Traveling

Punta Canta

Kristian Beverly4 Comments

A week after I graduated my mom, sister and I traveled to Punta Canta. We had to wait for my sister to finish her finals at Elizabethtown. Punta Canta is in the Dominican Republic and we stayed at a resort.

It was beautiful there and we couldn’t have asked for better weather. The water felt wonderful and while the sun was hot there was always a cool breeze moving through.

My sister, Kendall, became my model for the week since she loves to pose and I’d rather hold a camera before getting in front of it. 
During the day we’d eat delicious food.
Swim in the pool 
and drink pretty things with names like the Red Devil. 
Since we travelled to Punta Canta so early in the tourist season the beaches were pretty much empty. How much better does it get?
One of my favorite things to do while away is read. I had plenty of time to do that. I brought four or five books and zoomed through them so I ended up taking one of my sister’s books to read. I can’t go through a few days without a book!
 The one thing I really really wanted to do was go horseback riding. My mom mentioned it to one of the employees. Through a friend of a friend to a friend we found a place for me to ride off of the resort at. Kendall wanted to come along too, so we were off. We had no idea where it was but once we pulled up it was beautiful. 
Kendall is not the most confident of riders since she gets on a horse once or twice a year so the ride consisted of walking and trotting. But the length made up for it. We rode for at least two hours. The weather was beautiful too. 
I rode a lovely pony that I can’t remember the name of. My Spanish is passable and pronouncing the name was a struggle. So said pony heard good boy a lot. 
All of the horses were bomb proof. People would ride by us with an inch to spare on four wheelers and the horses acted like the four wheelers were air.  *Side eyes horses at home that freak at a tree that’s been in the same spot for years*
We rode all of the way to a beach. It was gorgeous. 
Kendall and I on our horses. 
Afterwards we rode back. We saw donkeys!
This cow mooed at us and followed for a bit before finding its cow friends. 
We got back to the barn.
While waiting for our ride to pick us up Kendall and I explored the barn. 
There were beautiful type Spanish horses
with beautiful faces.
This was my favorite of the young horses. 
I handed Kendall my camera and she said, “Kristian he’s trying to bite you.”
Oh well. He just was mouthy. 
Outside was this stallion. 
We left the barn and rode back to the resort. Riding in another country is always a fun time. 
At the end of the week we journeyed back to the USA.  Kendall claimed the window seat so she was in charge of taking air photos! I enjoyed my trip but was ready to come back home. 

So Many Pictures

Kristian BeverlyLeave a comment

I never thought I’d say that I’ve taken too many photos. But between the summer to today I have thousands of photos to deal with. I know that for some that’d be a day’s worth of photos, but not for me. There are more good than bad, so I’m happy about that. But still. So. Many. Pictures.
They span the summer which started with my first internship. The PA capital is beautiful.

Then the African American Museum in DC.

There’s plenty of barn photos.

And horse shows.

There were a few of those.

Breyerfest (which I still need to finish the final few posts about).

Philadelphia.

Plus any other interesting places I’ve gone to at some point.

Luckily I’m off for the next week for fall break, so hopefully I can get through most of them.

Grand Turk's Donkeys

Kristian BeverlyLeave a comment

I did two animal related things on the cruise. The first dealt with donkeys. The second was swimming with stingrays and kissing a sea sponge for good luck.

 Grand Turk has a feral donkey population. They also have feral horses, but there are far more donkeys. The donkeys have been on the island for hundreds of years, thought to have been imported to help with harvesting salt.

Donkeys are like a national treasure and are protected by the government there. They get to roam the island as they wish. So they are everywhere.

We saw lone donkeys,

young donkeys,

and groups of donkeys.

Some people had fences to keep the donkeys out, and others didn’t.

The halfway point of the tour was at the lighthouse. Some got out to see the lighthouse, while others *cough me* were distracted by donkeys. Our guide stepped out with bread and said he had a trick to show us.

Donkeys seemed to appear from nowhere.

He picked the  ‘right’ donkey to do the trick with.  He put a piece of bread into his mouth and the semi-feral donkey took it out. 
Then he asked if anyone else wanted to feed the donkeys, which was an easy yes.
Look how cute and tiny they are.
Cute and friendly semi-feral donkey.
My sister, Kendall, with the donkey.
When the tour was taking us back to the beach my mom turned to me and asked, “Did you get a picture of the lighthouse?”
“Nope.”
Lighthouse or donkeys? Donkeys. 
I did learn other interesting things about the island. The Friendship 7 landed near Grand Turk. They had a replica of it on the island. The real one lives at the Air and Space Museum in DC. 

Cruising 2016

Kristian BeverlyLeave a comment

For the past week I’ve been on a floating hotel.

It’s the same ship, Carnival Pride, as last year but this year my mom, sister and I cruised with family members. 
The islands we visited were Grand Turk, Half Moon Cay and Freeport. On Grand Turk we took a bus tour around the island that featured the history of the island. 
I noticed the feral donkey and horse population. Most of my pictures of the island are of the equine variety, so there’ll be a separate post for them!
It was a nice week.