It was time for our annual trip to the DR, to stay at our
usual resort, Sosua by the Sea and to visit our property on the North Coast, 30
miles East of Sosua.
As usual we stayed the night before the trip at the Newark
Airport Hilton, in a newly redecorated room with a very modern look and with
100% LED lighting! We must have had 200
or so little light bulbs in a variety of fixtures. A little like Christmas tree lights.
It was an excellent trip down on United, and with our new
highest status, we were upgraded.
The drive from the airport showed us that everything is
slightly better and when we got to the hotel they welcomed us with open arms
and we went right to lunch without even unloading the car.
Every year we hold our breath as we inspect the beach, which
comes and goes as a consequence of the fall storms. What a relief, the beach is OK!
To our delight there is a big construction project next to the
hotel and all the decaying properties from the early nineties boom have been
demolished, with some deluxe condominiums going up. On the other hand the 5 year old downtown
hotel on Sosua Bay has closed due to bankruptcy. We had dined there and liked it lot.
It is worth commenting on the food. The hotel has a set menu or a buffet for each
meal. Friday night was Dominican Buffet
night. It featured free range pork (a lean
fresh ham) and goat, plantains and great desserts. Saturday was barbecue nights with kebabs and
sausage. Monday night was Mexican and every
day there was fresh fish.
The hotel was nearly full with a group from Canada, here for
good works and fun.
My morning jogging revealed that there is a very nice new
park that is a memorial to Sosua’s WW2 Jewish refugees with a simple stage for
performances, seating and a view of the bay; that there has been a lot of road
paving; that downtown is more seedy; that manhole covers in the back streets
have been stolen and not replaced, with obvious problems.
Monday we had a meeting with our lawyer, Tony. Our property suit is going forward and we expect
a solution by June. We have offered Tony
a week in Mexico as an incentive.
We got into a big discussion of the DR, its economy,
education system. Tony thinks the DR is
too reliant on tourism; that its education system does not teach skills, and
public college education takes double or triple the normal time because of
holidays and strikes. Tony had a lot to
say about the Dictator Trujillo and what good he did for the DR. I read a book about him and thought he was
mostly bad!
We visited our property and the Cristopher family that takes
care of it. We are in our third
generation of caretaker, the first two
having passed away. We drank coconut
water from cocos grown on our property.
Very friendly people. A funny
point. One of the neighbors raised money for street lights and we
contributed. But an election for president
is coming up. So the incumbent president
decided to install streetlights, so we really have a lot of them. Some even work!
We played tennis at a local tennis club with really nice
clay courts. Now the club has an American
co-owner who is a teaching pro with a loud New York accent!
At the end of the week the group showed photos of their trip
and work projects at dinner and offered reflections on their experience and interaction
with locals, their building of a sports court in a small town, etc. It is interesting that they seem to view the
DR as a country of poor people that need to be helped and given things to improve
their lives. Maybe like missionaries
would?
But we view the DR as a developing country that is moving
forward. There are rich, poor and, most
important, middle class people living well, by their standards, in a democracy.
Trip back was uneventful. Lots of people paid for first class
so we got only one upgrade. Alice did
get tennis balls and umbrellas confiscated, as DR security considers them
weapons! We flew through immigration at
Newark thanks to the global entry program where machines read the fingerprints
of enrolled members.
Good trip!
