Luto

Tonight is my last night in Las Terrenas for 2 1/2 months, and it´s the quietest night yet. No music, no parties, no people drinking, nothing, and it´s a Friday night. The town is in an official state of mourning (luto) because yesterday there was a horrific bus accident in which 15 people died. The express bus from the capital, Santo Domingo, crashed head-on with a lorry and the whole bus crumpled. There are 15 dead and more than 20 seriously injured so far, with some of the injured still unidentified. The bus was packed, with people standing in the aisles.

The preliminary reports are that the 3pm guagua from Santo Domingo to Las Terrenas (the last one of the day) was about halfway to Las Terrenas when the driver went into the opposite lane going around a curve and crashed head on with a lorry. The driver died in the collision, so this account is according to the driver of the lorry, who needed surgery but survived. Almost everyone on the bus was from Las Terrenas or El Limón, the next town over. It happened at 4pm, my housemate saw a big commotion when she was out running at 5pm and heard then, and I went into work at 6pm. The whole evening more news trickled in. Nothing was on official news channels, because it´s not that fast here. Instead, people sent photos and videos from the scene by Whatsapp and Facebook. That was something that shocked me - before any emergency services had moved bodies, there were dozens of people milling around with cameraphones taking videos and photos. The photos are horrific, and shared on everyone´s Facebook wall.

By midnight last night, hundreds of people were waiting in the covered basketball court, where bodies were being brought to be returned to families. This is a small town, of 20,000 people, and many of the people who died were well known. I didn´t know any of them, because I´m a blow-in, but locals know everyone. A 10 year old boy was among the dead.The phone company, Orange, had sent 3 of its staff to a training day in Santo Domingo, and those 3 women died, one of whom was pregnant. It seems a lot of people knew them, I heard so many people talk about them.

Yakaira, one of the women who worked in the Orange shop.

Alba, one of the women who worked in the Orange shop.

By law, funerals have to happen within 24 hours, because there are no facilities here for preserving bodies, no embalming or anything. So today, at 10am, 18 hours after the accident, the funeral processions of Yakaira, Alba and Emilia, three friends, started up the main street. There were three pickup trucks, holding a coffin each, with family sitting inside the cab and around the coffin in the back. Each truck had its own procession, with people all around holding on to the sides and walking beside it and behind it. There were three other trucks too dispersed along the length of the procession that only had speakers on them, all blaring the same song on repeat - Adios mi familia. The whole town walked with them, some people wailing and crying and sobbing. There were some news cameras there, and lots of people filming it with their phones. At one point, a women broke out of a crowd wailing hysterically, and the news cameras all swung to film her. She was walking up the street wailing, with someone holding onto her, and a young guy in front of her, not a metre away from her, with his phone up, filming her. Here they don´t seem to think that is disrespectful. I don´t know if it´s to do with the fact that nobody here was able to make videos or take photos until very recently, or another cultural difference I don´t understand yet. All the photos I show here I took off the internet. I wanted to be able to show people what this kind of mass bereaving looked like, but I did not want to take photos.

I left the procession before the burial, but these photos were shared online.

The police shot dead an innocent young man, sparking a riot earlier this week, and now this awful accident has happened. Las Terrenas needs some good luck, you can feel the sadness everywhere. I am ready to leave, I need a break. This is a wonderful place that I want to come back to, my time here is not finished. But it´s not easy some of the time. Some things that we take for granted just aren´t true for here. Those people who were lucky enough to survive the crash are now in a dirty, understaffed, underequipped hospital. If they make it out of there alive, they won´t have rehabilitation, or prosthetics, or follow-up care, or a disability allowance. I haven´t heard of anyone getting treatments like chemotherapy for cancer, and I´m starting to think that maybe they don´t get it. 

So while this is a glum post, I am fine, and my friends are fine, and the kids in my school and all their parents are fine and that is something to be very grateful for. As I was writing this post, my housemate Mackenzie dropped in a goodbye card to my room that she made. She painted me juggling teaching (Las Terrenas International School 4th grade math) and waitering in Lazy Dog, and it was so darn sweet it cheered me up no end! So I´ll leave you with Mackenzie´s picture, and post again from my new, temporary life in Cape Cod.

