From: leeper@cbnewsj.cb.att.com (mark.r.leeper)
Newsgroups: rec.travel
Subject: Puerto Rico and Dominican Republic (2 of 3)
Date: 11 Nov 92 15:55:42 GMT
Organization: AT&T




       Caribbean Travel Log            1992                         Page 13



       not intended seriously.  I never know.)

            After lunch we did a little pointless shopping and returned to
       our car, then set out to find Tibes on the outskirts of town.
       Again, this was tough to find since street signs are so hard to
       find.  We did, however, find Tibes (pronounced "TEE-bess").

            It is an ill-wind that blows nobody any good and tropical storm
       Eloisa of 1975 was not that ill a wind.  The storm caused the
       Portugues River to flood and with it pull up a bunch of top soil at
       Tibes.  It uncovered a man-made formation of stones that dated to
       pre-Columbian times.  Uncovered were two plazas and a burial ground.
       Many Indian artifacts were uncovered.  These were from the Igneri
       tribes that migrated to Puerto Rico from Venezuela about 300 A.D.
       They believed in life after death and buried adults in a fetal
       position.  Children were buried in jars.  Burials were done in
       caves.  When bats flew out of the caves, they were thought to be
       spirits of the dead returning, so bats were both feared and revered.
       This was the first known instance of the popular belief that when
       you die you develop an appetite for plucking large flying insects
       from the air and swallowing them alive.

            Archaeologists have gone to the site but now it has also become
       a tourist attraction, comprising a museum, the grounds where the
       find was made, and a botanical park showing species of plants that
       would have been used by the Igneris.

            For reasons not well understood (at least by me) the Igneris
       liked to carve figures in triangular stones.  These triangles look
       sort of like what you would get if you started with a ball of
       modeling clay, broke it into two equal pieces, rolled them both out
       as snakes, put one over the other in a cross formation, decided you
       didn't like that, and rolled the two snakes back into a ball, then
       grabbed the two poles of the ball, squeezing them to points and
       letting a third point form between your two index fingers.  You end
       up with a shape that is almost like a fat boomerang that is
       triangular rather than L-shaped.

            A plaza has a circle made up of stones, some of which are
       carved into bat heads or have human heads etched in.  There is a
       reconstructed village of about six huts nearby.  The museum section
       has a film showing artifacts found, several exhibits of artifacts,
       and three or four resident dogs sleeping in the shade.

            Following this we set out for Ciales, where Evelyn's father
       lived as a boy.  Now as the crow flies this was about ten miles, but
       it was over the hills than run through the center of Puerto Rico.
       Every dozen yards or so the road twists to the right or to the left.
       The houses become more rural as you go, with livestock in the yards.
       I can't imagine people living on this road commuting to work.  It
       just takes forever to get anywhere.











       Caribbean Travel Log            1992                         Page 14



            We finally got to Ciales via Arecibo.  Evelyn had instructions
       to call her uncle when she got into town.  Instead, she decided
       first to look for the house where her father was born.  She had the
       address so we drove around for a while and finally found someone who
       knew the street.

            What a sight we must have looked like!  Two mainlanders in
       sunglasses with cameras on a street that probably hasn't had a
       native speaker of English this year.  A woman looked at us
       quizzically from her porch.  We could not find the address number
       four, but not all the buildings had numbers.  Evelyn didn't want to
       ask.  Of course, my Spanish is not so bad, so I asked the woman on
       the porch.  That broke the ice and Evelyn said that her father was
       born on that street.  The woman brightened up and got excited.  She
       called her husband out.  She thought that number four was torn down
       in 1955, but she did remember the Chimelis family.  (She pronounced
       the name Kimelis--I should find out if the Chimelis pronunciation is
       just an Americanization.)

            Well, when that was done, we went to the gas station Evelyn's
       uncle had suggested we call from.  Except the phone was broken.  We
       tried another phone and got through.  We described where we were and
       the uncle showed up to lead us to his house.

            What followed was about as awkward a ninety minutes as I could
       have imagined, though everybody pretended it wasn't awkward at all
       while just hoping it would end soon.

