Santo Domingo, DR

Bright and early Wednesday morning, we secured the boats and Nancy & Doug from Presque Isle, picked us up and dropped us off at the dinghy dock in Luperon. We hired a taxi to take us to Imbert where we bought tickets for the bus to Santo Domingo. I was relieved that they used a numbering system to assign us seats that we didn't have to share with goats, pigs or chickens. In fact the young man monitoring the boarding, kept an eye on us to make sure we got on the right bus and that we were put on the bus together. We were amazed that when we finally made it to Santo Domingo, we were the last passengers aboard the bus. So the driver took us directly to the old town area where we were staying. He told us that he was turning the bus into a taxi; we paid him accordingly.

Santo Domingo itself is a bustling city with the same dichotomies of old and new side by side. I wished I had been quicker with my camera to capture the scene of the man selling bananas from a wooden two-wheeled wagon pulled by a mule which had paused in front of a modern bank building.

We checked into the Hostel Nader which had been built in 1502 as a home but eventually became a monastery, then a retreat for poets, prior to becoming a hotel. It was located on a corner with sidewalks barely wide enough for two people. You entered through a huge wooden door into a small reception room which opened up to an enclosed courtyard you stepped down into. The remainder of the hotel was very much in the Spanish style of two stories, surrounding the courtyard. Our rooms were very spacious with extremely high ceilings. The windows were quite high with wooden shutters that you closed from the inside. Each room had its own bathroom, air conditioning and TV.

We asked for directions to a restaurant and were directed to go down the street about 2 blocks and turn right. Unfortunately, a film crew for a new Matt Damon movie ("The Good Sheppard"- supposedly set in Cuba) had several streets blocked off and we were directed to go another way. By the time we circled around the blocked streets, we couldn't find the restaurant we had been directed to, so we looked for another. Lots of people offer you directions but almost all want a tip. Elaine wanted to eat authentic DR food and that's exactly what we had. I just don't think she wanted it quite that authentic. We'd had better in Luperon.

We toured the Cathedral Metropolitana where Christopher Columbus (and relatives) had been buried prior to the Columbus Lighthouse in which he was later entombed. We walked to the Fort but decided that once you've seen a couple of these forts, you've seen them all. We walked throughout the old town area trying to locate the museum of shipwrecks but were not able to locate it. We returned to our hotel for a short siesta and then located a nice restaurant nearby for a truly wonderful dinner (it more than made up for the not so wonderful lunch).

We returned to Luperon today via a Caribe Bus (like a regular American bus) which took about 3 hours. Although I enjoyed the visit to Santo Domingo, I really enjoyed the bus rides to and from the city crossing over the mountains where the clouds rose from the canyons and mingled with the tree tops before being blown out to sea. Along this road we saw bulls harnessed to hand plows breaking the ground on mountain sides. A little further we saw a tractor up to its hubs in rice paddies that appeared to be a commercial enterprise. We saw tobacco leaves drying in thatched covered lean-tos being passed by bicyclists in their colorful shirts on state of the art touring bikes. We saw cell phones being sold by the dozens on street corners; stop at a traffic light and buy a cell phone or lottery ticket.

For some reason or other I found the various cleaning crews interesting. From a distance, you only see the beauty of the mountains and valleys with their green plants and trees, but up close the streets are teeming with litter. There were organized crews designated to pick up garbage and tend to the medians along the roadways. Yet the crews were using hand tools to do their job. Groups consisting of two people each were hand cleaning the streets. Road crews of several men were using machetes to cut the grass down to the roots and trim the trees in the medians. Clearly they are trying to make their country more appealing, yet those who are actually in the gutters, have nothing more than rudimentary tools to complete their tasks. It seemed so futile. Yet I supposed you have to start somewhere. In the city, there are trash receptacles every 10'; that's always a beginning.

I imagine that Christopher Columbus must have seen this island as a tropical paradise. Hopefully, they are on they're way to making it one again.