Day 3, July 10: Manuel es un gran conductor!

A map overview of our day trip: from Sosua to Maimon and back

Today, we took a tour of parts of the DR. Our usual driver, Felix, was unable to take us, so he arranged for a friend named Manuel ("Mahn-well") to give us the tour. We were headed from Sosua, (Soh-soo-ah), on the upper right, to Puerto Plata, left of center. As the day unfolded, we went all the way to Maimon (Meye-mohn), before returning to our condo in Sosua Ocean Village. There was a lot to see and experience, so I will discuss the day in sections of related experiences. Likewise, I will try to limit the number of photos I show on today's blog.

SOSUA to PUERTO PLATA

We left Sosua Ocean Village passing back through the parts of the town we have seen the last two days heading to the airport and then beyond. We did not see much of anything new, but we were a bit more observant of the area between the commercial district and the airport. For one, we were paying more attention to the various public and private beaches (playas) and their access points. We were also noticing more, how the traffic patterns unfolded in front of us -- specifically the crazy, seemingly dangerous ways in which motorcycles would weave in and around cars. The motorcycles were not just driven by young men, but also by old men, by young and older women. Many motorcycles would have a driver and a rider; some even had three to a cycle, and not so infrequently, the third passenger was a young child. A third observation we made was the relatively slow pace of construction on buildings. We would observe a few men working on one site, perhaps two men working on another site, and a single man working yet another site. And there were many men who did not seem to be doing any work at all, whether at a construction site or on the street in front of shops and stores. Here are some scenes along the road to the airport.

The name of the Puerto Plata airport is Georgio Luperon International Airport. It is actually south of and outside of Puerto Plata proper, but that is not so unusal in the world of airports. We asked Manuel who was Georgio Luperon. He explained to us that Luperon was an important general in the history of the Domincan Republic's freedom. We would learn more about him later in the tour. We continued past the airport headed to Puerto Plata. When we reached the outskirts of Puerto Plata, the differences between that city and Sosua were immediately evident. Puerto Plata -- I will refer to it as PP hereafter -- had more people, more traffic, more commerce. Clearly it had/has a much stronger economy as reflected by the number of shops, the density of the buildings in the neighborhoods, the better maintained, and more vibrant looking buildings. Here are our early views of PP:

1st row: Playa Dorado, a private beach for affluent tourists; Casa Brugal, the distillery for one of the country's signature rums; an electric appliance shop.

2nd row: wealthy enclave of foreigners, primarily US and Canadian; motorcycle recklessly barging into traffic ahead of our van; another of many murals in the city;

3rd row: the provincial baseball stadium; the provincial courthouse; the provincial administration building.

Upon entering the city, Manuel drove us to the main drive along the shore line. There, we caught many glimpses of the ocean and local beaches, as well as saw many more affluent residences and shops. So many of the buildings had murals. I was and am fascinated by the degree to which murals are an essential part of the public aesthetic in both cities. yet in PP, there were many more murals and the depictions were often in bright colors. Here are some of those photos from the drive along the shoreline:

The photo of the statute in the island in the ocean is of Neptune.

We came to this sign and this small street, signifying that we were entering the historic district, which was our ultimate destination for the day.

The central historic district of PP contained the several tourist attractions that we had shared with Manuel, as the primary places we wanted to visit: Umbrella Street, Paseo La Dona Blanco, the central park square, and the historic catholic church. Manuel drove down this very narrow street -- you could almost call it an alley -- lined with bright colored shops and businesses, and loaded with hundreds, maybe thousands of tourists. It was apparent that a cruise ship or two was in port, as there were tour guides leading large groups of foreigners around from place to place and giving commentaries by talking out loud or using bullhorns to make themselves heard over the general buzz and hubbub.

We walked around, stopping first at a coffee shop that carried decaf coffee, because Patrise was determined to get her first coffee of our visit so far. For health reasons, she can only drink decaf, and so had been going without until this third day of our visit. We stopped into this great little coffee shop, where she ordered (decaf) mocha cafe lattes (caliente/hot) for herself and for Deborah and ordered a frappucino (fria/cold) for me. Here are the pictures I snapped as we entered the historic district and while inside the shop.

