Snow in the Carribbean

I just waved goodbye to my parents after their week here in the Dominican Republic, and what a week it was.
Traveling rarely goes as planned and this trip was no exception, but if there’s one thing I know it’s that if you’re with people you love, it doesn’t really matter where you are. Despite flight cancellations at 4am, having to fly into a city literally across the country from us, then driving the breadth of the island dodging potholes at midnight in the rental Honda civic, my parents met us in Santiago hungry but smiling.
From that night on the trip went smoother, if less sunny than hoped for, and we were able to visit some truly amazing places around the island. Our first night after Santiago was spent in Tubagua, at an Eco-Plantation up a long mountain road dotted with amber factories, the ubiquitous colmados (general stores), and homes with laundry drying on the fences. That evening we met the owner, Tim, and two men from Mississippi. We spent the rainy night in what would become an ongoing discussion about life in the Dominican, and battle for the title of Banagrams Champion.
The Dominican was a tricky subject, between my parents’ views formed in Santo Domingo and their drive up the mountain, Jake’s experiences this semester, and Tim’s views after living here for 20+ years. It’s nearly impossible to visit a country like this and not wonder “why is life here the way it is? why are certain problems like poverty more severe than in the US? what could make life better?” It’s tempting to try and characterize the people here, and decide what needs to be done to solve their challenges. Driving through the country it’s frustrating to see all the garbage lining the roads everywhere, piled around houses, and washed up on the beaches. Does someone need to start a waste management program, or is there more to it? Perhaps the fact that there an ever-increasing number of immigrants and tourists give Dominicans a feeling of not really being in control of their own country or land, and so don’t responsible for it’s environment’s condition. Perhaps education or culture play a large role. These are more complicated issues, I am learning, than just choosing to live one way instead of another.
After leaving Tubagua, we drove along the north coast and through some steep windy roads to the Semana Penninsula to the city of Las Terranas. Here we finally had some sun and could enjoy the calm ocean there before the afternoon storms. Walking around Las Terranas was AWESOME; it’s not often you can buy fresh-caught whole shrimp for dinner (which we did - yum!!!) or even half a goat (passed on this) right off the street. Everywhere we go I learn new fruits and vegetables I’ve never seen before; a smooth, green fruit that supposedly is squash-like called tyota (?) is next on the list to try.
I learned a bit about the Dominican people on this trip, and how absurd it is to try to characterize an entire people in reality. Yes, the jokes about angry Germans and stuffy British, and Southern hicks are funny, but in every group of people there truly is a spectrum of characters. We encountered both ends here, when we came back to our car and found it’s tire flat. At first of course we assumed it was a puncture and a little boy we had talked to one the road followed us over and got to work helping my dad change it, shaking our hands and wandering off when he’d finished. Once the tire was off we drove to a Gomera (tire store/mechanic) and discovered it wasn’t a puncture; the pin had been ripped out so the tire would flat. “Had someone from the restaurant whose lot we had parked in been that mad we’d taken up a space? That would never happen in the States.” But just as we were shaking our heads, the mechanic told us not to worry about paying for anything. “No problem, amigo.”
On our way out of Semana we stopped in Sanchez and took a boat tour across the bay where humpback whales come to calve in the winter, to Los Haitises national park. We floated through mangroves, climbed around caverns to see cave paintings by extinct tribes, and had a big lunch of boiled bananas, shrimp, crab, and something potato-like called yame (?) Jake ate roughly his body-weight in crab, which impressed my father. They got along rather splendidly throughout the trip.
Once in Cabarete, we stayed at a gorgeous hotel with a big living room, kitchen, and porch yards away from the ocean. It was really the opposite of our first night in the thatched huts at Tubagua, but they both felt very comfortable once we were all around a table, playing Banagrams late into the evening.
Our final adventure was to 27 Waterfalls, outside of Puerto Plata, which was my absolute favorite part of the trip and warrants its own post. Suffice it to say Jake was the expert, my mom was surprising, my dad was encouraging, and I was a chicken. More later.
Jake and I had fun playing tour guide and there isn’t anyone else I’d rather experience this all with. This was a week of many amazing sights, too much rain, a lot of good talks, long drives, and an absurd amount of Bananagrams.
Thanks for coming, mom and dad.