This is a HUGE night for me. 2 posts!! So we go from Carnival to Semana Santa...Semana Santa was sweet for a few reasons 1) Bill was back in town, 2) I got 3 days off of work and 3) We went to Santo Domingo, and 4) I spent a freaky number of hours in a casino.
So I had been really excited to travel to Santo Domingo (about a 5 hour bus ride from Cabarete)to see a "real city" in the DR. Everyone had said that it would be super quiet and calm during Semana Santa (because everyone leaves the city and comes to Cabarete, which turns into a scary-massive party) so it seemed like a good time to go.
We arrived first in the Zona Colonial, the oldest part of the city, to check out our hotel - a quiet little 4 room bed and breakfast that I am now obsessed with, which overlooked a little park/plaza and had really fun modern furniture. The Zona Colonial is where many historic sites/museums are, lots of restaurants and shops (many of which were actually closed during Semana Santa which was sort of sad/sort of good for my bank account). The neighborhood was beautiful (lots of well preserved old historic stone/coral stone buildings and balconies spilling over with flowers), not as touristy as I thought it would be, and generally much more relaxing than I expected for the most popular neighborhood in the city. Many buildings and streets reminded me of Spain.
Highlights included a middle eastern falafel restaurant (you can't imagine what it's like to come across that after seeing plate after plate of white rice/beans/chicken - especially when you don't even eat chicken). Heaven! The restaurant was gorgeous - had a big, 2-level open courtyard seating area in a restored colonial building.
An unexpected find was Santo Domingo's Chinatown! Bill and I ended up there after sadly traveling to the outskirts of the city (also past the country's first Ikea! I somehow managed not to enter that place) to the botanical garden which gets rave reviews, only to find it closed for Semana Santa. Snooping around for some yummy (at best, edible at least!) Chinese food we took a chance on a restaurant that seemed crowded and like it had an extensive menu. It was so good! Honestly I think some of the best Chinese food I've had (I know I'm prone to superlatives but I swear it WAS seriously good). They even had tofu! In any case, if you catch the trend, basically we ate a lot of good and fun food in Santo Domingo.
I will say that the city was a little less developed than I thought though...I was expecting skyscrapers and real museums, none of which I found...the Museo de Hombre Dominicano was probably the biggest disappointment/terrifying thing to happen to the international museum community. Supposedly housing the most extensive collection of Taino (indigenous group that inhabited the Caribbean pre-Columbus) artifacts in the world, it essentially looked like the exhibitions were installed somewhere between 1950-1958, after which point the entire museum's staff quit, were not replaced, and someone just decided to keep the museum open because it was there. A bit scary, especially for the budding anthropologists among us...
The Museo de Arte Moderno did have some cool stuff, but i think I might have also been able to lift a painting off the wall and walk out the door with it...I guess I basically realized that the Dominican government/upper class is not yet prioritizing cultural landmarks.
What they did seem to prioritize, much to my delight, were tacky casinos on the waterfront! Since I wouldn't stop talking about card counting and the book Bringing Down The House, Bill finally agreed to hit the tables (he was dying to.) This was hilarious, especially because the first casino we went to had 2 ATMs, both of which were not working, and they refused to give us money using a credit card without a passport. Never thought I would see a casino where it was seriously difficult to access a bank account, but not entirely unsurprising for the DR - it's all part of the charm!
In any case, we hopped to another, got lots of free drinks and some free late night grilled cheese, I won a fair amount of pesos playing slots, and then slowly lost them all at the blackjack table, but not before we met some really hilarious characters. I have to say that a Dominican casino at 3:30am is probably one of my most favorite images I'll remember from my time here (ok maybe one rank below 'most favorite'). But really a treat!
In any case, I really don't have a gambling problem (Bill, quiet please), and the bottom line was that we had a great trip, and returned to Cabarete just in time to see the craziness of the last Saturday night of Semana Santa unfold...
More soon!
Tuesday, April 13, 2010
Semana Santa = loco, Carnival tambien. Pt. 1
Hi all! ahhh. So it does appear to have been over a month since my last post! Let's just say I'm really adapting to the Dominican cultural trademark of being just a bit late all the time...
So I'm just coming off a little Semana Santa (which basically amounts to a country wide spring break, aka a MASSIVE party in Cabarete...we're talking reminiscent of MTV Spring Break Cancun. Not that I would know what that looks like, honestly, but I'd imagine it was something like Cabarete beach looked 2 weekends ago...) extravaganza. While we're on the topic of parties Dominican style, I actually want to include a note about Carnival, which came and went a couple months back without a blog post.
I don't really remember when I went to Carnival, but it was sometime in February. It's a festival that happens countrywide (though in some towns more than others) during every weekend of the month. The town of La Vega is the Carnival mecca of the DR, so naturally I had to check it out.
