Arrival @ Santo Domingo

Just before we had to go through customs, we had to buy a Tourist Visa. The price for this was US$ 20. After declaring I wasn´t American and had no dollars, the servant simply said: "Okay, then it´s 20 EUR"...

Shortly thereafter we went to San Christobal, which appeared to be a city where not a lot of tourists come. Nevertheless, no 5 mins passed by or someone tried to make a bargain for a ride by bike or taxi for outrageous prices.

To save some money we figured we could buy a car and sleep in it, while giving us a whole lot of freedom at the same time. Thinking about how my dad sold his car for EUR 100 and I bought mine for 250, I thought we should be able to buy a car for EUR 100 or even less.
I don´t know about locals, but for tourists the price was not far from the price you´d pay for a new one, unless it practically fell apart and even then we had to pay outrageous prices.
So we abandonned this project.

San Christobal is quite shocking as to where and how people live. (probably not as bad as Mexico City´s banlieu, but still far worse than I had expected). Many people live in half-collapsed houses and there´s so much trash you can fill a supermarket with what you can observe standing in one place.

Santo Domingo seems a little cleaner, apart from the ocean, where it´s waves of litter rolling onto the beach. The electricity network is a miracle it still functions. The wires are dangling criss-cross over the road, at crossings in maybe 20 directions and some of the poles can´t support the tension so they start leaning over until they lean against a wall and the situation stabilizes a bit. Electrabel would get sued a million times over.