1st row: first view along Calle Beller; side view and front view of the Amber Museum;

2nd row: Calle Beller, the PP Chamber of Commerce building, a guidepost to the many items available for purchase throughout the historic district;

3rd row: Calle Beller views (left and center); "social media" sign inside the coffee shop;

4th row: El Rincon Coffee shop sign; photo of Deborah, Patrise and Manuel; mural promoting the DR's status as the world's number one exporter of organic chocolate.

El Rincon was actually on Umbrella Street, so coffee in hand, we continued to stroll down Umbrella street, meandering through the crowds, being called out by local shop owners hawking their various wares, souvenirs, and tchochkis. We observed a young woman demonstrating traditional Dominican dances in a dress made of the national colors (red, white and blue). We observed a man with a parrot, trying to entice tourists to let the parrot sit on their shoulders or arms and take a picture -- for a fee of course. And there were several small dogs who did not seem to belong to anyone, who slowly drifted amongst the crowd looking with sad eyes, seemingly waiting for someone to acknowledge them and probably wanting be fed or catch some dropped scraps as well.

Umbrella Street and its immediate environs:

When we got to the end of Umbrella Street, which is also officially San Felipe street (Calle San Felipe), we made a left turn and continued wandering through the district. I won't attempt a blow-by-blow, stop-by-stop narrative, but here are some of the many other sights we took in.

A few explanatory notes about some of the photos above. Paseo Dona Blanco is a narrow alley which leads to the very first hotel in PP. The woman who founded that hotel, given the affectionate name Dona Blanco, later died of cancer. After her death, the city painted the walls and alley of the street pink, the official color of the worldwide breast cancer research movement. Duarte Street (Calle Duarte) is named for one of the country's revolutionary war heroes, Juan Pablo Duarte y Diez. The multisided white and green building denotes the central park of the historic district and notice the large church in the picture right before it (3rd row, far left). This is the cathedral. Finally, on the last row of photos, far left, is a gentleman holding his small daughter and sitting between them is the pet monkey of a local vendor, who convinced dad and mom to let the daughter take a picture with the monkey -- for a small fee, of course.

PP to MAIMON

After all of the viewing of the historic district, we were getting hungry and asked Manuel to take us to a nice restaurant for lunch. Manuel chose to drive to the Maimon area, north and west of Puerto Plata -- refer to the map again at the beginning of this blog entry -- which was probably about 20-25 minutes outside of town. Along the way, we passed a heavily industrial area, including the city's major landfill, several manufacturing businesses, a technical university that was a branch of the main campus in Santo Domingo, and we passed the second cruise port, called Amber Cove. Amber Cover is exclusively used by Carnival Cruise lines, while the cruise port in town is exclusively used by Royal Carribean. Here are photos taken along the route to our lunch destination.

We arrived at the restaurant, Los Compadres Pescadaria. Obviously Manuel knew some of the people who worked there. It was strictly outside seating downstairs, but the weather was perfect for it -- not too hot, a bit overcast, and a nice breeze. After studying the menus, Patrise ordered paella, Deborah ordered fried Red snapper, Manuel ordered "lamps", and I ordered the "Little lobsters" (the name they used for langostinos. While awaiting for our food to be served, Manuel took me upstairs, so that I could get photos of the second floor and the views outside of the restaurant from the second floor. The scond floor was quite nicely appointed. However, that portion of the restaurant did not open until after 2pm. While up there, Manuel took a photo of me, and I took photos of the restaurant and views outside of it. Here they are:

Our food and drink arrived and we ate it enthusiastically. We agreed the flavors were good, but as a rule of thumb, it seems as if Dominicans prefer their food dishes cooked more than we usually prefer. Still, we ate, enjoyed the food and the conversation. We learned that Manuel and his wife of eleven years are both from PP. They have no children for now. We did Google searches for "lamps" and came up with two plausibe explanations of what they are and one really yucky-looking photo of what a lamp is/might be. Manuel ordered a large avocado for us to share; fresh avocado is so much better than what we normally get stateside. We all had more food than we could finish eating.

MAIMON back to PP

We paid for the bill, including treating Manuel to lunch, loaded into the van and began the long return trip home. However, on the way, we were going to visit the historic fort. Forteleza San Felipe, and we HAD to stop back by the historic district to get ice cream.