            The thing is that we came armed with about five minutes' worth
       of material to say to this family.  They had about as much to say to
       us.  But after coming such a long way, it was considered required
       that we stay a while and talk.  We spoke English and a little
       Spanish.  Evelyn's uncle spoke Spanish and a bit of English.  The
       rest of the family spoke only Spanish.  Much of the conversation was
       in broken English and simple Spanish.  After describing the families
       we were reduced to saying things like "This is a nice house" and "Is
       this hot weather typical?"  Banal as the conversation was, I think I
       may have carried more than Evelyn since, as she claims, I might be a
       little better at speaking Spanish than she is, if I have her to
       interpret the response.  I think the principle is that her
       vocabulary is a lot broader than mine, but I am better at coming up
       with alternate ways to express the same thought and finding one that
       fits the set of words I know.  As the uncle pointed out to the
       family, I do the talking and Evelyn does the understanding.  After
       about an hour of chit-chat about all the sports trophies in the
       house and that sort of thing, they invited us to dinner, which they
       had made for just the two of us.  (In fact, we sat alone in the
       kitchen.)  Rice and beans, plantains, and four chicken drumsticks
       (of which I took one and the rest were left).  I have come to like
       rice and beans, the staple dish of Latin America.












       Caribbean Travel Log            1992                         Page 15



            We finished eating about 7 PM and though we originally had
       planned to stay until 8 PM, Evelyn said we had to leave so as not to
       get lost on the way back.  I took a photo of the family--last one on
       the roll; I hope it comes out (it did)--and we returned to the car.
       I told the uncle, "Ahora mi familia es mas grande."

            When we got back to the room we ate one of the mangos, but
       found it underripe and not very good.  We left the other mango out.
       (Oh, there is a story connected with the mangos.  There were tiny
       ants in the room, mostly on the night stand.  We reported the ants.
       The owner found them and said it was the mangos that attracted the
       ants.  This is actually fairly impressive if it is true.  It means
       the ants knew there would be mangos in the room before I did.  And
       still we never saw an ant within four feet of a mango.  But the
       manager said it was the mangos that brought the ants.  Later he said
       that the ants were pretty much unavoidable in the tropics.)

            September 10, 1992:  This is our last day in Puerto Rico.  Here
       we are across from a beautiful white beach and we haven't gone
       swimming once.  We got ourselves a couple of beach towels and went
       out for an 8 AM swim.  The water wasn't quite warm enough that you
       could go in without getting used to the cold, but it was nice
       anyway.  In a swimsuit Evelyn looks like something out of FROM HERE
       TO ETERNITY (and I don't mean Burt Lancaster).

            The breakfasts have become more meager as the week goes by.
       This morning there is only some bland pound cake and coffee.  The
       last three days at breakfast we've talked to the same guy.  He's a
       roofer and sider from Maine who's down with his wife.  His idea of a
       good time is to sit on the beach, come back, and sun himself.  He
       has some interesting things to say about himself.  He is an
       alcoholic who now goes around to schools to tell the kids not to
       drink.  He has had training in motorcycles for a job that evaporated
       when he was done with training, so he went into roofing.  Now he's
       gotten an offer to assemble bikes in Trinidad and he seems pretty
       excited at the prospect.

            Well, since we were not able to see the old part of the city
       two days before, we decided to do that today.  We had seen the
       disadvantages of taking a car in.  We wanted to find out the
       disadvantages of a bus.

            We knew there was a bus stop just a short distance, perhaps a
       ten-minute walk, from the guest house.  There were three possible
       buses we could take and they run on a twenty-minute cycle.  Well,
       the first disadvantage of the buses is that they *do not* run on time.
       We waited about thirty minutes before an appropriate bus came along.
       They did seem to have vans come around offering an alternative to
       the buses and going the same routes.  I have heard that the same
       thing is happening in New York, where it is illegal.  For all I
       know, it may be illegal here also.











       Caribbean Travel Log            1992                         Page 16



            The neighborhoods we drove through certainly seemed run-down
       (lots of bars, etc.), but perhaps no worse than parts of New York.
       You would see someone sitting on the curb washing in the water from
       the rain gutter.  There were a lot of stores with heavy metal grates
       to prevent people from breaking in.  The people are friendly; at
       least some that we ran into were.  The buses were 25 cents and once
       you get to Old San Juan, there were shuttles that were free.  Evelyn
       says they were paid for by the bus companies, but my guess is that
       they were really paid for by all the expensive shops in the touristy
       section of town where the shuttles run.  That would make more sense.
       Why have the urban passengers subsidize the tourist perq?

            We happened to come at a bad time.  There is an election coming
       up like some other places we have been (such as Southeast Asia).
       The politicians feel impelled to get loudspeaker trucks to extol the
       virtues of their politics.  The political trucks seemed particularly
       thick in Old San Juan and followed the shuttle buses.  I was a
       little surprised to see that the drivers spoke their message live as
       opposed to having it pre-recorded.

