The Yorkie House: Dominican trip ~ Thursday ~ Puerto Plata City Tour ~

We were up bright and early on the Thursday morning to catch our tour bus....6 am is just far too early anytime but especially when we are vacation!
However we were excited to see new and different things so that totally made up for it!
Our first stop was the rum factory in Puerto Plata. Apparently they supply 75% of the worlds rum! Thats ALOT of rum! Personally I think most of it stays in the Dominican for the resorts! We are really THIRSTY vacationers!
Rum is made from sugar cane...never knew that either!
We weren't allowed to take pictures in the actual factory but it was still really cool to watch the bottling, labeling and packaging process.
These pictures outside are of the equipment they used 100 years ago to press the sugar cane to process it into rum!

It is stored in drums to the appropriate age.

There was a sampling bar at the end of tour but given that it was only 8 am...we passed!!!

Next we were off to a cable car to take up to the mountain top. While waiting these men were entertaining us. Some of their instruments were really quite different!

The cable car...

Going way way up there! I am not a fan of heights so at this point I was doing my best not to panic! You can see the fog up there, it came in over the mountain in a span of 15 minutes or so, as when we pulled up with the bus it was clear.

This is going up....I did manage to take a few pics before I didn't want to look down anymore! Dominican countryside is so beautiful!

Looking down on Puerto Plata city and the waterfront...

This was on the top of the mountain....a huge statue of Jesus. Given to the Dominican by Brazil. It was really unfortunate as it was soooo foggy up there and then started to rain really hard!!!! We did a quick walk around up there but there was no chance to take pictures as it was raining too much and the tour was hastened.

After coming down we did some touring of Puerto Plata. Apparently the city was named by Christopher Columbus. The name means Silver Port. As there is a tree that grows with leaves that are silver in colour. When he arrived on the shores of the Dominican all he could see was these mass numbers of silver leaves on the trees.
We arrived a City Hall and we able to get off the bus to take some pictures.

Ladies carrying buckets on their heads?

These are some paintings of the local shops in the city. We were prompted everywhere to come in to the stores to shop. They all wanted our business!
These paintings were everywhere on the island with symbols of elements drawn by the early people of the Dominican.

We were able to tour a jewellery factory. They mine one of the few Amber deposits in the world and a rare stone called Larimar only found in the Dominican. The Larimar is the blue stone and is quite pretty!

Here they are making the jewellery..

We were able to tour an old fort that has been restored. I think they said it was built in the 1500's to warn and protect the shores from pirates.

Actual cannons they used!!!

Perfect vantage point to spot intruders!

This is an aerial picture of the fort...

Moving along we were able to go a flea market along the beach. They told us this is the largest flea market in the Carribean. The vendors were unbelievable. We were tugged and pulled into the shops, what was cool is we could haggle and barter for prices. The girls got a kick out doing that! Even if they said they couldn't do those prices, you could be guaranteed a few shops down somewhere would have the exact same thing for the price you wanted...they knew this too!

There was a beautiful beach there! We took some time to enjoy the ocean and take some more pictures and also to get away from the vendors who were non stop at us!!!

This was a tribute to Aunt Nance who wasn't feeling well that day and had to pass on the excursion. We missed you that day!!!

We were able to see the Amber Museum. I also did not know this but the stone Amber is made from tree sap that has solidified of the years. It is incredibly lightweight. They had several pieces where insects had been trapped in the sap and now incased in a stone!