Stepping Out of the Boat

What a great weekend! We successfully made it to the other side of the island and back on our own – and we had a wonderfully relaxing weekend.

On Friday night, we were invited to go with one of our Dominican coworkers to his “club.” Here, it’s very popular to belong to a club where you can go work out, swim, and play sports. Most of them are ridiculously expensive to belong to, so we won’t be following that trend. Lucky for us, Marte, a math teacher at St. Michael’s, likes us and wants to hang out with us. He invited us to join him at his club after school.

It turns out that his “club” is really a hotel in Santo Domingo that makes a few extra bucks by charging the locals a membership fee to come and work out in their gym, swim at their pools, etc. Because we were guests, we had to pay a small fee to get in, but we had a marvelous time. We decided that we should do that every Friday after school – so relaxing! We went swimming and relaxed in the hot tub. Here, of course, there is no such thing as an indoor pool. People who live here laugh at the idea. We ended up ordering a pizza and chilling out by the pool until about 7:30.

Saturday morning, we got up bright and early (5:50) to catch the 7:00 bus to Puerto Plata, which is on the north coast. (We live on the south coast.) We went with the Metro bus company, but the deal is that you have to get there early enough to buy your ticket and get on the bus before everyone else. They’ll sell you a ticket for any bus, but if it’s full when you get there, you have to wait for the next bus to leave – which may be two or four hours later. Needless to say, we arrived on time and boarded the bus in plenty of time. The Metro busses are very nice – air conditioned and comfortable for the most part. It took us about three and a half hours to get there, but it would only take maybe two hours if the roads were better. We both read books (not for school) on the way. They do play movies, but the volume is so low that no one can really hear them. It was enjoyable.

When we arrived at the Puerto Plata bus station, we were unpleasantly surprised to find that it was in the dumpy part of town and was very dirty and run-down compared to the station in Santo Domingo. As soon as we exited the bus, we were accosted by taxi drivers wanting to take us where we wanted to go.

It’s a conspiracy!! The taxi drivers, hotels, and bus companies are all in it together! We got overcharged for our taxi ride to the hotel – a ten minute drive – that cost almost as much as it cost us to get all the way across the island. The driver wanted us to pay 734 pesos to begin with, but we ended up paying only 450, which ends up about $12.

When we arrived at the hotel, a couple glitches occurred: Glitch #1. Travelocity had not reserved our room at the hotel. We ended up waiting almost an hour after calling Travelocity on our cell phone (expensive!) because they had not faxed the hotel our reservation. Lucky for us, the hotel was not full. During that hour of waiting, we discovered glitch #2: A sign, of sorts, was standing on the counter. In five different languages, including fairly bad English, it said that the beach was unfortunately closed due to construction. OH NO!!! That’s the whole reason we came here! It all ends up fine – but in typical Dominican style.
After we finally got our room, we took a little walk around the hotel to check it out, and when we got to the beach, we were surprised to see people swimming. Yes, there was a giant, rusty, metal pipe running down the beach as far as the eye could see and the occasional bull dozer was driving by, but people were swimming. Some dude was trying to sell us something, and we asked him about the beach being “closed.” He said, “Well, man, what you see here and what it says in the lobby are two different things, if you get my meaning…” We got his meaning.

One definite benefit of living in Santo Domingo is that whenever some one was trying to sell us something, as soon as they found out that we live here, they immediately stopped the sales pitch. We decided that on all our travels from here on out, we should say we’re living in whatever country we happen to be visiting – although on second thought, that would create a moral dilemma.

We thoroughly enjoyed a weekend relaxing by the beach, reading, getting some sun (not too much, though), and eating REALLY GOOD food. There was not a single other American tourist at our hotel. Mostly, the people there were German, French, and Italian. There was one British group, and a small group of boys from Canada. Otherwise, though, English was not a part of anything happening at the hotel. I suppose we’re used to that, though.

Saturday night, we ended up going to bed early because we were so tired from our long day. Then, Sunday, we enjoyed some more relaxation on the beach. When we got down to the beach, we realized that the construction team had been working all night long – the pipe was gone!! So, Sunday, we had a mostly unobstructed view of the ocean. There was still the occasional bull dozer steaming by.

The ride home was pretty uneventful. We arrived safe and sound back in Santo Domingo with plenty of time to get ourselves organized for the week.

This coming weekend, we’re planning a trip with the other foreign teachers to Juan Dolio, which is much closer – only about an hour away. Hoorah for all inclusive resorts!!!




For more pictures and a video from the weekend getaway go to our pictures and video page.