We just spent a wonderful week in the Dominican Republic visiting Kathleen's cousin Anna. It was short for an international trip but we did pack a lot in.
In Atlanta we dropped the kids off with a sitter and then headed to the airport. Since we weren't sure how long that would take we ended up at the airport pretty early and just walked around. While we were wandering a stranger offered us some pizza saying that they had bought too much. Given that we could figure out how he could have a motive to hurt us and we were inside airport security we decided it was probably safe to eat. Free dinner!
We flew in to the capital, Santo Domingo, and arrived fairly late. Luckily we had Anna to come pick us up at the airport, meeting us with fresh empanadas and fruit juice! After resolving an issue with the Uber that had been towed for illegally parking in a place Anna told him not to park, we headed into the capital to a fun hostel, called "Island Life", where we spent the first night.
We explored the hostel a little bit in the morning and it was quite cute. There was a central courtyard where breakfast was served that even included a small pool. They also had several hostel dogs. If we had been staying in Santo Domingo it definitely would have been a fun place to spend a couple of nights.
However, we didn't have very much time in Santo Domingo so we checked out fairly early and went to go walk through the historic district before catching our bus to the north. There is a lot of history in Santo Domingo, because it was the capital of the first Spanish Colony in the New World. As a matter of fact it was founded in 1496 by Bartholomew Columbus, Christopher Columbus's brother. There were lots of beautiful old churches and we also visited the first hospital in the New World.
Then we hopped on an Uber over to the bus stop where we caught the but to Sabana De La Mar in the northern part of the country. The view out of the bus was gorgeous, but the bus was comfortable enough to catch a few Z's since we hadn't gotten a lot sleep the night before.
When we got up to Sabana De La Mar we got a ride on a motor cycle out to our hotel on the outskirts of town. Then we walked back through town to meet a man name Halle for dinner. Halle was our designated tour guide for our adventures the next day in Los Haitises National Park. He was also with the company that had booked us our whale watching tour, so he was able to help us figure out the plans for the next couple of days. He was really friendly and we had a lot of fun with him, both at dinner over the course of the next day. And Sabana De La Mar was a cute little town that we had fun spending some time in.
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| Central Park in Sabana De La Mar |
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| Hotel where we stayed while in Sabana De La Mar |
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| Restaurant where we met Halle for dinner. |
After those two excited days in the north we had a travel day in which we took the same bus back down to the capital and then another huge bus down to Anna's region of Barahona. The long bus rides stop somewhere in the middle of the route to allow people to go to the bathroom and buy some food. The route down to Barahona stopped at an absolutely massive rest area that seemed like the dominican Buc-ee's, with much less branding.
Except the "express" busses, all of the buses will pick you up and drop you off anywhere along their route. So when the bus passed through Bombita we hopped off. We spent the next three day in Bombita getting to see how Anna lives her life.
On Wednesday morning Anna put us back on the early bus back to Santo Domingo. We managed to make it from the bus to a taxi and get to airport all by ourselves even with our limited Spanish. We were going to try to use Uber, which wouldn't have required any Spanish, but we got talked into getting driven by a taxi who wanted to take us for less money.
The DR is not without its share of issues, most of which can still be traced back to colonial days. Although the majority of the population has darker skin, people running for government positions almost always have lighter skin and will intentionally make themselves look whiter. The DR is also better off that its island neighbor Haiti. There were several of checkpoints on the way back from Anna's village to the capital where security officers are looking for "illegal immigrants". We were told that this generally plays itself out as them asking people who "look Haitian" (darker skin) to provide identification, and this was in fact how it played out in front of us. Of course, it didn't affect us personally, but it is something to be aware of when traveling there.
Overall we did have an amazing week in the Dominican Republic! To Kathleen it felt like where Guinea could be with about 20 more years of development, and the comparison drawing was constant. It also made her want to get back in the Global Health direction so that she can live abroad again. Andreas loved his time there too but is less sure about wanting to move there.
