stuff

Trip Report
The Dominican Republic, 15-18 April 2004

Sometime early in April, I discovered that I could go to the Dominican Republic and stay at a nice place with food and drinks included, for only $500.00. I have never been there, so naturally, I decided to go check it out.

First though, some background. The Domincan Republic, or the DR as some here like to call it, is a really screwed-up place, but it isn't nearly as much a mess as, say, the neighboring Republic of Haiti. As many of you readers know, Haiti is going through the final stages of a civil war. If you can imagine what the American South was like during and after the American Civil War, you can get a pretty good picture of what life is like in Haiti right now.

Something like 50 to 90 percent of the land on the Hatian side of the island is deforested, because in the short term, making charcoal is much more lucrative than growing mangoes or bananas. In many places, the land is owned by absentee landlords, or the titles are uncertain, so there is little incentive to take care of it. I have heard reports that the northern portion of Haiti has actually become a desert.

With the trees gone, as well as a lot of the topsoil, there isn't much left to grow food on. Many people are living off of a sort of bread made with water, sugar, butter, and dirt. I am not making this up. Dirt is being substituted for flour, because no one is growing any sort of starchy vegatables, such as potatoes, taro root, yams, etc.

There were aqueducts, sewers, roads, electric power stations, and other infrastructure projects, built by the U.S. Army during the occupation of Haiti during the 1920s. Years of corruption, mismanagement, and neglect have made all of these completely inoperable.

But enough about Haiti. The DR is also corrupt, mismanaged, and in many places neglected, but it's more of a Louisiana sort of bad government. Things are pretty bad, but on the other hand, nobody is starving or eating dirt.

Most of the DR's history has been dominated by dictators of one sort or another. The worst of the lot was Rafael Leonidas Trujillo, who ruled the nation from 1930 to 1961. During the American occupation of the 1920s, Trujillo finagled his way to the the top of the reconstituted Dominican Army. When the occupation ended in 1924, Trujillo managed to block any reforms by the elected government, and then in 1930, he took direct control of the country.

The best comparison to Trujillo would be Saddam Hussein without the oil. He pretty much raped his country of its resources and sent the proceeds off to Switzerland; at the time of his death in 1961, he was estimated to be worth about $500 million. The man had thousands of statues of himself made and distributed around the country, every home and business had to have a picture of him promenently displayed, and he even had the capitol renamed in his honor; Santo Domingo became Ciudad de Trujillo. That took some stones; there never was a Hitlerville and Stalingrad was just an industrial town on the Volga, not the capitol of the USSR. I think if Trujillo would have renamed the whole country after himself if the idea ever occured to him.

All that ended on 30 May 1961, when his car was ambushed on his way to see a mistress. Both Trujillo and his driver were killed in a hail of bullets. It remains an unsolved murder, one that no one has any desire to close. My feeling is that the CIA was behind it. Trujillo has a history of acting beligerently towards his neightbors, but he was tolerated by successive American administrations because he was anti-communist and treated American sugar companies well. Over the years, however, the American government became less and less tolerant of Trujillo's antics. The straw that broke the camel's back was his sponsorship of a failed assasination attempt against the then president of Venezuela, Romulo Bétancourt.

Regardless of whether the CIA had him whacked, every year, the thirtieth of May is celebrated as a national holiday.

My own family has had some experience with the Trujillo regime, but nothing too terrible. Back in the late 1950s, my mother's cousin Oscar was visiting the DR and was eating at a restaurant. He ordered some soup, and when he tried it, he spat it out and demanded something else. The head waiter told him the the soup was named after the president, and to send it back would be an insult to him. Oscar then reportedly said that he didn't care if it was named after the Pope, it still tasted terrible, and he wanted it sent back and have a different soup.

He was arrested and charged with "insulting the dignity of the President of the Republic". Oscar sat in jail for a few days until the American embassy raised enough of a stink that the police released him and put him on the very next plane to Miami.

Another incident: when my mother was in high school, she had a friend who was from the DR. Her father had sent her to live in Puerto Rico, but the girl felt that she had been exiled from her family and she didn't know why.

It all came out after Trujillo was killed. It seemed that Trujillo had something of a sweet tooth for the young ladies, the younger the better. What would happen is if Trujillo or one of his cronies saw an attractive young woman, he would have his goons pick her up and have her taken to his palace. If the girl's family objected, they would disappear.

My mother's friend was the daughter of a cabinet minister, and he didn't want his boss to get his hands on her, so he sent her away to Puerto Rico, and she stayed there until it was safe for her to come back.

Well, aren't you glad you know all this now? If you want to know more about the history of the Dominican Republic, check out this short guide.

Onward, then...

