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Sooi's last evening in The Republic, we wanted to make a little bit special by cooking for ourselves and make it a little quiet evening. As we didn't know any place besides Fata Morgana were there was a community kitchen (besides the fact that we really liked the place and it was cheap) we decided to spend out last night together there. We left our hotel at 11:30 and arrived at Las Terrenas at 20:30 ! So most of that last day we spent on travelling and we were fed up by guagua trying to rip us off (or at least that's how we felt about it).
When we finished dinner, Edit, the owner of Fata Morgana tried to convince Sooi to take a bus in the morning the day his plane would leave instead of the next day. Since Sooi managed to get a Cacao Nut freshly picked by a Haitian guym he decided to follow our advice and we ended up having a second night together. We decided to spend it at the beach at Playa Cozon and simply have some beers and go for a swim...
After we sat down and finished the first one and went for a swim we came back at the bar and a couple of Dominicans were playing guitar, playing the bongos or congas or whatever it is called (I know for sure it wasn't a church organ) and singing too. After a while we put ourselves in front of the band at a table and when the band noticed our interest, they asked what we wanted to hear next. So we asked them to play merengue and bachata, what the difference was and one of the members of the band and a spectating lady even showed us the secrets of merengue dancing...
Sooi and I agreed this certainly was the most idyllic day of the trip.

After the band left, we shot the last pictures with Sooi's underwater camera (we also took these pictures under water) and we were blessed with some beautiful sunsets in the nicest beach in the country. Sooi thanked all gods of all religions (except that one religion were you need to cut of your hand, paint it blue and then sing a song in a language that doesn't exist, because that's a silly religion anyway) for staying one more night and receiving a gift like this one, without even asking for anything...

Dominican Coins

Did I mention already that the coins here in the Republic are made of
rubber ?

KeruBanda

The whole day long we were anxiously looking forward to the concert of KeruBanda. When we eventually decided to take a shower in the less than appealing bathroom (I even doubted that I would get cleaner out of it then when I got in it) we heard some music playing and figured that they had started already at 8 o'clock as displayed on the banners all over the town. As we were preparing ourselves as quickly as we could, a Dominican guy with an American Nationality told us there wasn't anyone there yet and that the music we heard was just a DJ playing. With a sigh
of relief we figured we could relax a little more. When we eventually showed up in the center of the village around nine-ish, we discovered that the gig was actually taking place inside a new club in Mimey, that had booked KeruBanda as their opening spectacle.
The guards at the door told us that the concert was about to start around 10, so around 20 past
ten we entered the club. It was a very fancy club according to Dominican standards, which we noticed because a lot of expensive cars with people in expensive suits showed up. Most of the tables in the club were reserved and some of them had a box with a bottle of Jack Daniels waiting to be consumed. We were directed to a tiny little plastic table with tiny little chairs at the side of the club. They played all kinds of loud music (Dominicans don't seem to make the connection of their country-wide hearing problems and the loud music they play all the time during all moments of the day), mostly Reggea-Ton, Merengue, Batta-something and sometimes a kind of techno that reminded me of the times shortly after "Bonzai".

Sooi was feeling the vibes and looked like a drifted-loose Kurt Cobain between all these High Class Society Dominicans who looked at him like they never seen anything like it.

Every now and then we went outside for a smoke, because you're not aloud to smoke in airconditioned places.
Dominicans don't smoke a lot and some people even acted annoyed when someone lighted one outside in their vicinity. Lots of people also warned us about the dangers of smoking. (well I'm trying to quit and smoke only three when I'm drinking and Sooi only smokes when on
holidays :-), so we take their advice for real).
Anyway, it's only because of our bad habit that we had the luck to meet one of the singers of the band in person. We were looking from a close distance at a neat van parked right outside the club. It looked like a guagua but then without the broken windows, dents and scratches as usual
and it was also brand new.
As we were admiring this vehicle, a guy came out and we asked were this van was going (we succeeded being understood already after 4 attempts !). It turned out to be the artists tour-bus and the singer's name was something that came close to a poorly
pronounced "Richard". We explained the guy that we came all the way over from Santiago to see the band play. This came across as we had came all the way over from Belgium to see them so the guy promised to give us a free cd. Unfortunately we didn't make it to the end of the concert,
because Sooi was just a little bit (!) drunk and we had to go home early.
Fortunately we managed to get Sooi's trophy which he had been dreaming of since the day we arrived at Mimey, a banner with the name of the band, where they played at and when. Ultimately we'd fancy to have it signed by all members of the band, but we had to be happy with only part one of the plan.

