Santo Domingo

During our Sunday perambulations, we had located a bus station, determined the time of buses to Santo Domingo, and planned our departure from Santiago.

I can't say we loved Santiago. It was rather grubby, frenzied, and noisy. It was our first experience of a Dominican city, so we didn't know if it was the standard. We were quite content to load ourselves into a midday bus and head for the capital, about two hours away.

The buses are great and very reasonable. There are two or three companies competing for the business. We left Santiago on the Aetra bus, air-conditioned comfort, tv, music, the lot. Caribe Tours and Metro are the other two biggies. They are generally quite accommodating about dropping people off at unscheduled stops. We settled in and watched as the countryside unravelled. We left the mountains and drop down to the souther coastal plain.

At all bus stations, taxi drivers are many and various. The hard sell is alive and well and living in the DR. Guides, taxi drivers, shillers of one thing or another all ply their trade along the avenues. Taxis roll by and, spotting a target gringo, hiss, "Taxi?" You are begged for just one minute to come in and see this marvelous store. DVDs copied onto blanks are sold for $0.50US by kids on the streets. Boys take up shoe shining early and cannot be convinced that sandals and cloth sneakers are not in need of their attentions. That said, I don't think we've seen a single beggar. Everyone is offering something and one gets the impression of a generally hardworking people trying to get by. They do accept "no"...eventually.

We descended from the bus and were surrounded by several taxi drivers and bus drivers. Once they knew our destination, there was a general palaver, an agreement that a taxi would be required, and some discussion of its route. That done, the winning taxi driver escorted us to his car (suffering, as do most vehicles here, from age and infirmity), and successfully delivered us to the Gran Hotel Aida just off El Conde.

El Conde is a street of some 20 blocks in length which has been converted to a pedestrian promenade. A whole lot of living goes on along it. There are fast food places, little bars, a nice place for breakfast (Dominican coffee is among the best I've ever experienced). It starts at a stately colonial home and ends at the Parque Colon, commemorating the belief that Columbus's first New World landing was on Hispaniola. There's a whole lot of Columbophilia going on here, for his "discovery" of the island and of North America. I suspect the Tainos, who were wiped out within 50 years of his arrival, might take exception. But they can't.

An omnipresent part of Dominican life is music. Drivers like to share what they are playing. Later, when we were in Jarabacoa after our return, we were to see the pinnacle of this generosity. Fortunately, the music is fabulous. The national music is merengue, but they accept pretty much any Latin option. El Conde sways with sound until the wee hours.

Our room was an inside, windowless room as all the outer rooms were taken. It was comfortable and the hotel itself was lovely. The owner (who, we learned later, is a self-exiled Cuban) was very helpful. We decided to book a room with him for our return from Canada. He showed us two, both overlooking El Conde, and gave us our choice.

We had to catch an early flight the next morning, so we crammed in a bit of very local sightseeing. I wanted to go to a bookstore. WW wanted an ATM (cash point). This led to some pretty interesting conversations with locals using our combined Spanish financial vocabulary of some two words -- peso, banco -- as well as such tricky ones as machina (we hoped that was a word), donde, and por favor. A great deal of charades was played, miming the insertion of a bank card into a bank machine slot. After we had circled the same block twice, we were clearly losing at charades, and WW announced he would ask the police.

The police in Santo Domingo are omnipresent, very young, and armed. Men and women alike, all appearing to be about 20 years old, wear their natty grey uniforms, and like to swing their batons or smack them smartly against their thighs. We approached two such officials, both lovely looking lads. We explained our need (pantomime, increasingly frazzled Spanish, I might have cried). They were very understanding and let us know (we are getting good at charades) that they would not just point the way, they would escort us.

We set off. At every street, whether we needed to cross it or not, they would march out, brandishing their batons, stop the traffic, and march us across. The locals became justifiably intrigued. What had these gringos done?? They escorted us through Parque Colon and started up Isabela la Catolica on the far side. As store owners peered from their doorsteps or peeked through their windows, our police escort marched us smartly by. Then a grey police SUV pulled up, full of what appeared to be commanding officers. The situation was explained and we were placed in the back seat. By now, the upper floor balconies were crammed with onlookers.

The officer drove us possibly 10 metres, then let us out and pointed at a Banco Popular. We thanked him very very much.

As we walked back to Parque Colon, a woman darted from her shop, asked in quite good English (oh that she had been around earlier) what the police had wanted with us. I don't think she believed they were just helping us find a bank. But she took the opportunity to try to sell us some caps.