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Published: April 9th 2006
It´s been a strange week, with seasoned veterans leaving the guesthouse and newbies arriving. In theory, this leaves me as one of the most experienced people in the house but it´s a bit like the blind leading the blind!
It was an odd week at school, too. Without Sarah to take the lead, Amanda and I struggled a bit to gain control of the classes who were even more excitable than usual because it was the end of term. By Thursday (the last day of school before the Easter holidays), half of the teachers were away on courses so we abandoned all hope of teaching English and just had goodbye parties for Amanda who also leaves on Monday.
On Friday, everybody in the house took a trip to Boca Chica, the nearest beach to Santo Domingo. Although it´s only 30km down the coast, it takes quite an effort to get there. Stage 1 is either a taxi or two public cars to Parqueo Enriquillio and stage 2 is a bus to Boca Chica. Parqueo Enriquillio is in a part of Santo Domingo I haven´t visited before and it was easy to see why Massiel (the i-to-i coordinator in SD)
On the way to Boca Chica
View from the bus to Boca Chica.had advised us to stay away from it. Shabby shanty houses sit alongside businesses and market stalls of every kind and are crammed into narrow, dirty streets. An unsuspecting tourist could easily get lost or into trouble or fall foul of the drug gangs that are prevalent in this part of the city. It certainly has a very different feel to Cacique where the guesthouse is and made me realise for the first time, that we´re actually in one of the nice, middle-class parts of town.
Although air conditioned and relatively rust-free, the local buses that ply the outskirts of the city are basically big gua-guas, stopping every 200 yards or so to pick up more and more people until every last square inch is filled with paying customers. At one point our conductor was hanging onto the outside of the bus to make more room inside for punters!
Boca Chica itself is a small ´seaside resort´popular with French and German tourists. Despite this it´s relatively unspoilt with a long strip of pure white sand fringed by palm trees, bars and shacks selling traditional fried food. One end of the beach has a rather uncharming view of a
large industrial plant but if you sit with your back to this, you get uninterrupted views of the turquoise blue caribbean. We spent a pleasant afternoon soaking up the sun, swimming in the sea and playing guess-the- nationality/spot-the-sex-tourist.
By about 5pm however, apocalyptic black clouds had come over and changed the sea from tranquil turquoise to sludge brown, reminiscent of the solent so we decided to leave the beach in search of food. Unfortunately, most of the flies in Boca Chica had done the same thing so we passed on the fish and meat and asked one of the stall-holders if he had any fruit. After some confusion, we established that he did, indeed, have pineapple, melon and bananas so we each ordered a selection and sat back to carry on watching the world go by. After about 25 minutes, we bored of this and decided to head for the bus but our errant stall-holder returned in the nick of time - with two chocolate ice creams! More sign language and spanglish later, we finally made it clear that while ice cream is nice, what we really wanted was some fruit. Another 20 minutes and five paper plates of
fruit duly arrived. It was very nice but totally unremarkable so we were, to say the least, surprised to get a bill for 1,900 pesos - that´s forty pounds! Unfortunately for him, we weren´t American tourists so instead of just paying him we launched a verbal assault of outraged indignation and threw the bill back at him. His next offer for 1,200 pesos was also rejected and he finally settled for 600 pesos, which was still a bit steep for what amounted to 5 bananas, half a melon and half a pineapple.
Next week is Semana Santa (Easter week) and the main holiday in the Domincan Republic. As the school is closed, everybody at the house is de-camping along the coast for a few days to a small town called Bayahibe where we hope to get in some serious beach-time and a spot of snorkelling. It´s not a bad life...
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Steve
non-member comment
Glasses up...
Hey you.... The pics look great, so glad to hear it's all going well... good luck with the weather on your Easter break and make sure you do get some under water action.... i would imagine there will be loads of sea life to look at even in 2' of water.... Keep up the great work...!!! Steve xx