Adventures in the Caribbean: Santo Domingo, Dominican Republic

Today, Epiphany, we took a single backpack and walked a few blocks into town to catch a mini-bus.  Apparently they all go to the same place, so there was no concern about boarding the wrong one.  Just in case, I stretched my Spanish to the max by asking, “A Santo Domingo?” 

It took us to the highway, where we were directed to switch buses.  This bus was packed, and we thought it was full. 

Nonsense—these buses have hidden seats that fold down, adding significantly to their capacity. 

Andrea and I were pointed towards the front bench, with a man excited to sit between us and practice his very poor English.  He annoyed me because I prefer to be left alone, but he was also somewhat interesting and helpful, and was apparently a Catholic “missionary,” as well as a father desperate to raise money for a medical procedure for his son. 

Anyway, after a passionate, rousing sermon, he sold CDs to an awful lot of the passengers, including me, for 50 pesos, or about $1.  I felt ripped off, but if the guy was a scammer, he managed to scam an awful lot of locals too. 

The bus ride cost 70 pesos each, which we paid en route to the employee who was in charge of collecting money, opening the door, and yelling to potential passengers to let them know where the bus was going.  All in all, it was an impressive, efficient, cost-effective, and slightly intimidating transit system.

. . .

In Santo Domingo we walked along the waterfront to our hotel, the Renaissance Jaragua Marriot.  It is one of Santo Domingo’s nicest hotels, but only cost $100 for the night, a real steal we thought.  We could see the Caribbean from the window of our room.  It was tremendously hot, so we gulped down lemon-lime ice water from a cooler in the lobby, and bought some sandwiches at the café. 

Then we headed back out to get some cash and see the old town.  After a hot, 8 kilometre walk, we had seen most of what we wanted to, which included old churches;

 city walls;

 a fortress;

public squares;

and so on.  

We also saw a big statue of Christopher Columbus. 

. . .

Back at our room we showered and rested for a bit, then went down to find a taxi.  I had brought a little notebook with the names of the places we might need, as well as a few Spanish phrases like “how much to . . .?” and things like that.  Using this I bargained with our cabbie and we settled on 300 pesos for the fare, or about $6. 

The atmosphere outside the stadium was madness, with fans more or less evenly decked out in red or blue, and loud and boisterous.  We queued for tickets, and in retrospect I realize I was supposed to pick a side to sit on—either Licey or Escogido, but I could not understand the ticket seller, so he asked me in English if I spoke Spanish, I said no, and he just handed me a pair of tickets for 1000 pesos.

We got inside—me after a thorough pat-down, and Andrea untouched—and bought bottles of water and ice-cold cans of El Presidente beer, all for about a couple of dollars.  We found our seats, on the Escogido side, it turned out.  We were just below an impromptu band made up of fans, not stadium or team employees like they would be in Canada.

Man, did we have fun.  The game was compelling, but the best part for me was the atmosphere—those Dominicans really know how to get into a baseball game.  Andrea’s highlight was the margaritas, which truly were something else, albeit not as cheap as almost everything else in Dominican ($7!).

Since our flight was early the next day, and since we were in no way invested in the game’s outcome, we left after the sixth inning.  I managed to watch the final two innings on TV in our hotel room—Licey had extended their lead from 3-1 when we left to 7-1.  Escogido briefly made it interesting with two runs in the bottom of the ninth, but 7-3 was the final. Licey went on to win the 2014 championship.