HolaDR.com: Everything About The Dominican Republic!

I’m the first to admit I’m not great at vacations or relaxing. But after a good year with the business and a week to blow, I went to the Dominican Republic. It’s the country that shares the island of Hispanola in the Caribbean Sea with Haiti but doesn’t get nearly the attention because it’s not the tottering morass of poverty and violence Haiti is.

It was surprisingly easy getting there. The trip to Santo Domingo, the capital city, was only two connections: Dallas and Miami. The only problem was our flight got in too late to make the drive to our final destination on the northern coast. We found a little hotel near the airport and spent the night watching the street life from our third-floor room and sleeping in comfort. I’ll write more about that in the days to come.

The next day, we drove almost four hours north through the mountainous countryside to Puerto Plata, a resort city. The trip was a fascinating view of what might be considered a ”typical Third-World” environment but with surprisingly good roads, little sprawling development, and beautiful scenery. We only made one wrong turn, the people were friendly, helpful, and seemed always busy doing something or going somewhere on the motorbikes and scooters that dominate the roads.

Suffice for now to say it was over all fantastic. We ran into few Americans, but lots of Brits, Canadians, and other nationalities. The prices, food and service are great, the recreational sites easy to get to and fun, and it was just a blast. I even made some new friends (see pic).

I was impressed also with the general attitude toward their environment and preserving the easy-exhaustible natural resources island nations have. One of the foci of Jared Diamond’s book “Collapse” was the comparison between the Dominican Republic and Haiti and how their very different environmental habits helped create the vastly different situations in both countries today despite their virtually identical original demographic and geographic conditions. Seeing it first-hand was enlightening and encouraging.

When you see places like this, you have hope again. Not to mention a little too much mamajuana. More on that later…

By: Ken Schreiner