15/01/2022
Wrapping up my 2nd week in the Dominican Republic 🌴
My week in the capital Santo Domingo culminated with a free (and packed) live show right next to the hostel - Bacheta / Salsa / Marangae / One-of-them-I-don't-know-the-difference. Was nice and I met some interesting locals, though we were on a hysterical slope, and by the end I said that with all due respect to the cool vibes, I ran to the room, tuned down the trumpets echoing in my head, and chilled with some Spanish rock guitars by Heroes de Silencio, Mago de Oz and Soda Stereo. Ahhhhhhhhh.😮💨🎸 Thank you very much, this is real music. Yeah yeah, a matter of taste, I know 😇.
My Santo Domingo week was mostly wandering around "Zona Colonial", the city's tourist area, even spotting a nice little beachlette near the harbor, that's quite charming if you ignore the dumped garbage. Santo Domingo's a huge city and one best be careful walking around unknown places, as it's notorious for all sorts of less pleasant things. And let's say that even in the so-called tourist area, it's not exactly Venice, except for a street or two, and Central American vibes are well felt, for better or worse.
So I finished the week I booked at the cool but basic hostel in the capital, and cut to the country's northeast, to a place called "Las Terrenas". It's a nice seaside town where tourism is developing but not yet exploding, with lots of French people everywhere - not sure if it has something to do with the nearby French Antilles islands, a relic of the glorious empire they once had (Sorry Napoleon).
The anchor for choosing the new hostel was, ahhhhh, hot water in the shower 🚿. Simple, yet not so obvious in the Dominican Republic, especially at the low price levels I'm aiming at. I spent a week without in Santo and it was not fun. The hostel turned out to be nice, a bit out of town, and a bit out of the internet 🙈 but oh, ah, how I congratulated the kind hostel owner when his promise panned out with the a gushing flow of hot water.
If cats and dogs don't describe the weather, it's easy to catch a moto taxi, which is a boy-and-above on a 2-wheeled-something. You just settle a 2-3$ price and roll with blazing safety and elegance to the beach and "civilization". I even managed to encounter an Israeli among The French and the Dominicans.
I spend my days in even slower gear than usual: wandering around beautiful beaches, self-searching among the palms, scratching dozens of mosquito bites left from Santo Domingo (in vein of course), staring at the wild cow grazing the thick grass in front of my room, acquainting deeper with my dreams in multiple sleeping hours, acquainting even deeper with my ever-growing mp3s collection, attempting to get some work done between a power outage and an internet cut, and last but not least, self-endulging with the huge avocados 🥑.
For those asking and wondering, yes, it's possible to obtain a normal internet connection in the republic, but, it's really not trivial and should be verified in advance - it very much depends on where you are and how much you're willing to pay. And the long power outage I experienced was actually a planned one, and they said it was only once every few months, so I actually didn't personally verify the horror stories about power outages, beyond occasional 2 minute cuts.
Bottom line, I'm pretty bored and not so comfortable here in the Dominican. I don't really connect to the "scene" (which exists) and I'm also squinting towards Playa del Carmen in Mexico, where there's a mass of nomads in a million WhatsApp groups, a blissful chattery situation I know from Tenerife. I got recommendations for Cabarete, not far from here, but I wonder if I can be bothered.
It should be noted that it doesn't mean the Dominican Republic is “not good” or anything 🙃 It's simply my subjective experience, stemming from my character and interaction in the places I chose. When I get to a place I typically try to find friends in the hostel and online, and here I didn't quite find. I've had similar experiences in my journey and I know myself in situations like these, and know that I prefer "social hubs" in which it may not be easy to find yourself, but altogether a more simple and less alienated experience.
Anyway, there are some real pluses here, if one ignores the garbage thrown and the motorcycle noise\polution: Due to much rainfall, everything is thick-green, full of palm trees and tropical plants and bananas. It's cheap and easy to get around, and locals don't harras you much (like in Thailand for example), but are rather nice and welcoming. Huge avocados. Huge coconuts. Delicious bananas. Smoothies ("batidas") are great and cheap. Local "President" beer.
I had quite an evening the other day - I walked in the beach called "Playa Bonita", as I always roll, with my feet in the water and flip-flops in hand. It got dark and I kept walking on the beach, one Dominican with a weird look got a little too friendly and started following me, so I clung to another white couple until he gave up. I kept walking through a luxury hotel full of rich Frenchmen where I drank some good coffee that was not meant for me. I continued on a dark and somewhat scary road, telling myself "all good, what the heck", and indeed reached the main road and heard drum beats of rock, music and singing.
Before I could say Christopher Colombus, I found myself in a two-hour local church session, that if only I'd gotten a peso for every "praise Jesus," I'd have bought hot water and fast internet powder for the whole year. It was an interesting cultural experience, reminding me of American movies about remote towns. Of course they asked me where I'm from and when I said Israel they said "oh, we have a special place in the heart of Israel, it's where it all started" and such, and in the end they took me "home". I was especially impressed by the 10-year-old boy who was skillfully mastering the drums, less in Christian (Catholic? Protestant?) passion and more in rocky groove. When the local priests went on and on, in fast and smeared Spanish I could only half understood, about how Jesus and God and the Holy Spirit are everything - he sat next to me and was amazed to hear I was not from America but from the other side of the world ⛪
So that's it, all that's is to decide Mexico and prepare my arrival (there are many posts about how to get a long visa 🙂 ).