            Our first stop on our walking tour was the so-called Pigeon
       Park.  It is one park with a view of the bay that hosts thousands of
       guests whenever you arrive, almost all of them pigeons.  The park
       must have about four pigeons per square foot.  The benches are solid
       pigeons.  I saw one pigeon jump on the back of a park bench and
       chase six pigeons off, one after another.  Well, I had a gut full of
       bullies in junior high and high school, so when I find one these
       days I strike a blow for the oppressed of the world.  I knocked the
       bully pigeon off his perch and let the other pigeons come back.  (Is
       this really what it feels like to be a super-hero?)

            Our next stop was San Juan Cathedral.  It was built in 1521 of
       mostly fairly plain architecture compared to the cathedrals of
       Europe.  Its greatest attraction is the grave of Ponce de Leon, who
       deserves some credit for having the greatest respect and care for
       the rights of the indigenous people of all the great mass-murdering
       pirates that Spain sent to the New World.  True, he did have
       hundreds of Indians killed for rebelling against the invaders, but
       generally he opposed the out-and-out enslavement of Indians that
       people like Diego Colon tried to bring.  (Hey, I warned you I
       wouldn't have anything friendly to say about the Spanish
       colonization.  I look around and see a lot of poverty and misery in
       what by rights should have been a wealthy part of the world, but
       that wealth was stolen by imperial powers--Spain foremost among
       them--and I cannot see a darn thing that the local population got
       back of any value but what is for me the highly dubious exception of
       Catholicism.  I cannot conceive of a God who would favor the
       policies of Spain in the New World.)

            To make the Cathedral seem like a grander edifice than it
       actually is, it has painted arches around the dome at the top, as if











       Caribbean Travel Log            1992                         Page 17



       there is another floor at the top.  The arches are not painted well
       and probably would not fool any but the most credulous and willing
       to believe.  Actually, the most striking visual effect is a statue
       of Mary, set back about two feet from a colorful frame.  It creates
       an effect sort of like television.  In any case, it is a weird look.

            Our next stop was Casa Blanca, the home of Ponce de Leon's
       family and at one point the stronghold of the government's treasury.
       The grounds are gardens in the style that Spain borrowed from the
       Moors.  The house itself has a somewhat over-priced admission of $2
       and shows you furniture of the sort you might have seen in the house
       in classical days.  I don't know how much is authentic.  The
       treasury was kept in the "Chest of Three Keys."  The treasury of the
       government of Puerto Rico kept in a single chest.  There was a
       three-key chest just within the front door, but it did not look like
       the original.  In pictures I have seen of the real Chest of Three
       Keys; the keyholes looked like the digits 1, 2, and 3, except the
       "3" is backwards.  Not so with this replication which had somewhat
       normal-looking keyholes.  The walls inside the house were as white
       as the outside and the furniture was a dark brown.  I remember a
       little room with three kegs of wine or rum and a small statue of a
       friar to watch over the kegs.  The second floor of Casa Blanca is
       now a museum of Indian culture and of the conquest.  There was a
       chart of the oceans with the chartmaker's concept of a whale.  It
       had the head of a pig and paws with claws.  It did spout water, but
       this was obviously a picture of a whale from somebody else's
       description and framed the creature in terms that the artists knew
       how to draw.

            We stopped and got a cold drink at a little bodega before
       continuing.  It is interesting that I can tell I am dehydrated by
       how much I can restrain myself on the first sip.  If regardless of
       my effort to drink slowly, I instinctively drink half the Coke on
       the first sip, that's just my body trying to restore its fluid
       levels.  It's what my body needs and there is really no obligation
       to apologize to Evelyn who offered me the sip.

            Well, our next stop was El Morro, the fortress stronghold that
       held off the French, Dutch, and English.  Even today it is heavily
       fortified with vitamin C (for cannon) and with iron.  One of the
       books said it was designed for brute force rather than subtlety like
       the later San Cristobal.  Actually they both look like a lot of
       brick, rock, and cannons.  El Morro is built on at least five levels
       connected by ramps and stairs, probably more than five levels if you
       include the lighthouse that was built on the top.

            The food was prepared on the lowest level, both literally and
       figuratively.  The food was kept in something called the "rotten
       pot" where they would throw everything and let it stew until it was
       dished out.  Pork, chicken, rice, vegetables--all got stirred
       together in a huge stew with the constituent parts











       Caribbean Travel Log            1992                         Page 18



       indistinguishable.  Rotten meat was thrown as often as not.  Insects
       dropping in for their own dinner would stay for somebody else's.
       This was not the golden age of military cuisine.  Soldiers were
       worked like horses, fed like pigs, and expected to think like oxen.
       All to protect and enrich the families of the hidalgos.  Still, they
       were able to repulse Francis Drake, putting that famous cannonball
       right through his cabin.

