They lied.
We arrived at the airport in Santo Domingo and the taxi driver picked us up. Loaded our things into the van, and I use that term "van" loosely, and starts it up. Smokes starts coming out of the dashboard. That should have been a sign to get back on the plane and get the hell out of there.
We told the driver it was no problem and do whatever he needed to do to fix it or get another van. He cut two wires under the hood, started her up again and off we went.
Taxi rides there are an adventure, literally. The drivers there don't follow any rules of the road. Red light? Nah...they don't have to stop. Stop Sign? Nope, that sign means nothing to them. It's whoever has bigger conjones. And the person with the nice car always backs down as they don't want to risk an accident. There is no car insurance there either.
I have never quite seen so much poverty in person in my life. I have seen it on television and in National Geographic magazine but not in person. There were also homeless, malnourished dogs roaming around which broke my heart as an animal lover. They look at animals there as just animals. There is no affection for them. I saw few people with pets. Maybe five people and one was the hotel owner, who was German.
Trash was strewn all over the streets and sidewalks. It was like there was no trash pick up. I knew there had to have been...but I never saw a trash truck the whole time I was there. Never saw anyone picking up trash or cleaning up.
We attempted to go the beach one day. We took a bus ride there. That was an experience. We catch the bus at this bus station in "bad" part of town. I don't know what part of town wasn't bad...but this part of town was worse if it could get any worse. Trash was piled as high as I am tall. (5'1") There were beggars on the street, kids trying to shine my flips flops for money. Don't ask. Women carrying babies wearing nothing but diapers. The women and the babies were dirty. Their skin, and hair were filthy. But...we were looking forward to the beach...so we all piled into the air conditioned bus.
After a 30 minute drive, the bus stops and drops us off on the side of the highway. We had googled a very nice place to visit on the beach. It was a hotel with restaurant. There were beds you could lie on and food and drinks. The pictures were beautiful. Anyway, we get off the bus and start walking....and walking....All of a sudden a large group of people start running down this side street screaming and yelling. My husband who is fluent in Spanish said they were screaming that this lady had a bomb in her purse. The lady was screaming she did not have a bomb and to give her the purse back and to leave her alone. I am clinging to my husband like a two year old clings to it's mom. We have to walk past this group to get the "beach resort" we oh so craved.
After walking past the group and being chased by a few chickens, we made it to the resort. Along the way we saw more trash, more poverty, broken down abandoned cars and homes. It was lovely :)
We enter the resort and was immediately told that we would need to spend $100.00 American dollars on food and drinks before we could use the lounge chairs and beds on the beach. We hate and drank but it didn't hit the magic $100.00 so we walked along the beach for a minute. There was no where to lay a towel and just sit. No chairs to sit on. Just the lounge chairs and beds which cost $100.00.
The beach where the resort property was located was in good condition. But as soon as you walked past the property line, there was trash and broken down buildings on each side. It was like placing a nice hotel in the middle of the slums and pretending there was no slums around it.
We lasted there about an hour and left. Back to the bus stop to wait for another bus. This bus stop was a little better. It was just a gas station. No air-conditioning, though so it was cooler to be outside in the breeze and in the shade.
Once we were back at the other bus station, it was time to call for the taxi to take us back to the hotel. While there, I was approached by a man, trying to speak to me in Spanish and I had no idea what he was saying. I just said I didn't speak Spanish, (in Spanish) and figured he would leave me alone....well that didn't happen. He continued to bother me. My husband approached me ( he was inside calling for the taxi) and told him I was his wife and to leave me alone. He didn't seem to care that I was his wife and continued to try to speak to me. The couple that we were traveling with, the husband, approached also and said something to him in English. But with a tone that he realized, whatever it was, he was pissed. My husband told them him he had 1 second to get out of my face, so he turned around and left. I don't know if our friend's appearance is what made him realized they weren't dealing with just one but two Americans or what, but he left.
When I got back to the hotel, I was hot, tired, hungry and in tears.
The food there was really good and the historic section was beautiful. I only took pictures of mostly the good parts.
We lived in Spain in the 1980's for a few years and my husband had found this nice restaurant on the other side of town that specialized in authentic Spanish food. We took a taxi there and realized this side of town was where we should have stayed.
We enter the restaurant and the host immediately stopped us. We traveled with some good friends and neighbors who happen to be African American. Not that that matters, it doesn't to me, but to the Dominicans it did. They said something to us and my husband took over. He asked for a table and they looked at us like, "you are kidding, right? It was kind of a Joe Biden/Barbara West moment. Like they couldn't believe we wanted a table there. We were dressed very nice and were used to dining at restaurants like that in Tampa, Spain and elsewhere.
My husband then explained that in The Dominican Republic, if your skin is dark, you are most likely Haitian. And that means you are poor, lower class. The lighter your skin, the more respect you received. Everyone in the restaurant had very light skin and you could have dropped them in the middle of Madrid and they would have blended in perfectly. My husband also explained that white women, like myself, were looked upon as something the Dominican men strived for. Their goal to was to snag them a white woman. Not his white woman of course. The waiters and host were very gracious and treated us with respect, but we received looks of death from the other patrons.
After the second night there, my husband confesses that he is very disappointed in the trip and what we had experienced in just 2 days. The rest of us had not said a word to him as he had planned the whole trip and didn't want to hurt his feelings. But once he spoke up and said something, we all agreed....it sucked big donkey dicks.
After many more bad experiences....along the way....we did meet some great people whom I will actually miss. One was a young man who's father is a diplomat in Germany. He looked so much like someone you would see at my son's college, UT. My husband called him, "Mike from Boston" He was really Mikhail from Germanuy. He was here for 16 weeks to do an internship to become a diplomat. He wanted to do it all on is own without his father's help. He shared with us his experiences and perception of the country and we all had some laughs and good times. A new bar opened across the street from the hotel. My husband who talks to anyone and everyone....set up a party with food and drinks for us and the hotel staff for the last night we were there. There was good music, great sangria, compliments of my husband, delicious food and really nice company. It was the most fun I had during the whole trip. I am including some pictures from that night.
My husband and myself in the middle and our friends Brad and Cheryl on the ends.
The whole group of us.
Bar owner (far right), his brother and uncle.
And as a great end to the the trip from hell, my husband comes home, sick with what we thought was the flu...We spend 6 hours in the emergency room last night to find out it was only a virus. We were worried he had picked up something deadly while on vacation.
He will survive.
If anything good came out of this vacation it was that I looked forward to returning to the U.S. To my modest but lovely home. To my 9 year old couch that I won't complain about again. To my life here, which after seeing all that I saw there, is a really wonderful life.
3 comments:
That is definitely an adventure. Sounds like you made the best of it, and maybe helped their economy a little. Maybe Dorothy in the Wizard of Oz was right: There's no place like home.
It's good to see another culture up close. Even if it's sad and heartbreaking, I guess. Good to have you back!
Thanks Kate and Dave,
I love learning about other cultures. Eating their foods, experiencing their daily lives. I loved the fact that every street corner had a little store you could buy coffee, sandwiches or a soda. You don't have that here in the states. But the poverty is what was so difficult.
That was the hardest part for me, knowing I couldn't do anything to help them except purchase their goods etc. I wanted to take all the dogs home and bathe and feed them. My husband keeps telling me I can't save the world.
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