Day 1 - 15 April 2004

Ah, Tax Day! A perfect day for me to leave the country! Actually, being the anal-retentive person that I am, I filed both state and federal taxes way back in January. Maybe I can use my refund checks to buy Cuban cigars.

The flight from San Juan to the DR was very short, only 45 minutes. We flew on a propeller-driven plane operated by American Eagle. My seat was right next to the propeller. Let me assure you, those things are LOUD. I tried reading my newspaper, but the prop noise was just too distracting.

You don't need a passport to visit the DR. All that is required is some proof that you are a US citizen or legal resident. I've never needed a passport before, but fortunately, I do have my birth certificate, which is ok as far as Dominican immigration is concerned. You do have to pay $10.00 for a tourist card, and once you've filled it out, you're in.

Here's a nice view of the tarmac and
the thatched roof at the Punta Cana airport.

We landed in a place called Punta Cana, which is on the extreme eastern point of the DR. The airport is really neat; the terminals are all open to the outside air and the roofs are made of thatched palm fronds. It's sort of like visiting Gilligan's Island.

After getting our bags and going through immigration (a formality, really), we boarded the bus to go to our hotel. The place was about 20 miles away, in a town called Bavaro (presumably, the town was founded by German settlers). It was still daylight, so along the way we got to see the real countryside.

Once thing that I noticed right away was that a lot of the concrete fences had broken glass embedded on the top. In the States, that would be conidered illegall; the courts have maintained that property owners have a duty of care towards people who visit their property, even people who are trespassing in order to rob the place. In the Dominican Republic, they view that sort of reasoning with a great deal of contempt. Someone slices up his hands while breaking into my place, well, he won't be playing the piano in prison anyway.

I highly recommend the place we stayed at, the Princess Bavaro. It's owned by the Princess cruise lines, which in turn is owned by P&O Lines, Ltd. Everything is included here: drinks, meals, beach towels, entertainment, etc. If you want drugs and prostitutes, you're on your own, but I suppose those are easy to get over there.

Parrots!

The rooms are actually bungalows, complete with AC, a fridge full of pop and beer (not an honor bar or any of that crap; all of it totally free), cable TV with all kinds of weird channels from France and Germany, and a lovely terrace outside. The grounds are beautifully landscaped too.

The interior of the resort's main building. Pretty cool, eh?

The thing is, everything was extremely clean. You really could eat off the floors at this hotel. The reason for this is that the cost of labor is really, really low, so it's easy to hire a guy to go around the lobby with a dust mop for an entire shift, and have a lot of gardeners to make sure that there are no dead palm fronds on the lawn and the plants are arrainged just so. Even at that low wage, however, the folks who work there still come out ahead, since the cost of living is very low as well.

In the main building, they have a huge dining room where you serve yourself, buffet-style. The food was actually very good, and it was all you can eat, which made it even better. Nobody there seemed to be too worried about drinking the water, so I had some as well.

Day 2 - 16 April 2004

This day, I decided to just relax and do nothing. I packed my bookbag with a couple of good books and headed out to the beach.

The thing to consider about the resort before going anywhere is that the place is really big. My bungalow was about a kilometer from the beach. I could have walked, but I decided "I'm on vacation". So instead, I took the train.

The "train" was actually a large propane-fueled golf cart with an attached trailer that could seat up to 25 people. It had an established route, so I hopped on board and took it as far as the beach. Once there, I had breakfast, since it's always a bad idea to drink on an empty stomach. Then I plopped down on a deck chair, pulled out a book, and started the piña coladas coming.

One of the many places to get free drinks.

So what book was I reading? Things a Computer Scientist Rarely Talks About by Donald E. Knuth. It was based on a series of lectures he gave at MIT back in 1999 about God and religion and his beliefs. I'll post a full review later, if anyone cares to see it.

There were an awful lot of German and French tourists there, though. It seems that the Dominican Tourist Bureau does a lot of promoting in Contenental Europe, but not so much in the States. I wonder why.

Day 3 - 17 April 2004

On this day, I decided that I wanted to see the "real" Dominican Republic. I could have stayed at the resort, but it's all sort of artificial. I might as well have stayed at home.

So, I signed up for a tour and paid the $75.00. We all got up bright and early and took a taxi to the tour operator's office. Awaiting us there was our Jeep and driver.

These are the Jeeps that we rode on while we were touring the countryside.

The first place we went to was a sugar plantation. Sugar is still a big export product for the DR. What amazed me was how much of the work was being done by hand. There were guys cutting the cane with machetes, and then loading it onto oxcarts. When I asked why none of this was mechanized, I was told that it was cheaper to have these men work the field, than it would be to pay for and maintain tractors and other farm equipment. It turns out that a lot of these men were from Haiti, and many were in the DR illegally.

A view from a Dominican sugar cane plantation.

