Destination: Caribbean & South America: Finals days in the DR!

This will be the final post from the glorious Dominican Republic. The government here isn't controlled by a controversial dictator, and the country isn't ridden with disease, corruption and natural disaster. The Dominican Republic has it's problems, but in general, it's on the up-and-up, so I don't see a need for a 'final thoughts' post.

We spent the last 4 days in Santo Dominigo, the capital, and of course, as they love to point out, the oldest city in the Americas. In fact, everything is the first. The first Cathedral of the Americas, the first City Hall in the Americas, etc. They're very proud, and it's easy to forget that there was a civilization (and I use that word pointedly) of Taino Indians that inhabited this land before Christopher Columbus sailed the ocean blue.

On Friday, we explored the Zona Colonial, and saw the major attractions including El Conde, a pedestrian walking path flanked by touristy shops, and the Catedral de las Americas.

Jewelry stand on El Conde

The Plaza de Colon, in the heart of the Zona Colonial. Yes, that's Columbus. Big woop.

Pigeons in the Plaza de Colon

Main entrance to the Catedral de las Americas (1502)

Inside the Catedral de las Americas

Statues of the founding fathers: Juan Pablo Duarte, Sanchez, and Mella. In the Parque de Independencia.

The Presidential Palace

Continuing our trend of buying bread and Peanut Butter for most meals. We didn't buy this loaf, but boy is it mammoth!

Saturday was also devoted to Santo Domingo, though our adventures were much less fruitful. We started off the day late, because we had an “appointment” at the camera shop close to our hotel at noon. I had little faith they could fix her lens, but the place looked far more promising than our first few tries.

With broken Spanish and English we explained to the guy what had happened, and what wasn’t working. He seemed to say he’d diagnose the problem, and have an estimate ready for us in an hour. So we did a few errands, and an hour later we were back, and the lens was fixed! $40 later…

We spent the rest of the day walking around the old part of town, though it started raining, and we didn’t get too far. We did see the “Mercado Modelo”, which was nothing more than an old warehouse-like building with countless stands selling the same touristy crap: amber and blue-stoned necklaces, pendants and earings, as well as cigars, paintings, shirts, and anything else they could print “Dominican Republic” on.

By this point, we felt we had a pretty good grasp of the capital, so we decided to take a day trip out of town on Sunday, our last day in the country. We were out of bed early, and off to the Cueva de las Maravillas (Cave of Wonder!), an hour out of town. The bus dropped us off in the middle of nowhere, which is exactly where the caves are.

The caves were very cool, and enormous. The place was very well put together, with lit walkways winding through the otherwise pitch black cave. As you pass by certain points, you activate motion sensor lights that illuminate stalactites and stalagmites, and some Taino Indian paintings. It was fairly unknown as it’s only been open to the public for 7 years, but it was well worth the trip.

It was beautiful inside the caves, but we weren’t allowed to take pictures. Of course we tried, but when that didn’t work so well, we found these images on the web.

As we made our way out of the caves, we passed by the museum’s last exhibit: a pen full of huge iguanas! Very cool. A caretaker told us the larger ones were about 10 years old, and can live up to about 30!

We tried hitchhiking it back to town, but when that failed we flagged a passing bus. Next we decided to visit the Faro de Colon, a lighthouse dedicated to Christopher Columbus. It’s shaped like a massive cross (8 stories tall, laying down), and, when turned on, beams an enormous light into the sky. Apparently it cost a ton of money, and unfortunately, they can’t turn it on that much because it can cause power-outages in the nearby neighborhood.

The Faro de Colon also has a monument to Columbus which supposedly contains his remains, though Spain and Italy each claim they are his true resting place as well.

Besides Columbus, the Faro de Colon has an incredibly week museum dedicated to the Americas, with a ridiculously tiny and discombobulated exhibit for each country (and also China, England, France, Israel and Portugal for some reason).

We were more entertained by the impressive building itself, in particular the walkway down the center of the cross. We took lots of pictures.

PB & B in the shade!

After the Faro de Colon we found a motoconcho to take us to a Gallera, which is where they fight roosters. Cockfighting is a national sport in the DR, and hugely popular with betting men. We skipped out on the Coliseo (where international competitions are held), and headed for a more local (though they claim it’s second only to the Coliseo) Club Gallistico. It was about 5pm, and the events were just starting.

Cockfighting usually goes down on Fridays, Saturdays, and Sundays, and usually gets going around late afternoon until wee-hours of the morning. One day may have between 30 and 40 fights, each lasting a maximum of 15 minutes, after which it’s called off.

The 12-foot diameter ring had about 5 rows of seats surrounding it, with a total occupancy of probably a couple hundred. Most of the seats were full, with guys drinking beer and placing bets. There was an announcer, and cock-handlers.

Each round the roosters would be brought into the ring via an overhead trolly. Then the handlers would each take out a rooster, and spend a few minutes getting the bird agitated and riled up. Meanwhile, a kid would be going around the ring picking up the feathers and wiping off the blood from the round before. Once the handlers had the roosters good and ready, they would send them at each other.

The birds would start off strong, flaring their neck feathers and jumping over each other. They would peck at each other’s necks, and occasionally get lucky when the spikes attached to their ankles would stab the other bird. After several minutes the birds would grow tired, and start stumbling around the ring.

We watched 3 or 4 rounds, none of which resulted in any dead roosters. After about 10 minutes the roosters would be tired, and when it got too boring to watch, they would deem that one rooster beat the other. Though the fights were not very gruesome, Abra still got a little nauseous, and figuring we had seen enough, we headed on our way.

Before leaving, we talked to one of the owners outside, whose rooster had just won his match. He was very proud, and showed him off to Abra to take a picture. The rooster had won him 10,000 Dominican pesos (about $266!), and would be ready to fight again in 30 days.

After the cockfight we hitched a ride with a real sketch taxi driver. He seemed like he may have been half blind, and the car felt like it was going to fall apart at any moment. We were happy to arrive back in town, and headed back to the hotel to pack up some in preparation for our departure the next day. We watched a few episodes of ‘The New Adventures of Old Christine’ (with Elaine from Seinfeld), which we just recently discovered and is hilarious.