A solo adventure

About 3 weeks ago, I just wanted to get out of Las Terrenas for a bit. I´m a big city girl, don´t forget, and this is a small small town. So we had a Friday off school, and I got the guagua to El Limón. Then another one to Samaná, then another one to Las Galeras. Travelling by guagua is always interesting, and the last leg of the journey was the most so. It was long, maybe 45 minutes, sitting in the back of a pickup truck. People, usually men, strike up conversation, and one old man asked me what my faith was. I said I don´t have one, that I´m not religious. He asked what I meant by that, and I said I wasn´t a believer. He was incredulous. "HEY! This girl said she doesn´t believe in God!", he shouted to someone on the street who shook their head incredulously. I think that might have been his first contact with a heathen... 

Las Galeras is a sleepy town right at the end of the Samaná peninsula, more chilled than Las Terrenas. I got off and another friend from the guagua took me to his sister´s shack on the beach where I ate delicious grilled fish, salad and plantain, and drank coconut water. Then I hunted down the cheapo hotel my friends had stayed at. 700 pesos (€15) for a double room with a bathroom. It was clean, but there were cockroaches. But hey, it was a double bed all to myself and quiet. I went down to the beach for a sunset swim and a walk, and found a bar with kittens and free internet. 

Las Galeras beach,

Furby

Babies

Tiny tiny kitten asleep on my lap

I wanted to go to the famous Playa Rincón, but was being quoted 700 pesos for a motoconcho there and back. So I asked the people in this bar, and sure enough the guy there offered to take me for 500 pesos. His name was Ambioris, and he was my buddy for the next day. He was 21 years old and desperate to impress me. Instead of being sleazy, he was very sweet and utterly unaware of how young and earnest he seemed. We arranged to meet the next morning and I went on my way. I stopped by The Dive Academy dive school and bar/cafe because I saw THIS GUY:

<3 Bosun <3

This is Bosun, who is remarkably similar to my love, my child, my dog Lily. Turns out he is also a Brittany Spaniel cross who came from the South of Spain, but he made it a bit further than my Lilzer. His lovely owner, Diane, is an Englishwoman who lived in Spain for years running a scuba dive centre there. I stayed and chatted to her for ages, and vicariously pet my Lils through the lovely Bosun.

Coral. Spot the cockroach.

The next day Ambioris and I set out on our adventure. He took me to La Boca del Diablo, the Devil´s Mouth, which are blowholes on a rocky cliff. I´m scared of blowholes (thanks, Mom) so I stayed well back. At the right time of year, you can apparently see whales pass.

Ambioris at the Devil´s Mouth

 Playa Rincón was the most beautiful beach I have seen yet. It´s big, and curves around a beautiful bay with the most transparent water ever. It was pristine, with some parts busy and some parts utterly deserted. Heavenly. I got to spend about 2 hours there before Ambioris drove me back to Las Galeras. I got a burrito in Diane and Bosun´s and then hopped on the guagua home, feeling relaxed and utterly content.

Reflections

It's been almost a month since I posted, making me an atrocious blogger. I think it's because everything seems so normal now. I guess after 3 1/2 months in a place the remarkable becomes normal. In a week's time I'm going to fly to Boston and head up Cape Cod to Provincetown where I'll be for the summer. I've got a job in a restaurant and a place to stay, so the plan is to work and earn a load of tips there so I can come back here in September with lots of dollaz to rent a nice apartment. So with this big change coming up, I've been reflecting on my time here so far, and trying to figure out what I've learned. Here is what I have managed to put into words thus far:

1 - Sometimes lack of organisation makes things more efficient. I am working in a bar/restaurant at the moment as well as the school for some extra cash. The other night, we ran out of tequila. I called the liquor store and 10 minutes later they delivered it. We run out of anything, we can call a motoconcho guy and get him to go to the supermarket for us. In restaurants at home, everything would be done in a big stock order, delivered regularly and charged to an account - you can't just call a dude at 11pm and have him drop over a bottle of tequila.

2 - You can plan things if you want, but you can't get pissy when they don't work out as planned.

3 - Dominican people never say no to you, even if the question is "Are you a doctor?" This is why you need recommendations of where to go.

4 - You can be very pleasantly surprised at the service you get. I broke my phone's screen, went to get it fixed. The guy charged me e25, which is good for an iPhone screen and fixed the screen but then I couldn't make calls. He swore it would fix itself overnight. I got annoyed and wasn't going to pay him, so he said he would put the broke screen back on. I paid him resentfully and took my phone home. Sure enough, the next morning it worked perfectly. I think I need to go back and apologise,

5 - If you are white you can just stroll into fancy hotels and enjoy their pools and showers and sun loungers.