There is a great deal of discrimination against Hatians in the DR. A lot of them are there simply because conditions are so vile in their home country that they are willing to put up with prejudice from Dominicans. The only work that Haitians can find in the DR are the dirty, dangerous jobs that Dominicans do not want to perform. The children of Haitians born in the DR are routinely denied citizenship and are can't even get birth certificates.

Some more sugar cane. The sugar is inside the stalk, dissolved in the sap. The idea is that the cane is pressed and the watery sap is squeezed out. The water is evaporated, and what you have left is what we call "brown" or "raw" sugar. A refining process is needed to make the white granular sugar with which we are familiar.

One of the darkest moments of Trujillo's rule happened in 1937, when he gave orders to eliminate all of the Haitians living in the DR. About 20,000 people were murdered, mostly in the border regions. Trujillo's government ended up paying an indemnity, but it was an absurdly low amount, less than $500,000.

A lot of this ill feeling, both past and present, has to do with race. Dominicans look down on Haitians because they are perceived as being "blacker" than they are. It makes no difference that they are all the same skin color. Dominicans consider themselves to be "Spanish" or "European", and the Haitians are "African".

Trujillo was very obsessed with race. Oddly enough, before World War II, the DR was one of the few countries where European Jews were welcomed in. Trujillo's motives, however, were less than pure: he saw them not as Jews, but as Europeans who were able to help "whiten" the Dominican gene pool.

While we were there, there were a lot of kids running after our cars begging for money. They were the children of the people who worked there; they spoke mostly in Creole. Our driver advised us not to give them any money, because that would only encourage them furthur. Some of these kids were bold enough to jump onto some of the other moving vehicles and hold their hands out; they were shooed away by the drivers.

After that experience, we were taken to a market where we could buy stuff at wildly inflated prices. There was a tobacco shop which had Cuban cigars in stock, but they wanted over $200.00 for a box. I ended up buying a box of Dominicans for about $25.00, and even then I felt I paid too much.

A Dominican market, catering to tourists. The faces on the posts are these ceramic plates that you're supposed to hang on your wall.

I also bought a package of six little bottles of something called "Mamajuana". It's a sort of Dominican moonshine reputed to enhance sexual potency. The stuff will probably make you go blind first.

A cocoa tree.

Our next stop was at a small family farm somewhere up in the mountains. It took us over an hour to get there, driving through a lot of unpaved and rutted roads. Once we got there, we were shown some cocoa trees and their fruit, and we got to see how chocolate was made.

Two chickens fighting. People used to amuse themselves watching this until television was invented.

Suddenly, two men came out holding roosters. Our tour guide explained that after baseball, cockfighting is the most popular sport in the DR. The two birds were set down on the ground, and they went at it for a few minutes before the handlers picked them up again. They didn't really fight; they mostly puffed their feathers up and pecked at each other a little.

We left the farm and drove around a little more. As we drove, we passed through quite a few small towns. Every time we did, all these kids would come out and wave at us. Evidently, to them we were very exotic. After about another hour of driving, we ended up at a private beach, where we had lunch.

Our lunch consisted of roast pork, chicken, and rice and beans. It was excellent. Plus, we could have fresh coconut milk, drunk straight out of the coconut. We all had a chance to hang out and relax on the hammocks they had strung up between the palm trees.

Eventually, it was time to go back. By the time I got back to the hotel, I was so wiped out, I went right to sleep.

Day 4 - 18 April 2004

Sunday was my last day, but I was determined that I was going to enjoy myself before I left. So I had breakfast and went to the beach. The checkout time was at 3:00 and the bus wasn't going to leave until 4:00, so I had time.

Checking out was a snap and I boarded the bus to the airport at a little after 4:00. At the airport, they had the bomb-and-drug-sniffing dogs go over our luggage, but there were no incidents.

As it turned out, I was leaving with the last group, around 7:00, so I had a little time to wander around and take pictures, some of which you can see here.

At the ticket counter in Punta Cana. LTU is a German charter airline; I think they were going to Munich.
Some German tourists. Funny thing is, they don't look all that scary.
This was our waiting area. Pretty fun, eh?
While you're waiting for your plane, why not take a flier on some video poker? It's Dominican-government approved!
Inside the plane. And yes, it really was that cramped.

The trip back to San Juan went uneventfully. We all had to go through immigration and customs. To my great surprise, nobody asked to look in my bags for contraband. Maybe I didn't look suspicious to them. I may have a bright future as a drug smuggler.

Welcome Back!

When I got home, my cat was waiting for me, and he was a little upset. He hates it when I go away and leave him with a pet sitter, in this case a very nice neighbor lady who likes cats.

Thomas is a little pissed.

Copyright © 2005, Ronald Lovejoy
Last updated: 15 September 2005