On the way back to the historic district, we encountered a traffic jam. Initally we thought that maybe there had been an accident, because an ambulance passed us with its lights flashing and its siren blaring. However, that was not the case. In a while, as we were creeping up to and through the traffic chokepoint, Manuel pointed out that there was an Immigration and Customs truck. Apparently they had apprehended some Haitians who were illegally in the country. Recall from your sixth grade geography that the Dominican Republic and Haiti are two countries on the same island, often called Hispanola. The only thing that separates the two is a high mountain range. So it is not unusual to see Haitians on the streets of the DR. Earlier in the trip we had asked Manuel, how did the DR government keep the country from being flooded by Haitians, since their poverty levels are so much worse than in the DR. He had told us that the military keeps a strong and active presence at the border point in the mountains and that they do immigration enforecement vigorously. Apparently, it is possible for Haitians to be in the DR if they have "papers." When ICE stops them on the street, if they cannot show proper documentation, they are immediately deported back to Haiti.

Here are some photos taken along the route back to the district and the fort.

The visit to the fort was brief, but informative. We learned a bit more about the Dominicans' struggle for independence from Spain, then being momentarily part of Haiti, being reannexed by Spain, and then finally gaining full independence. General Georgio Luperon was one of the leaders in the resistance throughout all of these years. Although he was asked to take on important political positions, he mostly deferred. He did agree to serve as the interim president for about one year, but then returned to civilian life. Much of his life, after independence, was spent in exile, because he often opposed the political movements from his former resistance colleagues, which seemed to him to be moves toward autocracy and authoritarianism. He was a very strict believer in democracy. So exile was his outlet to avoid being jailed or killed, while being able to assert and plan for the return of democratic principles while abroad. Later in the evening, as I was preparing this blog, I read this quote that he had written over 100 years ago. It seems so relevant for our country and our times, that I will now quote it here.

"Today, the nation has lost principles and feelings, without which freedom disappears. Today, the love of country is a burden in the bottom of a pocket; previously it was worn engraved on the heart. Very few currently think about the future, and it seems that they believe that the tyranny that humiliates and subjugates them will have no end, sustained by the perversion of the great popular feelings; and as if the country and patriotism were a chimera, they run after the oppressor to sell them their rights and their freedoms, with which the stupid have the logical satisfaction of their baseness. Concupiscence supercedes any other consideration. Fraud in all business is the rule, rather than the exception. In politics they deceive each other, without any of them having the courage to protest against the infamy."

Here are some photos I took at the fort, including the statue dedicated to Georgio Luperon.

We returned to the district to get ice cream. While there, I went to a bank ATM to get some more cash. However, the ATMs (there were four of them, mind you) would not dispense any cash: and not just for me, but the Dominican patrons also experienced the same disappointment. So prompted by Manuel, who explained my goal to the secruity guard blocking my way, I entered the bank, The guard gave me a number, and I sat to wait for my number to be called. I guess I sat for about ten-twelve minutes. This was a bit of a challenge, because the announcements were in Spanish stating the customer number being called and the window to go to.

I had only begun to take a beginner's Spanish course earlier this year, and I wasn't able to complete all seven weeks. Still, I managed to notice when my number (C25) was called and the window I was to go to also named (Caja 9). I was secretly pleased with myself. It took about ten minutes to complete the transaction, which required me to show my passport, and to sign some papers about the transaction. However, I did successfully complete the business, and complimented the young teller's nails on my way out. (It was not false flattery. Her nails really were quite tastefully done. She lit up at the compliment, thanked me, and wished for me to enjoy the rest of my afternoon.)

PP to SOSUA (back to where we began)

When I emerged from the bank, Patrise, Deborah, and Manuel, were coming across the plaza from the ice cream shop with a generous double scoop of stratciatella and cookies and cream for me. Yum, yum! We loaded into the van and to bring this long tale to an end, we made our way back to Sosua Ocean Village. As Patrise observed, it always seems to take less time for the return trip than for the outward bound trip. So before we knew it, Manuel was depositing us at Barefoot Villa and getting his richly deserved fee. As we had entered Sosua, he was playing with me by testing some of my Spanish: water - agua, bathroom - banos, celebrese -- "just what you said." We laughed heartily because he had asked me in Spanish rather than giving me the English equivalent. He said my Spanish was coming along. I complimented him that his English was much better than my Spanish. Then as we were appoaching Ocean Village, I said to him, "Manuel es un gran conductor!" His face lit up with a big smile, as I had said to him that Manuel is a great tour guide. He said next time, I have to be the tour guide.

And so ended a wonderful day of touring. although we were sorry that Barry wanted to stay behind to meet some deadlines.

Adios and hasta la manana!