and went to stand up to help Tommy. When she stood up though, she busted out the loudest fart that I have ever heard escape from any woman! Tommy, Todd and I stopped laughing, looked at each other then at Kristy and literally fell on the floor laughing. Kristy bolted for her bedroom out of embarassment while the 3 of us laughed for another 10 minutes until security came and told us to shut up. Sydney never woke up during this whole escapade even though her door was open a bit...

Tommy topped off the night by finishing his beer before going to bed, what a trooper. And that was just the first day of my trip to Cabarete...I wasn't kiting when I was there but I did see kiters.

Cabarete is a great place, just look out for the Sea Urchins, they are plentiful and hurt like hell when you step on them!!!