6 - People here live with very very little, and though I think I am living with little here, in reality I am a privileged spoilt little brat.

7 - Sometimes you can be smart and get great prices on touristy things because you speak Spanish and can bargain. Sometimes that bites you in the ass. Illustrated below.

7a - Some friends and I wanted to go to Parque Nacional Los Haitises, which is a a collection of islands and mangrove forests where the Taino, the indigenous people of this region lived and where Carribean pirates stashed treasure. It's about USD $70 for a day trip there, so we figured we could find something cheaper. Usually if you ask a Dominican they'll have a "cousin" who can sort these things out. Sure enough, we got quoted the price of e25 each for a trip out of Sanchez, a nearby town. Some chancer who called himself Chocolate (yes, really) met us at the guagua stop in Las Terrenas and we got the guagua to Sanchez. We got off in Sanchez and Chocolate hopped out, leaving us to pay his fare (red flag number one). He brings us down some alleys to a little beach with falling apart houses to our boat, a blue fibreglass fishing boat, as basic as they get. 3 little benches, max 7 people. Chocolate passed us on to a fisherman who assured us he knew all there was to know about the National Park (see point no. 7 above) They took the motor out of their house and attached it and off we went. Despite lots of comments from all the locals about how calm the water was and how lucky we were, it was a rocky rocky ride. The boat slammed down on the waves and made the top half of my jaw hit the bottom half like a movie clapperboard. About every two seconds. There were some lifejackets sitting on the floor of the boat, and I was the only one wearing one. It was my Mom´s birthday, and it´d be forever ruined if I died that day.

Happy Birthday Mom!

Wet n´ Wild

Irati with the fresh sea spray in her face

After 25 minutes of bumpy, fearful discomfort, we made it to the islands, where we quickly realised our guide/fisherman/some dude who happened to be standing near the boat when we turned up knew nothing beyong that these were in fact islands where Taino used to live. He took us to an island that had a load of soldiers on it from where they were trying to control forest fires. They were bemused at all these white people in a fishing boat. We sailed into a cave and around some islands where we oohed and aahed at the seabirds, then he took us to a big cave where we could get out of the boat and walk around. This cave had Taino cave art in it. We were quickly confronted by a tourism board woman who asked us to pay 200 pesos (€4). We had been told, when the price of our trip went up by 200 pesos, that it was to cover the cost of the park, which is what we told the tourism lady. She looked pissed off. We looked through the cave, saw the cave art - a kind of a fish face scratched onto a rock - and went on. Then our fisherman guide said that was it, and we were heading back. We felt sure there was more to this trip, more to see, but he assured us we had seen it all. This is a fine example of point number 3 above - a fisherman, despite what he might tell you, is not a tour guide. If you want a tour guide, you gotta pay for one.

"When did the Tainos live here?"

"Oh, a long time ago."

"Yes, but how long?"

"Really long ago."

So began our homeward journey, which was considerably worse than the outbound one. We had to sit on the floor of the boat because it was bouncing so much. We were soaked through and blinded by high powered jets of salt water pummelling us. It was funny, for about 5 minutes, then we just kept laughing because we didn´t know what else to do. Another Dominican experience, survived and learnt from!

Camp of the soldier men

It´s a cave

Cobweb-like tree stuff

Mangroves

More mangroves

Cave dwellers

Check out my tan.

The annoyance at getting such a crappy tour was totally overcome by giddiness at surviving it, so we celebrated the way most Dominicans do on a Sunday - we drank beer and rum at a watering hole to blaring salsa and bachata music. We were in total countryside, outside of a small town called Sánchez, at a natural pool packed to the brim. We were the only white people (no tourists in Sánchez) and they looked bemused when we got up and danced bachata, badly.

Mother and child, twerking.

Of dubious cleanliness, but refreshingly cold.

I´ve got more to tell before I leave this crazy land for the USA, but it´s late and I have to sleep. I was meant to post this last night, Sunday 7th, but there was a power cut. The power stayed out all night and nobody in my house slept, because we need fans on us to sleep in this heat. It was gross and sweaty and suffocating. Then this morning when I was going to work, there were fires in the street being cleared up, burnt out washing machines and mattresses, and it turns out there were riots last night because the police shot dead a local 18 year old who didn´t stop at a checkpoint when told to. The rioters tore/knocked down the power lines. It was quieter than usual on my street, because nobody had any electricity to blare music. So more about riots and police tomorrow, because now I´m going to point my fan at my bed and climb under my mosquito net. Goodnight.