Feliz Navidad #1
As the warmth of the Caribbean sun is leached from my bones by the frigid air of an English winter, I find myself wondering whether I would go back to the Dominican Republic. The resounding answer is no, not even for the 84 degree heat of mid-winter.
It’s an easy question to ask, but with a complex answer, so if you can be arsed to read the rest of this I suggest you get a brew and make yourself comfy.
Don’t get me wrong, there’s nothing wrong with the place, the sun was hot, the sea was blue and the sand was like talcum powder but there is a feeling that that’s all there is, no depth to the culture and no sense of national pride from the Dominicans. The whole place was a huge tourist trap, designed to part me from my cash. I know most holiday destinations are similar, but if you engage a Jamaican or Egyptian in conversation about culture or religion you get more, you get passion and colour, and this was sadly lacking here. I have waffled about my opinions on the differences between travel and tourism before so I’ll not go into it again here (here if you’re interested 4th July 1995), but suffice to say that if tourism is all about your destination, then there are far better places in the Caribbean to visit than the Dom’ rep’.
The oldest known inhabitants of the island were the Taino Indians, replacing older tribes around 600 AD, the Tainos named the island Quisqueya, which means “mother of the earth”. The hunter gatherers lived on the island until a little after Columbus landed on the 5th December 1492. By the early 1500s they were all but gone; smallpox, enslavement, suicide and war with Spanish ended their rule of the island. Since then Hispaniola, as Columbus named it, has been in Spanish, French and US control until finally becoming a republic. You would think, with such a rich history, that some of it would filter through to today’s society. Unfortunately I didn’t see it.
Anyway, back to the holiday. You may now be under the impression that we didn’t have a good time. Nothing of the sort, it was a great holiday. We had a good laugh, read some great books, saw some mind boggling things and got a fine tan. All will be revealed in the next few posts.