The Capital

Recently I´ve had reason to go to The Capital a couple of times. People here in Las Terrenas call it that, much like The Big Smoke to culchies. Santo Domingo, to call it by its real name, never appealed to me much, and I had previously only used it as a way to get to another part of the country. Now that I´ve spent more time there, I understand it better and can see its strong points. I´d still never live there, though.

You never know, your Christmas clothes could be in there.

I had to get from one side of the city to the other, and the easiest way to do that is in taxi. However, that´s the most expensive way (200-300 pesos). The guagua (25 pesos), is generally a minivan (or shared taxi) doing the same route every day, so I set out, determined to do this the cheap way. I passed through busy squares and shopping areas and tried to take it all in. 

Preachers on street corners shouted into microphones while people gathered around them, nodding in agreement. Minivans, buses, motorcycles, cars - all presuming to be some form of public transport - weaved and honked and overtook on both sides. An impossible network of destinations. There are no maps of routes or ways to figure this out in advance. The only way to find out which one you need is to ask anyone and everyone. Some people look at you blankly, others are more helpful. Most are helpful. 

Once you figure out what guagua you want, the journey is an experience in itself. There is the chofer (driver) and the cobrador, who deals with the money and recruitment of passengers. Yep, recruitment of passengers is the only way I can put it because these guys actively hunt them down and practically haul them up. The more passengers that get on, the more money they make, so even when the guagua seems full, they make room. And, incredibly, nobody complains.

The cobrador on my guagua (going to Avenida Duarte) was hanging out of the door pointing at people and shouting DUARTE? DUARTE? YOU GOING TO DUARTE? HEY YOU! DUARTE? WOMAN! DUARTE? SKINNY GUY! DUARTE?  When we were stopped, he would jump out and look for customers, going off down side streets. One time he was gone for a good five minutes, and people were getting impatient. There was no traffic - we could have gone - and the driver kept inching slowly forward as if he just couldn´t wait to go. But he waited. And miraculously, the cobrador comes back with not one, not two, but three new customers, whether they wanted to or not. 

When I was waiting for a guagua, he jumped out and said DUARTE? I said yes, so he takes me by the elbow and starts corralling me and another woman into the guagua. A rival cobrador nearby also going to Duarte got pissed and a shouting argument starts between them as they somehow keep screaming DUARTE??? People just walking down the street, not looking like they´re waiting for a bus are possible customers. When people ignored him he kept repeating it until they said no, and he shrugged, somewhat offended. Like, you don´t wanna get on my guagua? What´s your problem? This guy loves his job, puts every ounce of his being into it, and he is good at it. I was pretty sure there were people on this bus that had no intention of getting on a bus. 

People wander through traffic selling things - water, ice-cream, potato chips. There was a man with a big tray of pork crackling wandering through the beeping, smoking mess of traffic, mostly stopped. They shout in the guagua  and ask you to buy their wares. A man shook a load of chewing-gum in the door of the guagua and when nobody wanted to buy it, he called us mujeres tacañas, stingy women.

The shops bulge out onto the pavement and form tunnels of knockoff baseball and basketball shirts. Any wall can be a display wall, indoor or outdoor, dirty or clean. Lots of t-shirts with numbers and slogans that make no sense but kind of look like they do. Everything is brightly coloured.

The Ouginal Brant

There is an entire block dedicated to toilets, an enamel mountain spilling out onto the street. One street just holds mattress shops, some new and in wrapping, others old and unappealing, and some burnt and blackened. Why are they all together?

Shoe, shoe, shoe, cat, shoe, shoe shoe.

They pile things so high they seem sure to topple, but I haven´t seen it happen yet. There is rubbish everywhere; empty milk crates filled with dirty styrofoam containers, while all around people buy more food to put in more styrofoam containers. They love their styrofoam. There are guys all over the place selling food fried in pots of boiling oil. It looks pretty good. I particularly like the quipes, meat in bulgur wheat, deep fried. They come from the Lebanese immigrants into the DR in the 19th century. The Dominican touch is to artistically dribble catchup (ketchup) up and down them. Hotdogs on a stick are similarly garnished. You can also get grilled corn on the cob, baked sweet potato, fried yuca balls filled with plastic cheese and empanadas.

