Bola Race

I just got back from participating in the Peace Corps DR’s 4^th annual bola race. A bola is a free ride to a destination, the equivalent of hitchhiking. In the US, bolas (or hitchhiking) is frowned upon and illegal, but here in the good ole Dominican Republic, bolas are an everyday occurrence. (Did you know that in Cuba if someone asks you for a bola, it is illegal to tell them no?) Now that you know what a bola is, I bet you are still wondering what exactly a bola race is, so let me explain.

Bola Race 2009: On Saturday morning, beginning in Santiago (a large city in the north of the country), 25 teams (boy-girl pairs) of Peace Corps volunteers competed to arrive to an unknown destination first. Five minutes before we were allowed to leave Santiago, they told us our final destination: Rio San Juan, a touristy beach site about one hour north of Boaba. So the bola race sounds easy, right? Here are the rules:

• The teams can only use bolas. They can not pay for a ride to the final destination. Even though bolas are common, this is extremely difficult for us white Americans. The Dominicans see us, assume we are tourists with lots of money, and therefore they don’t want to give us free rides.

• The teams have to dress in costume and come up with a background story. My partner, Ben, wrapped his ankle and walked around on crutches, and I wrapped my arm in a makeshift sling. Our story? We are brothers and sisters (if we were husband and wife, I couldn’t flirt with the male drivers to ease the bola-ing process) vacationing in the Dominican Republic. We were riding horses in the mountains, and both fell. We used up all of our money to pay for he hospital bills and now we have to get to Rio San Juan for our cousin’s wedding. We were trying to get some sympathy, but other teams just had ridiculous outfits. Two teams dressed in scrubs as doctors, two teams were members of athletic teams (one volleyball and one baseball), and there were a couple of teams who dressed as traveling singers.
• Each team is given a large quantity of some sort of liquor or mixed drink. The liquor has to be completely gone by the time the team arrives at the final destination. This does not necessarily mean the two volunteers have to drink the liquor. The alcohol can be shared with the bola driver as a gift of gratitude. Many teams had normal liquor, such as rum or gin or whiskey. Ben and I had a bottle of Crème de Café, which tastes fine as a nice after-dinner drink. However, it is not the best alcohol to drink midday in the hot sun while you are riding in the back of a pick up truck, so we gave a lot away to people who helped us along the way.

The results?? Ben and I made it to Rio San Juan within 4 hours, coming in 10^th place out of 25 teams. The first place team arrived to the hotel 45 minutes before we did. We got a bola from a guy in a large 16-wheeler truck. Then this nice old man paid for us to ride in a guagua (even though the guagua was public transportation, this was legal because we didn’t pay for the ticket). And lastly a guagua driver told us he would take us the last leg just to show us that nice Dominicans do exist. So after about 4 car transfers, we arrived in Rio San Juan, ditched our crutches and slings and just started running to the hotel. And I’m sure all of the locals loved watching random groups of Americans dressed in silly costumes because as we were running one Dominican yelled out, “I’m glad your leg is better, but you lost the race! The others already arrived!”

It was a lot of fun and a good way to see different parts of the country. And since we arrived to the hotel by 1 p.m., we had the whole afternoon to relax by the beach. And the best part of this bola race?? Because my site is so close to Rio San Juan, three volunteers just decided to come to Baoba and stay Sunday night with me. So we played dominoes, walked around town, went to my beach, and then played card games with my youth group, who of course were excited (especially the teenage boys) to spend the evening with 4 blonde American girls.