I just spent a week in the Dominican Republic with Wifey and Princess Jr. We were staying with some friends who've been living there for a few years now. I'm about to tell you about that stay, and I want to acknowledge two things:
- I realize that I can never really complain about being someplace where the weather is in the 80s and above all the time when the alternative was for me to be in Boston getting snowed on.
- I am about to speak from a place of extreme privilege, specifically American privilege. I find it ironic that can go to another country and feel privileged because of my American-ness, but I don't feel privileged in my own country even though I don't stop being American when I'm at home. That's another post for another day though.
So, let me quickly note the things that were enjoyable about the DR:
- Our friends were there, and we like them, so yay.
- Beaches. Lots of beaches. If you like beaches, another yay. I happen to enjoy beaches so that worked for me.
- Some neat natural wonders that weren't hidden behind miles of rope. We visited Los Tres Ojos the day before we left, and it is amazing. Underground caves and lakes, and not a single security guard or rope or anything. You could dip your toes into the water, you could touch the stones and stalagmites—essentially you could interact with it in a way that you usually can't with US places of this nature.
The reason you can run all over the place here is kind've the heart of the DR though: No hay reglas. There are no rules. It's like some kind of Mad Max world. That's probably why, as a person who kind've likes rules and order, I didn't dig it.
Herein begins the rant.
The country is filthy. I have never seen litter like in the DR. Seriously, I get pissed off at home when I see a candy wrapper or crushed beer can chilling in the grass because we've gotten to the point where litter is no longer the norm. They didn't get the memo in the DR. Shit is gross. You drive along the highway and there's this beautiful coastline with sandy beaches and grass, and you see all of this white shit dotting the grass and you're like, What's that? And then you realize it's styrofoam containers and bottles and plastic bags and all kinds of crap. And no, this isn't tourist detritus. These are people who freaking live here!! They give zero fucks about it. Remember how I said there were beaches everywhere? Well, with your white sands and blue water you're likely to also find someone's dinner remains. Zero. Fucks.
Now, you can probably go to one of their all-inclusive resorts and have some pretty nice clean beaches. By far one of the best beaches we visited was Playa Coson, largely because it didn't lie right next to any major throughway or streets. Pretty much it looked like only tourists frequented it. It was removed enough that it was "unspoiled". The beaches that were more in the heart of things like at Las Terrenas or the beaches at Boca Chica though? Nope. I saw a dude walk right up to the shore on one beach and empty his pockets and walk away. No one gave him a second glance. He was a local. I'm gonna go out on a limb and say that the beaches the locals frequent, which were the ones we usually went to because they were closest to Santo Domingo, were the dirtiest ones. I actually found an interesting website with forum posts about the trash problem there after I Googled to see what kind of waste management system they have in place. In a nutshell: none.
If you ever visit the DR and don't stay in an all-inclusive, i.e a place you won't have to leave, do yourself a favor and hire a taxi. Do not attempt to drive. I always thought Boston drivers were kind've lawless, pulling all kinds of stunts like creating lanes where there are none, cutting people off...just generally being Mass-holes. You've seen nothing until you've been in Santo Domingo-area traffic. There are no rules. It's a free-for-all, and as a result there is a lot of honking, a lot of standoffs, and a lot of crappy-looking cars. They're called Frankenstein cars because they're made from all kinds of random parts, put together and barely running. They break down so much that there are literally DR-equivalent AAA trucks just waiting around every few miles on the highway. Even the rental car we got from the airport was missing the original radio. It was some after-factory thing held in place in part by a piece of wood, and the oil cap was missing. I've seen bootleg cars; I grew up in the poor part of a major city. Some of family members are currently driving cars that should not be on the road. But I've never seen anything like this.
People here are on the take. Everyone. Everywhere you go, they are trying to sell you a service or a thing or whatever. Wifey and our friends called them "entrepreneurs". I call them annoying and con artists. Dudes put on fake but official-looking vests with nametags and offer you services. You have to watch out for that shit. We parked at a restaurant on the beach at Boca Chica. We were literally less than 50 feet from our car and could see it perfectly. Dude offered to watch our car for money. I said no. We finished up, went to our car, and he approached us for payment. I was like, "No. I didn't ask you to watch it. I told you I didn't want you to watch it." He was pissed. Fuck him. I was at the end of my rope anyway. At that same beach we had people approaching us every 5 minutes, seriously, trying to sell us shit. "Want me to braid your daughter's hair?" "Want a massage?" "Want some of this fresh seafood I just caught today?" "Want a cd?" "Want some sunglasses?" "How about an inflatable ballooon for the nina?" And on and on and on. That can really put a cramp in a "relaxing" day at the beach.
You go to a tourist attraction like Los Tres Ojos or the Colonial Zone and "tour guides" will offer their services to you. You don't need a tour guide for a building with one room and placards explaining everything. You don't need a tour guide for an attraction that comes with headphones and an audio tour. You wouldn't give some random guy off the street money to give you a tour of Anne Frank's house, but in the DR dudes disguise themselves you think they're official and part of the attraction. Language barriers aid that misconception, and they know it. I'm lucky I saw this in the guide book or I would likely have fell for it.
