Other than having Columbus there and being old, the cathedral was unremarkable. The rain stopped rather quickly (as usual) and we left, planning to give ourselves a quick overview of the historic buildings and maybe go into one or two. This was not to be. We were immediately latched onto by a guide whom we could not shake. He kept insisting he was just giving us free advice so we would enjoy our stay more. He talked about how he wanted to be sure we were happy, so we would go home and tell other people about it, because the Dominican Republic in general and Santo Domingo in particular weren't getting a lot of American tourists. Mark and I both considered telling him that one reason more Americans don't come here is because they would rather go somewhere where they aren't constantly fending off people who want to change money, provide taxis, or be a guide, but we decided that would be considered rude. I realize all this may make me sound like an ugly American, but I can't help contrast this with a place like Thailand, probably equally poor, where people are friendly towards you, happy if you use their services, but not put out or overly persistent if you don't.
So we ended up with a guided tour of the Colonial Sector. I can't help but feel that walking around with a guidebook would have been as informative. For one thing, we didn't get to go into the Alcazar (the home of Diego Colon and his family), although whether we would have in any case is questionable. When we returned fifteen minutes later it was closed, and also closed early (or never opened) on Sunday. Usually in hotter countries things shut down for a long lunch and then stay open later (when it's cooler) to compensate. We didn't want to be walking around in the heat of the day, and this schedule apparently didn't mesh with the schedules there. Since there schedules weren't posted, we have no way of knowing what their hours were, of course.
We had some slight revenge on the guide, though. He asked how we got to the Colonial Sector from where we were staying and we said we took a bus (guagua). What? A guagua. After a couple of repetitions he finally believed us. At this point I think he realized that he was dealing with cheap American tourists and was not going to get an enormous tip. In fact, at the end he suggested US$10 or US$20; we gave him 100 pesos (US$8). This may sound cheap, but we had said we didn't want a guide, and he did say he was giving free advice. He also didn't approve of the hotel we were staying in and tried to convince us to move to a hotel in the Colonial Sector (from whom I suspect he would get a commission). It was about three times the price of ours. Oh, and we also turned down his offer to take us to a good place to buy amber, one of the big products in the Dominican Republic, but something we are not at all interested in.
After this we were hot and tired (we had gotten up about 6:30 AM), so we walked back to where we had gotten off the bus and tried to figure out where to get the return bus. It was hopeless--there were too many buses, none marked, all with drivers shouting destinations we didn't recognize. (It's undoubtedly the reverse problem from the one we had in Puerto Rico. There, we wanted a sign saying 'Ponce'--the last stop--while here we wanted to know which bus was going down a particular street to get to its ultimate destination.) After five minutes we gave up and took a taxi.
We rested a bit and then went out to the grocery down the street for juice and snacks. (The room here, as in Puerto Rico, has a refrigerator.) After some discussion, we decided to drop the idea of taking a bus to La Romana or elsewhere, and instead check on getting a tour or renting a car. And so, with this plan in mind, we went to sleep.
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We had breakfast in the hotel coffee shop. Service was incredibly slow, but I don't know if that's a cultural thing or just this coffee shop. Our other meals were somewhat slower than they might be here, but this was the slowest. Mark ordered French toast, which was more like fried bread. I ordered mangu (mashed plantains). I had hoped they were sweet plantains, but no such luck. the dish was pretty tasteless except for the raw onion garnish (maybe that's why it's there).
After breakfast we walked to the Cultural Plaza. This turned out to be somewhat further than we expected (because the hotel clerk had mismarked on the map where the hotel was), and it was already getting hot. We did find it, but only after asking directions from someone.
The Cultural Plaza contains half a dozen museums in a park setting. The Museum of History and Geography was closed, but two other museums we were interested in--the Museum of the Dominican Man and the Museum of Natural History--were open. The museums here, as in many poorer countries, have a two-tier admission structure: Dominicans pay 2 pesos (16 cents); foreigners pay 10 pesos (80 cents). This is still quite cheap.
We went first to the Museum of the Dominican Man. As Mark pointed out later, this focuses almost entirely on the native and black heritage. Perhaps the European influence is covered in one of the other museums. At any rate, this museum covered what is (to me, anyway) the more interesting part of the history. All the exhibits were labeled in Spanish only, but I didn't find that a problem, though I might have to look up the occasional word in my dictionary. (I had brought my basic Spanish dictionary rather than my comprehensive one, so most of the time it didn't help anyway.) There was a fairly large section on the Tainos, who also inhabited this island, and some more on the slave trade with Africa and the descendents of the slaves. There was also a large section devoted to the religious beliefs of the various peoples and their combinations. For example, there is a Dominican version of voudon (voodoo) as well as santeria and other, lesser known, variations.
