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Recently we went on vacation to the Dominican Republic. It was me, my husband, our two children, and my parents. None of us had been there before. For some reason we decided to rent a car while we were there. Every guide book and advisory site we consulted told us not to do this.
We had to travel from the airport to our resort. It was a two and a half hour projected drive. It seemed like a straight shot. I of course had consulted online map sites to get my information. Traveling oversees on the advice of an online map site as my only friend is a big leap of faith.
I love maps. I like making them, printing them out, following them. I trace them with my finger to get an idea of how the road meanders. I wanted to see what the road looked like from this perspective, from the comfort of my own home, here in America, thousands of miles away from reality.
The reality is, it took four hours. The reality is also that these roads were the windiest, back country, mountainous, rural roads I had ever encountered. We saw towns that consisted of two shacks and a goat. We thought we were lost more often than found. We would reach a cell tower, get reception, find out we were on track and then drop off line.
We got off course a few times. We were scared a lot. We thought about turning around and calling it quits. We even considered asking the goat town people for directions. Yet, somehow we made it to our resort with what little we had. And on our return trip out of town, we were relieved to find out that there was a beautiful new highway leading straight to the airport.