At the airport for our flight back I attempted to get a cart to haul our luggage inside. The carts are free. Some dudes though, who I'm pretty sure are not actually employed by the airport, are standing around outside with carts and they claim you. They roll up to the side of your car as you pull up, they wait until you start unloading your luggage, and they start taking it from you and telling you that they'll help you. I asked our friend if I should let them or go get my own cart and she said, "Sure, but they'll expect a tip". She slipped a few pesos into my hand for him, hugged us goodbye, and left. The dude rolled the cart through the sliding doors right up to the checkin line...which was literally a few feet from the door. He then unloaded our bags in the line and looked at me expectantly. I was disgusted. I put the coins in his hand, he looked at them, and then he was disgusted. I have no idea how much she gave me, but I felt fine about him feeling stiffed because what kind of tip did he want for rolling our luggage cart 20 feet!? I could have carried all of our shit in there myself! Entrepreneurial my ass.
I don't know if it's obvious to you, but this was by far the most annoying part of this country for me.
The food sucks. It's bland and tasteless. The only dish I had that was delicious was something called boca chica, which is essentially deep fried whole fish. The best I had it was at a place called Soya Azul, which was another beachside restaurant that was maybe the second nicest beach we'd gone to. Only complaint I have about that beach were the rocks (ouch!) and a lot of seaweed. By the way, I had to Google the name of this place to make sure I had the right beach, and one of the results was a page of Instagram photos. This chick
was literally right in front of us on the beach while she was taking these. We laughed about it because you see pics like these all the time, and you think, Who are these people in bikinis making duck faces? And then there she was, literally doing it right in front of us. Good times. I have to show Wifey. She'll get a kick out of this.
Other than that though Dominican food was pretty horrible. It's like the existence of salt hasn't made itself known over there. They really like Italian food though. You can find pasta dishes everywhere. Those aren't bad, but it's kind of weird to go to a country and eat another country's food, you know? Like, it's a rule of mine not to go to another country and eat some American chain food (although I was sorely tempted at one point).
Also, beer. Would you like Presidente? No? How about Presidente Light? No? Welllll...maybe we have Corona. You'd rather do that than drink water from the tap in a country where maybe 49% of the water has been treated, and even then you can't be sure of the water treatment system itself. You can drink bottled water...but where was it bottled? Presidente is sounding good, huh? In the bottle. No hielo.
Couple of other notes that are not vacation gripes but just general observations. People over there seem to either be really poor, or really "rich". I say "rich" because I don't know what rich translates to in pesos. Like, we went into a mall with a L'Occitane in it and that was supposed to be a place where "rich" Dominicans go to hang, but airports have L'Occitanes in them too. Any random mall over here could have one. My friends were like, "Yeah, you can go to that mall if you want to spend like 1000 pesos on a shirt." 1000 pesos roughly translates to almost $100 or something US, and there are definitely people I know who would spend that kind of money on a shirt, and I wouldn't consider them rich. I think DR "rich" is actually middle class, and they look rich simply because there is such a huge contrast between them and the lower classes. Like, there's a huge difference between driving a brand new shiny Mazda and a Frankenstein car, right? I drive a '98 Accord that has seen better days because I'm cheap, but I'm still in the same income bracket as someone driving a new Volkswagen. That doesn't seem to be the case in the DR. I saw most of this disparity outside of the city proper, along the highways.
Dudes with guns. Lots of dudes with guns. Everywhere. At toll booths, at the entrance to apartment complexes, in strip malls. Big guns too. They looked like sawed-off shotguns, but I didn't exactly stare at them. They were in military fatigues and looked to be official, but it was difficult to tell if they were private security firms or members of the police force or army or what. Now look, I know that the police force around me in the States are obviously armed. The Bank of America building I walk past to work sometimes has an armed guard at the door. This is not news to me. Maybe it's the size of the guns, that they're so blatant about it. Maybe it's the casual nature in which they hold them. Maybe it's because they're everywhere. I've never driven through a toll booth on the Pike and seen armed guards hanging out there, protecting...something. Never had to walk past an armed guard on the way back from the swimming pool in a private building either. I mentioned this to my friend, and she said, rightly, "Would you rather you couldn't see them?". It made me very nervous though, especially after reading warnings on the US Department's website about dudes posing as officers to shake you down, and actual police officers pulling you over to extort you. I'll admit, visiting that site was not the best thing to do for an already nervous traveler. It made it seem like the DR was full of criminals waiting to snatch your bag, follow you to your hotel and then snatch your bag, or follow you to your hotel, rape you, and then snatch your bag.
Also, just throwing this out there, but a black woman with short hair and more masculine traits (i.e. shorts, t-shorts, no make-up, baseball cap) traveling with a much more feminine white woman and a clearly mixed-race child? That gets attention, and not the positive kind. I can't tell you how many stares I got. Lots of eyeballs moving between me and Wifey trying to figure shit out. Homosexuality is not illegal in the DR, but they don't exactly like it.
In short, if I were to ever return to the DR, I would stay in a resort. Fuck trying to experience the local culture. I did it and found it lacking. I'm ready to seclude myself in a safe, clean resort.