After the Museum of the Dominican Man we went to the Museum of Natural History. This is known more for its collection of Dominican insects and birds (mounted and stuffed, respectively) than for any broad representation of the Earth's flora and fauna. (Their stuffed lion was particularly silly-looking.)
When we finished here, we decided to walk over to the big tourist hotels a few blocks from our own. Our of the brochures indicated that many of them had tour desks and, as I said, we figured at this point that a tour would be a lot easier to cope with than public transit, which seemed totally chaotic. We also hoped to find a tour out into the countryside. They had tours, all right--at 1000 pesos (US$80) per person to go to Puerto Plata, for example. This was written '$1000' and when I commented this was expensive, the clerk said, 'That's in pesos, you know.' Did he really think I thought it was in dollars?
Having ruled out buying a tour, we decided to rent a car and go somewhere on our own. I checked the phone book in the hotel room and discovered there was a car rental place a few blocks away, which we also remembered passing on the way to the museums. So we walked there and asked about renting a car for Sunday. Because they were open only until 5 PM on Sunday, we asked if there was some way we could drop the car off after 5 PM. The clerk behind the counter-- who spoke perfect English and was probably from the United States-- said we could drop it off at the airport the next morning. I said I would prefer not to, because I didn't want to try to find my way to the airport in the dark. He asked where we planned to go, and I say we have been thinking of perhaps going to Altos de Chavon or someplace like that. He suggested that hiring a taxi would probably be cheaper than renting a car, and when I commented that I had some problems with getting lost in Puerto Rico, he said if I got lost in Puerto Rico I should definitely not try driving here! So Mark and I decided that made sense and agreed we would hire a taxi the next day. We went back to the room, looked at the brochures from the tours a bit more, and decided rather than going out to Altos de Chavon, which sounded like it was a bit too non-specific for us (it's a reconstructed 15th Century Spanish village that has a lot of art galleries, and could well turn out to be the Dominican equivalent of an outdoor mall), we would do the half-day tour of the eastern part of Santo Domingo, including El Faro de Colon, Tres Ojos de Aqua, and the aquarium. I also figured that would give us some time to go back to the Colonial Sector on our own.
When it got a little cooler (well, all things are relative), we went out walking and walked down to the Parque Independencia and El Conde Gate (where independence had been declared in 1844). There were men sitting out on park benches talking, kids playing, and in general it looked a lot like parks everywhere. Earlier we had seen two men playing checkers near the hotel, but the checkerboard had 100 squares instead of 64. I imagine that would make the game more complex.
We then walked back up a different street to the hotel. By walking opposite traffic on the various one-way streets, we managed to avoid having all the taxi drivers offer us rides. We stopped at a drugstore and bought three comic books, one for us and a couple for a friend who collects them. (He's particularly fond of Uncle Scrooge comics and they had one in Spanish.) The store had a system where you stand in one line and get a slip of paper with the total of your purchases on it, then you go to another line to pay. Mark claims this keeps the clerks from mis-charging for the merchandise and then pocketing the difference, since the charges are added up by a different person than handles the money. I'm not sure I follow this. If there is one cashier and he rings up the amounts, then for the cashier to profit the customer has to pay more than what the cash register says. Although I suppose its possible that they're also trying to guard against someone giving a break to a friend, so the two cashiers each add up the total and it has to agree.
We looked at a few restaurants and finally decided on the Mesquito. We both had gazpacho, served here by bringing the broth to the table and then adding the finely diced vegetables there. It certainly keeps them crisp. Mark had camarrones bilbaino (large grilled shrimp with a spicy seasoning) and I had asopao de camarrones (a sort of stew with shrimp). Very good, and very filling--we had no room for dessert. Dinner was 520 pesos (about US$42 including tax and tip). This restaurant was on a street running right in back of the fancy tourist hotels (which also had back exits from their grounds), so I suspect it was probably a little higher priced than other restaurants elsewhere, but it was convenient. (We never did get to the Maison de Cava, which is a restaurant set in a cave.)
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We got up and had breakfast in the room, the service from the hotel restaurant being somewhat below par. About 9:15 AM we went out and negotiated for a taxi to take us around for our planned sight-seeing, at a rate of 120 pesos an hour (about US$7.20 an hour).
Our first stop was El Faro de Colon, the lighthouse they are building to honor the 500th anniversary of Columbus's discovery. (Well, actually our very first stop was to get gasoline, but that doesn't count. Gasoline, by the way, is about 20 pesos or US$1.60 per gallon. The road signs are in kilometers but the gasoline is measured in gallons. |
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