One Fall

A blog post by Adam. The plan was to jump down 27 waterfalls. Instead we had one fall, and then a rapid ride to a Puerto Plata emergency room.

This story, however, starts hundreds of kilometers away at Iberia, Melissa and my supermarket of choice in La Romana. It's big and it's cheap, perhaps only surpassed in value by the reputedly super inexpensive Cristo Viene, which we have not entered for obvious reasons ("Cristo Viene" means "Christ is coming" and I personally don't want to get caught in the produce aisle when Jesus shows up). Iberia sells groceries, clothes, electronics, medications, hardware supplies, and more. It has a good selection of imported and local products. It's only rival in town in terms of selection is Jumbo, La Romana's premier supermarket. 

Jumbo and Iberia differ in four significant ways. First, Iberia crams the same amount of merchandise as Jumbo in half the space.  Second, Iberia's prices, particularly for fruits and vegetables, are often half those of Jumbo's. Third, unlike at Jumbo, it sometimes feels like half the produce at Iberia is partially decomposed. Fourth, possibly due to either the space differences or the price differences, Iberia always seems about 54 times more crowded than Jumbo. Hopefully Iberia's unique place in the world is now clear. It's like Fred Meyer. Kind of.

Understanding Iberia's advantage (rock-bottom prices) and disadvantages (narrow overstuffed aisles, questionable quality, and crowds) we decided to check out their selection of water shoes, required equipment for conquering the 27 waterfalls (www.27charcos.com). And as expected, they did indeed have water shoes for the reasonable price of $5 per pair. I grabbed a blue pair, Melissa went with red. We felt good about the price.

A week and five hour drive later we found ourselves at the 27 waterfalls visitor center. We were with Mina and her husband Jorge, who was visiting the DR for a week. After eating our egg salad sandwiches and waiting out a torrential downpour we went to put on our swim suits and water shoes. Seconds after Melissa went off to change, Mina came running out yelling at me to come to the visitor center lobby. Melissa had put on her water shoes, taken one step in the bathroom, and fallen hard on the back of her head and elbows. The extremely cheap water shoes were lik eice skates on the slick bathroom floor. Melissa was in tremendous pain and everyone was concerned about her.

We decided Melissa had to see a doctor to make sure everything was OK beneath her throbbing skull. We hopped in the car and drove 30 minutes to a Puerto Plata hospital, where Melissa had a CT scan and everything luckily checked out OK. It was scary and Melissa continues to have lingering soreness. My fascination with good deals had not paid off. For probably the millionth time in my life, it had not paid to go cheap. I continue to feel bad. And I also continue to shop at Iberia. How difficult it is to change my ways.