After a sleepy bus ride I arrived in La Vega in the early afternoon, along with some companeros from Cabarete. My first experience in La Vega marked the single most ridiculous car/ car-ride I have ever seen or experienced (and that's saying a lot coming from someone living in the DR). The car I got into at the bus station - a public car that would take us to the center of the Carnival action in town - had no back bumper (I forget what else it was missing, but it definitely should have been taken off the road about a decade ago), was probably about 40 years old, and appeared actually somewhat dangerous (again, saying a lot coming from someone who routinely experiences Dominican public cars/buses) due to the fact that the front dash was nothing more than a mass of unprotected wires, spilling out into the passenger seat area. It was way too funny, and frustrating that I couldn't appropriately document it with a photo from the backseat (which I was probably sharing with 5 or so people at the time) because I thought it would be a bit too obvious and perhaps offensive to the driver to suggest that I thought his car was a hilarious spectacle.
In any case, while I thought we would be driving Flinstone style any second, the car somehow got us to the center of town and we headed towards the loud music. So in short...Carnival was a huge party with a lot of beer and Brugal rum being sold under tents along the roads of La Vega. In the Carnival tradition, there is somewhat of a constant parade of costumed groups walking through the streets. These are mostly men. These men are also carrying rubber balls on the end of ropes. With these rubber balls they are also violently smacking the asses of bystanders (or, more specifically, anyone in the road...if you are on the sidewalk - where god knows I stayed - you're not really fair game). If you do get hit, some dude winds up and nails you with this rubber thing as hard as he can, and you end up with a welt/bruise on your butt/thigh that makes it look like you are in some sort of seriously abusive relationship. I'm still a little fuzzy on the details of where this tradition comes from or why anyone thinks it's fun/acceptable, but I think it might just have to do with the volume of rum consumption during Carnival.
In any case, that was the scene - tons of people in a big parade, and some in weird costumes or trying to sell weird things. For example, someone tried to sell me the opportunity for them to wrap their--oh, I'd say 15 foot --giant, live bright yellow snake around my neck for a photo for 100 pesos (aka $3). Not sure if everyone here is familiar with how I feel about snakes, let alone potentially deadly ones, but the guy was waaay off in suggesting that I would pay for that photo. Instead I took one with a man who looked like he had jumped in a bucket of tar...but probably black paint...and attached a really long tail to himself, along with some other freaky werewolf-like features. I definitely paid him, especially after he ran at me waving his tail in my face and yelling "money! money! money! money!". Never a dull moment here!
So I'm just coming off a little Semana Santa (which basically amounts to a country wide spring break, aka a MASSIVE party in Cabarete...we're talking reminiscent of MTV Spring Break Cancun. Not that I would know what that looks like, honestly, but I'd imagine it was something like Cabarete beach looked 2 weekends ago...) extravaganza. While we're on the topic of parties Dominican style, I actually want to include a note about Carnival, which came and went a couple months back without a blog post.
I don't really remember when I went to Carnival, but it was sometime in February. It's a festival that happens countrywide (though in some towns more than others) during every weekend of the month. The town of La Vega is the Carnival mecca of the DR, so naturally I had to check it out.
After a sleepy bus ride I arrived in La Vega in the early afternoon, along with some companeros from Cabarete. My first experience in La Vega marked the single most ridiculous car/ car-ride I have ever seen or experienced (and that's saying a lot coming from someone living in the DR). The car I got into at the bus station - a public car that would take us to the center of the Carnival action in town - had no back bumper (I forget what else it was missing, but it definitely should have been taken off the road about a decade ago), was probably about 40 years old, and appeared actually somewhat dangerous (again, saying a lot coming from someone who routinely experiences Dominican public cars/buses) due to the fact that the front dash was nothing more than a mass of unprotected wires, spilling out into the passenger seat area. It was way too funny, and frustrating that I couldn't appropriately document it with a photo from the backseat (which I was probably sharing with 5 or so people at the time) because I thought it would be a bit too obvious and perhaps offensive to the driver to suggest that I thought his car was a hilarious spectacle.
In any case, while I thought we would be driving Flinstone style any second, the car somehow got us to the center of town and we headed towards the loud music. So in short...Carnival was a huge party with a lot of beer and Brugal rum being sold under tents along the roads of La Vega. In the Carnival tradition, there is somewhat of a constant parade of costumed groups walking through the streets. These are mostly men. These men are also carrying rubber balls on the end of ropes. With these rubber balls they are also violently smacking the asses of bystanders (or, more specifically, anyone in the road...if you are on the sidewalk - where god knows I stayed - you're not really fair game). If you do get hit, some dude winds up and nails you with this rubber thing as hard as he can, and you end up with a welt/bruise on your butt/thigh that makes it look like you are in some sort of seriously abusive relationship. I'm still a little fuzzy on the details of where this tradition comes from or why anyone thinks it's fun/acceptable, but I think it might just have to do with the volume of rum consumption during Carnival.
In any case, that was the scene - tons of people in a big parade, and some in weird costumes or trying to sell weird things. For example, someone tried to sell me the opportunity for them to wrap their--oh, I'd say 15 foot --giant, live bright yellow snake around my neck for a photo for 100 pesos (aka $3). Not sure if everyone here is familiar with how I feel about snakes, let alone potentially deadly ones, but the guy was waaay off in suggesting that I would pay for that photo. Instead I took one with a man who looked like he had jumped in a bucket of tar...but probably black paint...and attached a really long tail to himself, along with some other freaky werewolf-like features. I definitely paid him, especially after he ran at me waving his tail in my face and yelling "money! money! money! money!". Never a dull moment here!
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