Santiago

WW arranged for a car to take us to Santiago, about an hour and a half away, on Sunday, March 16. This was the first step on our voyage from Django to the Santo Domingo airport.

Both our driver and his car shared the same degree of decrepitude, but that's not unusual here. Motoconchos or scooters are the standard mode of transport for most people because of the very high price ($8US/gal) of gas. Emission controls are not a happening thing. The air pollution in any conurbation is a very sensory experience: tactile, olfactory, gustatory, etc. We saw almost no one on a scooter wearing a helmet, except in Santo Domingo. The driving is alarmingly aggressive. Honking is a way of saying, "Get out of the way", "Hi!", "I'm here", "Nice day, ain't it", and sundry other comments and invective. It is almost continuous.

As we headed off, we saw busloads of Dominicans unloading themselves at the beach. I asked our driver whether it was a festival. (Understand, please, at that point I had six words of Spanish; he had NO English.) He said something about "mano santo". I had never heard of the Holy Hand and wondered if it were a cult. It was only much later that we figured out it was Palm Sunday and the start of Holy Week (Semana Santa, not mano santo) which is a major holiday in the DR. All manner of activities, including snorkelling and fishing, are strictly prohibited during the entire week.

We jounced our way along relatively good roads, watching banana groves, rice paddies, and tobacco fields roll by. Santiago is in the central highlands, but in a valley. The beautiful Dominican mountains gradually surrounded us as we approached the city.

Our driver did not know the hotel we wanted. He read the name and address I had carefully copied from our Rough Guide. It didn't help. However, the Dominicans are nothing if not resourceful. He pulled over beside two young men on motoconchos and asked if they knew the place. One answered yes and, for 100 pesos (about $3 US) agreed to ride along and show our driver the way. We arrived safe and sound at the Colonial Hotel on the edge of what passes for a tourist district. Since most tourists are interested principally in beaches, Santiago is not top of the exploration list.

We wandered the streets and found a cafeteria-style eatery. The Rough Guide recommends these with the following qualifications: Make sure the food doesn't look two days old; if it does, it probably is. Eat only at a place full of locals. This one met both criteria, but I could not find the food appetising. I nibbled some of WW's and had a beer. (The DR beer Presidente is very nice and an exceeding improvement over the Bahamian Kalik.)

After lunch, we wandered up to "the monument" which was originally erected by the dictator Trujillo in honour of himself, but was immediately rededicated upon his demise. It's to the heroes of the revolution or somesuch now. Around it are several smaller monuments to the real DR heroes: baseball players.

WW, who used to indulge when he was in Bermuda, was delighted to see at least a dozen kites in the air. We had to go up and watch. It was brilliant. The kites are almost all homemade, of thin dowel and garbage bags. They can fly to extraordinary heights, under the control of their young (I'd say an average of 11 years old) controllers.

We rested in the shade and watched. A young man came to chat with us. He was delighted that we spoke French as it gave him a chance to practice his. (All Dominicans are required to take a second language, either French or English, in school and most opt for French since it it so much easier than English. As a result, a surprising number of them can communicate quite ably in French.) He told us he was originally from Ham-eye-eekah. He said it was a state. It was only on the second time round that we worked out the Spanish pronounciation for Jamaica.

We snoozed in our extremely unprepossessing hotel room, which featured possibly the most uncomfortable bed ever made. In the evening, we headed up toward the monument again. A chap at the hotel had said that was where we would find real Dominican food. We went into a place called Ole (sorry, can't do accents) where the menu was entirely in Spanish. We decided to just take the plunge and each try an appetizer. If that proved to be insufficient, we could order more later. I thought longaniza sounded cool, WW went for mondongo from the creole menu.

The next morning, when we told the man at the hotel where we had been, he said, "Wow! Very very traditional food! What did you have?"

We told him. He stared at WW and said in horror, "You had mondongo? But that's...that's..."

"Tripe soup," I supplied.

"Yes. Tripe soup," he said. "Ewww."

Mine was a quite nice sausage. It's one of the few mealtimes that I've won.