November 1st and 2nd are recognized as "All Saints' Day" and "All Souls' Day" respectively. I'll be honest, I don't know what those days are really about, but I know we got two extra days off of school and a long weekend. Jill and I needed to get out of the city and rest a few days. Thanks to Groupon, this was possible (if you've never looked at Groupon's getaways, do it now! They're worth it and very easy to use). We found a great deal for a 3 night stay at an All-Inclusive resort in the Dominican Republic. We booked the Groupon and began to look at flights. There is a bus you can take, but with such a short amount of time, we chose to fly. We booked on an airline I had heard others use before, TortugAir. I could use this blog as a long and bitter diatribe written against Tortug, but I will try and exercise some self-restraint. Let's just say, for those of you who would live in Haiti and want to fly to the DR (or anywhere else they fly) and are considering using Tortug, don't. There, that's all.
We left on Thursday afternoon and flew from Port-au-Prince to Santo Domingo, the capital of the Dominican Republic. I knew the plane would be small, and I thought I had prepared myself for that, but I hadn't. I didn't know that I would be close enough to the pilot to tap him on his shoulder and ask him why certain buttons were flashing red and another screen kept flashing the word "ALERT." (In case you're wondering, I didn't tap the pilot on the shoulder at any point, though I was close enough. I was too busy checking the propellers outside the plane to make sure they were still turning!)
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| Sweet laminated boarding pass.... |
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| Teeny little plane. |
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| What's up pilot? |
We landed in Santo Domingo a terrifying mere 45 minutes after takeoff. The airport was nice, but located far outside of town (with this airline you don't fly into the main airport in Santo Domingo). We were ale to share a cab with a nice couple in front of us who were staying in a hotel near ours. The first night of our trip we stayed in the Zona Colonial area of Santo Domingo. This would be considered the historical district as well as the arts district I think. When we walked into our hotel we were greeted with a blast of cool air and a glass of champagne and knew we had made a good choice of hotels. The staff were warm and welcoming and the rooms were great.
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| Old church/mission near our hotel in Santo Domingo. |
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| Outdoor patio restaurant things. |
Our next stop though had to be food. We had passed a road a couple blocks from our hotel that was in front of an old church and had restaurant after restaurant lined up, each with an outdoor patio seating area. Our eyes stopped on one particular restaurant and, without discussion, knew we needed to eat there: The Hard Rock Cafe.
Now, some people will judge us at this point..."you went to another country and ate at the Hard Rock Cafe?!" Absolutely. Try as our cafeteria might, they just can't make a cheeseburger that will compete with an American cheeseburger. We wanted something in English and something that tasted like home. Enter the pulled pork sandwich with french fries and a coke. Delish.
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| 'merican food. |
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| Still decorated from Halloween the night before. |
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| Sooooo good. |
After dinner we wandered the neighborhood where an artisan fair was going on with all kinds of crafts from Colombia. When we had seen all we wanted to see we went back to the hotel, sat in the air conditioning, and watched TV. Simple pleasures.
The next morning we needed to catch a bus from Santo Domingo to Punta Cana. I knew the name of the bus-line and the address. We got a taxi from our hotel and were dropped off at a very sketchy building. But, at 6:45 the doors opened and we were inthe right spot. We paid $375 RD (about $10 US) and hopped aboard. The bus left at 7am and as we drove through the streets of Santo Domingo, something just seemed....different. It finally hit me: no walls. There were no walls around the houses, buildings, businesses, nothing! In Haiti, EVERYTHING has a wall around it. The streets are not a mixture of different porches or houses with different paint or different brick. It is all a jumbled mx of different kinds of walls.
We drove through the countryside on this very nice bus for about 4 hours. No, we weren't exactly sure of where we were supposed to get off. Any Spanish I picked up in high school had been violently shoved out of my brain when I began learning Creole. When we reached the last stop and everyone was getting off, I figured we should to. We were dropped off at a gas station parking lot and immediately swarmed by taxi drivers. We found one, and fifteen minutes later arrived at our resort.
The next few days involved very little physical activity (aside froma very diverse volleyball game played between Americans, Dominicans, Chileans, Russians, and a Canadian). We ate, sat on the beach, read, ate some more, read some more, and slept. It was great!
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| View from our room (semi-blocked by the tree). |
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| Another shot from our balcony. |
The last day and night we were at the resort both Jill and I were feeling kinda crummy and not entirely looking forward to the trip back. However, the transportation to return to Santo Domingo worked out all right. We arrived in the capital with a few hours to kill so we took advantage of the several American food chains in the area: a bacon cheeseburger at Wendy's and an ice cream cone at Baskin Robbins. There was also a grocery store nearby so we bought a few items that were much cheaper than our local stores here in Haiti.
On the way back to the airport we attempted to figure out the Metro and did so semi-successfully. We made it back to the airport, had one more fight with Tortug Air, another terrifying fight, and safe arrival in Port-au-Prince.
Restful weekend and another country stamped on my passport. Win.
