Six Days, Seven Nights: Santo Domingo, Monte Cristi, and Santiago

Thomas and I arrived in Santo Domingo on the 29th and stayed at Hostel Nòmadas, my favorite hostel. They always make sure that I´m taken care of no matter what. Their rooms are clean and comfortable too, with hot water, air conditioning, and a fridge for only $40. We stayed there until the third and I was able to give Thomas an insider´s tour of Santo Domingo with Wilman´s help. I think we ended up staying too long in Santo Domingo and may have even had a chance to visit Miches if we had planned better, but I think we both still had fun. Then we took a Caribe Tours bus to Monte Cristi, which only ended up being a 4 and a half hour trip when it was supposed to take over 6 hours. It was because the roads were good. I didn´t really like Monte Cristi that much because there wasn´t much to do so we headed to Santiago for a night after I had accomplished all of my lobster house duties. Santiago was interesting. We went to the Centro Leon, which is a museum dedicated to the history of the DR. We were the only people in there besides three others. It was the most deserted museum that I have ever been in. They had some interesting exhibits though. Then we went to the Monument in the center of town and had to pay to get to the top and take pictures. It had a fantastic view of Santiago. I liked Santiago. Thomas described it like Boston compared to New York. It is smaller, cleaner, and the people are better educated and have a higher income. It´s carro pùblico system is also a lot easier to understand because there are only a few main roads, making it difficult to take the wrong route. The photos shown here are a little out of order because blogger.com can be difficult sometimes, especially for someone as technologically-uninclined as I am.

This is a photo of Thomas on top of the hill we hiked in Monte Cristi. I love this photo, despite what he says. :P

This is a photo of Rinconcito, monastery ruins where they have live music ever Sunday night. People start setting up their chairs around five and the show starts at 7. The entire hillside is covered with people. It is my favorite event to go to in Santo Domingo.

Here is a photo of the Faro de Colòn (Christopher Columbus´s lighthouse), which is called by one tourist ¨an architectural atrocity¨. In the book I read over the summer about the history of the Dominican Republic, ¨Why the Cocks Fight,¨ it said that millions of dollars were spent to build it and when they turned it on for the first time, the entire city of Santo Domingo lost power. Now they only turn it on during Columbus day and it shots a light in the form of a giant cross into the sky. It is a complete waste of money.

Here is a photo inside Los Tres Ojos, the system of caves outside of Santo Domingo. It was really cool. This cave is open to the air and you can hear merengue and bachata music drifting down from the guardhouse. In order to get to it you have to use a ferry through the caves that costs 20 pesos.
Here is a photo of the view from the hill we hiked in Monte Cristi. That mountain is called ¨El Morro¨or the plateau. We wanted to hike it but it is a reserve so it is not allowed.

Here is a photo of the guagua we took to the airport outside of Santo Domingo. Darien had left my phone at the Europecar office so that I could use it while I was in the capital and in Monte Cristi. Unfortunately I didn´t know it was there when I got off the plane so had to go back to the airport. Usually it is a $30-40 cab ride each way. Since I didn´t want to pay that hefty price, which was actually more than the phone cost, I combined tourism with business and along the way was able to introduce Thomas to the guagua system, a motoconcho ride, gave him a tour of La Caleta park, went to Los Tres Ojos, and the Faro de Colòn. I also was able to prove that you could get to the airport without paying a taxi and we ended up only paying 150 pesos for the two of us. We took the guagua to Boca Chica from around Parque Enriquillo that cost 90 peso and they dropped us off about 1.5 km to the airport. The we took a motoconcho the rest of the way for 60 pesos. On the way back we took a cab ride to Los Tres Ojos and I was able to talk the driver down to 500 pesos and we walked all the way back to Zona Colonial, but did some sight-seeing along the way.

On New Year´s Eve we hung out with Wilman and his friends Sandy and Yimmy. We went to Yimmy´s house, where were were introduced to canasta. Then we went to Yimmy´s aunt´s house for a delicious dinner and some dancing. After a few drinks I was able to convince them to take me to the Malecon, the road by the ocean, where there was fireworks, live music, and a live broadcast from NYC! It looked a lot colder there than it was in the DR. This is a photo that Thomas took of Wilman and I dancing. I think that it came out looking pretty cool!
Here is a photo of all of us before we went to go to Yimmy´s aunt´s house (except for Thomas because he is taking the picture). In order from left to right is Yimmy, Sandy, me, and Wilman.
On our way back from visiting the food market on the 27th de Febrero (the Dominican Republic´s Independence Day, which is also Thomas´s birthday!), we came across Chinatown! I was excited to see it because it is rare to see Asians or any foreigner for that matter in the Dominican Republic that are not tourists. This is a photo of him with the statue of the Chinese immigrant. :)