Incongruously, there is a Chinatown in Santo Domingo. Not quite on par with New York´s Chinatown, this one was inaugurated in 2008 with the express intention of attracting tourists. Asians of all types were strongly encouraged to set up business, and a couple of blocks were enclosed in one of those arches that signify Chinatown like a big gold M signifies McDonalds. To add authenticity, the city erected some historically accurate statues, like The Chinese Immigrant, or the Chinese Princess, as seen below.

"Chinese princess"

The most famous area of the city is the Colonial Zone, which is steeped in history. It´s the oldest European settlement in the New World and was founded by Christopher Columbus´s younger brother Bartholomew. It was kind of the raping and pillaging base-point for the Spanish as they went about annihilating all Carribean cultures. There are lots of streets and squares named after these invaders and ruins or crumbling remains of 16th century buildings. In the Parque Colón, (Columbus Park) there is a bronze statue of the famous invader. Clambering up the statue is Anacaona, a Taíno (the native people of these islands) chief. She and her brothers negociated with the conquistadores when they arrived on the island, but she ended up being executed for refusing to be a concubine to the Spanish. Needless to say, I feel like she should me immortalised in bronze and have a square named after her rather than Columbus.

Columbus, presumably pointing the sun, which he also intends to claim for Spain.

The legendary Anacaona

What´s interesting about the Zona Colonial is the decay. You can walk among the ruins of a hospital or a monastery, 500 years old, with the constant background noise of bachata music and horns beeping. What might have been a nice building facade 200 years ago is now crumbling and lethal looking, but a woman is hanging her laundry out the upstairs window and you can buy fried chicken downstairs.

Lethal balconies.

While in Santo Domingo, I took a day trip out to Boca Chica, the nearest beach to the capital and possibly the crappiest stretch of sand ever. Astonishingly, people come from Europe to spend a week in beach hotels there. The most crowded, dirty beach in the south of Spain would be better than this. The views are of the port of Santo Domingo, industrial and ugly. The beach is crowded with restaurants all along it. But there were two things that made it unbearable for me - the beach vendors and the dogs. The beach vendors sell coconuts, sunglasses, phone covers, shrimp,  straw hats, towels, and a million other things I don´t want. A never-ending stream of hisses and sleaze and annoyance. They would try every single time they walked by, though we had said no the previous ten times. At least every 5 minutes somebody would try and sell us something. But the dogs were the worst. There were loads of beach dogs, just as there are in Las Terrenas, but these poor creatures were hungry and skinny and sad looking. It broke my heart. I ended up buying fried chicken for one little pup whose ribs were sticking out. Las Terrenas is possibly the best place to be a dog in this country, thanks to Amigos de Lucky, an association that spays, neuters and vaccinates dogs here.

I wanted to take this lil dude home.

This poor old girl was mangey and bony and saggy, scrounging around for food while fat Germans got massages.

As I get to know more people in Santo Domingo, I get to see how different people here live. Las Terrenas is a small town, 3 hours from the capital, and it feels like a small town. I went with my friend Vivi to a Thanksgiving dinner hosted by a group of bilingual, Latino/North American med students in a gorgeous apartment in a lovely area. A new friend Carlina and her friend took me out to a rock bar and a beautiful cocktail bar with an open courtyard. Both are well travelled and bilingual and doing interesting things. More people in the capital wear their hair natural, rather than braided or chemically straightened. There are other music options. There are museums and newspapers. People read. But, it is still a noisy, loud, poor, overcrowded, dirty city, and though it has its strong points, it made me appreciate my small town more.

This just about sums up this country. A little book stand in the bus station, with sex positions and prayers side by side.