Paseo

I mentioned briefly in my last entry that I have been doing some traveling with Dominicans lately. For some reason, various families keep inviting me to spend the day with them as they travel the country. And of course I keep accepting the invitations.

Las Galeras, Samaná

The first invitation I received was from Sofia and Miguel. They’re my 50-year-old neighbors, and both of them grew up and met in Las Galeras, Samaná. They have five children (26, 24, 22, 16, and 14 years old) and all of them were born in Las Galeras before Sofia and Miguel moved to Baoba. Up until this trip, 13 years had passed since the entire family had returned to Las Galeras. 15 (children, grandchildren, and a few family friends) of us piled into a pickup truck and we made the 3-hour trip to Miguel and Sofia’s hometown.

One of the most interesting things about the trip I noticed was how everyone was dressed. For those of you who don’t know, Dominicans absolutely love to look their best. I was dressed comfortably in jeans, flip flops and a sleeveless shirt, but all of them were dressed to impress with stilettos and tight, sexy outfits. However the minute we arrived, they all went to change into more comfortable, everyday clothes. So the only people who saw them all dressed up were the same ones who were traveling with us. This seemed a little ridiculous to me, but oh well.

During the day, Sofia toted me around to all of her family members and old friends, bragging that she was now friends with the Americana. I didn’t mind this because people kept wanting to impress me so they kept giving me stuff: rice, beans, milkshakes, oranges, peanuts and a bunch of bananas. It was great. And around 4 o’clock we all piled back into the truck to get back to Baoba in time for them to watch their telenovelas (nighttime Dominican soap operas).

Santo Domingo

The next paseo was to the capital, Santo Domingo, with Valerio and his family. (Sidenote: Valerio is the guy that shot off his gun at the Patronales festival in one of my previous blog entries.) I have been to the capital many times and I always dread the long trip, but this was my first time going in a private car. Not having to deal with public transportation for the first time here seriously changed my whole perspective of the city.

We took the scenic route, stopping at various “attractions,” one of them being a Catholic church that has the statue of a Jesus that apparently does miracles. I took pictures of the statue and of a Jesus on the crucifix because they told me to. It was then that I realized that I was invited to share this family vacation with them because I own a camera.

Once arriving in the city, we went straight to the zoo. We ate lunch standing in the parking lot (chicken and various vegetables that Sylveria, Valerio’s wife, had cooked the night before), and then were ready to go. The zoo was okay. It was a much smaller zoo than most of the ones in the US, and a lot of the animals' cages seemed too small for them. But we got to see about 15 different animals, so that was cool. Seriously, the animals in the zoo were: 2 lions, 3 tigers, a bear, 2 rhinoceroses, 3 monkeys, 2 chimpanzees, 5 snakes, 4 hippopotamuses, 3 ostriches, 2 crocodiles and a bunch of pigeons, flamingos and water buffalo (or as Valerio called them- “weird-looking cows”).

After the zoo, we went to the aquarium, which was basically just a bunch of fishbowls. There were two sharks and two turtles, but every other animal in the aquarium was some type of fish. And I believe that if you’ve seen one fish, you’ve seen them all. Valerio and his family were all amazed by a rare species called the “Pescado Gato” and they were even more amazed when I told them that Dad used to fish for them in my grandparent’s lake house and then eat them.

One interesting thing about both the zoo and the aquarium was that they each had two separate entrance fees: one for Dominicans and one for foreigners. For the zoo, the price for the foreigners was three times the local price, and the price was double for the aquarium. So I basically just hid in a corner while Valerio bought all the tickets, so people wouldn’t know I was a foreigner. I don’t know if you all are aware, but my pasty white skin tone tends to stand out in this country of beautifully tan brown people.

And the last attraction before heading back to Baoba: riding the metro! President Leonel Fernandez apparently decided that the one thing his developing country was lacking was a metro. He spends only 2% of the national budget on education (this includes paying teachers salaries, building new and repairing old schools, buying books, etc.), yet he has somehow found billions of dollars to fund this cool transportation system in the capital.

This was my first time riding the Dominican metro, and it was definitely the first time riding “el tren” for Valerio and his family. (It was also the first time they had ever ridden an escalator, and watching them hesitantly step onto the moving platform was a very amusing experience for me.) Before all of the girls got on the metro, they all sprayed themselves with perfume and touched up their lipstick, powder and eye liner. They all wanted to look GOOD before this big adventure. And they absolutely loved it. We bought one ticket (40 pesos= $1.25 US) and just did a round trip and rode through all of the stops until we arrived back to where the pickup truck was parked. After the metro trip, it was 5 o’clock, so we called it a day and headed back to Baoba.