Pictures Link

I've changed the name of the album to
http://picasaweb.google.com/oneindelijk/RepublicaDominican#
(if anyone's interested in why:
because the name of my blog was the same as that album, and the blog automatically creates a new album in picasa to store the pictures with the same name as the blog, I ended up with two albums with the same name, which was all to confusing...)

City of Difference

The funny thing about Santiago (and then I will shut up about it) and
also the reason why I like it, is that there is such a big difference in
such short distances.
This picture, for example, is taken only two
block away from the hotel I stayed in. It felt like you're suddenly in

Africa or something (not that have ever been there).

The streets are filled with vegetables, clothes, shoes and e ven buckets filled with
toothpaste, medicins, garlic and lemmons (all in one bucket). The odour
isn't really nice there (although the rotting pineapples spread a nice
smell), because the sewers are sometimes flooding parts of the streets
and open sewers in this heat ought to smell like that.
Cars can hardly pass, but they do it anyway. It felt kinda awkward to
take pictures here (so I didn't).
Two blocks away from my hotel in the other direction was the main
street. There you have traffic jams al l the time, but not as bad as
during peak times in cities in Europe. Although they press the horn
practically all the time, they don't seem to be as stressed out in
traffic and the funny thing is, that sometimes it even seems to help.
They use the horn a lot just to provide an audible sign of their
approach towards motorbikes, pedestrian s and other cars (saves them
braking).
On the real busy crossings, a countdown-counter is installed so the
drivers can see how much time they have left before the light changes
(in both cases).

In the hotelroom we got a service that we've never had before. We had a
speaker in our room and a switch to turn it on and off. Dominican music
on demand !!

Live Concert

My traveling companion, Sooi, met me in front of the hotel, because he was searching for some live music (which was the reason I had come to Santiago), but I had to severely disappoint him. Never giving up like the man he was, he found out the next day that there was a gig the night
before. The night we've been in search for at least some dancing and stuff, but all we found was a disco were we had to pay RD200 to get in, which we didn't want to pay as it looked like nobody was even moving inside (the 'D' in DISCO stands for "don't !").
Sooi also found out that the same band also played in a little town called "Mimey", which was on the way to our original destination, "Monte Christi", in the far North-West of the country. We decided to stay there for a couple of nights and then move on to Monte Christi to chill for Sooi's last days in the country.
We had to get off in "Cruce Guayacanes" and take another one for the last stage. I could only reme mber the "Cruce" part and the locals only used the last part to refer to the town. Nevertheless they understood when I asked "¿Es aqui, Cruce ..?".
We booked into the hotel in town (it looked as there was only one) which
we payed RD200 a night per person.

The security for our personal stuff there bared me more then sorrows, certainly when the owner and a friend came by our room and immediately showed an interest in my laptop, asking
how much it costed...
So we locked out room tight, w ith the tiny little locker that we got from the hotel (the doorlocks from all the rooms were all forced open before) and went out in town, because this was the first night of the "fiestas patronales". When we came back, no grizzly-bears had entered our rooms and the toilet paper was still in place (ouf)...

Power Outage #367

I've probably mentioned it before, but power outages are a frequent thing in the Dominican Republic, so metimes because the government cuts the power, but in a

city like Santiago this might be due to the skilled way the powerlines are constructed... In santiago this is neatly done (as in the picture) compared to how it's done in Santo Domingo...
In house electricity also looks like it won several prices for living up to CEBEC-alike standards and the fan in the hotel didn't make any noises for at least 10 minutes after you changed its speed, probably because then it was trying to hard to fell of its hook.