            It was really tough to get to El Morro since Hurricane Hugo
       tore up a big piece of the plaza that leads to the fort.  It is
       being rebuilt and it is pretty tough to get around the construction
       just to get to and from the fort.  After the fort we walked around
       the shopping area of Old San Juan (which is a lot more modern
       looking than it sounds).  We got a Coke from McDonalds which went
       down supremely well, thanks to the wonders of dehydration.  Nothing
       makes a Coke taste better.

            After the short break we shopped for the tchatchka and
       eventually found a one as a "cemi."  A cemi is one of the triangular
       stones the Tainos made.  This is obviously an imitation but about
       the right size for the tchatchka table.  Shopping is a little easier
       than it might be with the currency being the same.  Puerto Rico is
       one of the few places we could have gone and used United States
       currency but would not have to hear about the United States election
       campaign.

            Well, following that we went to a bus stop to pick up the bus
       for home.  After a forty-minute wait of boredom punctuated by my
       folding an origami dinosaur for a little boy who would otherwise
       have torn up a piece of polyethylene bubble packing and left it on
       the sidewalk and a private garden (all with his mother's tacit
       approval), the bus still hadn't come.

            Eventually I decided it was coming time to, as W. C. Fields
       said, "take the bull by the tail and face the situation."  Evelyn
       thought the bus terminal was just a short distance away.  We moved
       on and found another bus stop, but I didn't trust that one any more
       than the first.  There was a tourist information service office
       nearby and I said we should get directions to where the terminal
       really was.  It was a couple of blocks away.  Just as we got there,
       a bus arrived we could take going back.

            Back at the room we freshened up and wrote in our logs for a
       little while.  Then we went looking for dinner.  We had gotten a
       recommendation for a restaurant called the Metropol and, in spite of
       seeing it on a map from the hotel, we could not find it.  So Evelyn
       got smart and called the restaurant for directions.  We still
       couldn't find the place.  Finally, in a sort of random walk, we did
       see the restaurant.  It was good.  Evelyn got a Cuban food plate
       that she claimed was very good and which gave every evidence of
       actually being as good as she claimed.  I had Cuban black bean soup











       Caribbean Travel Log            1992                         Page 19



       (very tasty) and camarones rellenos con queso.  These looked like
       very fat fried shrimp that were surrounded by a layer of a cheese
       sauce.  Very nice.  But the funny thing was the water situation.  I
       was still very parched from the heat.  They filled my water glass,
       then Evelyn's, and mine was already empty.  They filled it a second
       time and walked away, and the manager came over to point out to the
       waiter that my water glass was empty.  I think I drank more than a
       quart of water at that meal.  I am of Slavic origins and that means
       I dehydrate quickly.  On the Southeast Asia trip it was a standing
       joke that as soon as I got into sunshine my back was soaked.

            Anyway, I got a lot of service with a very good meal and tipped
       very generously.

            Our last night in Puerto Rico was a pleasure.  Back at the
       room, I ate the second mango and wrote in my log while watching
       Crosby and Hardwick in A CONNECTICUT YANKEE IN KING ARTHUR'S COURT.

            It's probably time to finish my worm's-eye history of Puerto
       Rico, so here is part three.

            History of Puerto Rico, Part 3: After the Dutch assault that
       captured San Juan for a month, the island was fortified so that
       attacks were less of a likelihood.  Things were quiet for a long
       time and in the 1600s the Spanish introduced coffee production so
       people wouldn't fall asleep altogether.  The locals got caffeine in
       their systems, got irritable, and in the 1820s the locals began
       trying occasionally to rid themselves of Spanish domination.  It
       didn't work.

            In 1868 was one of the biggest rebellions and that same year
       Isabella II abdicated in Spain and the royal rule was replaced by a
       republic.  In the years that followed, the newly enlightened Spain
       eliminated slavery and gave Puerto Rico representation in the
       parliament.  In the 1880s the people of Puerto Rico started
       campaigning for autonomy which they were finally given in February,
       1898.  Their autonomy lasted ten months.  They were invaded by the
       United States during the Spanish-American War and the autonomous
       country suddenly found itself a United States possession.

            Well, to make a long story short, slavery eventually got
       replaced by low wages and some autonomy and now Puerto Rico is a
       "Free Associated State" which is a commonwealth and still a
       possession of the United States.  There is still a strong
       independence movement, but being part of the United States has its
       advantages.  And that completes the thumbnail history.

            September 11, 1992:  After breakfasting on the last two cans of
       Goya fruit juice, we checked out of the Tres Palmas.  While we were
       driving the rented car back to the airport, it started raining very
       hard.











       Caribbean Travel Log            1992                         Page 20



            We dropped off the car and took the shuttle to the air
       terminal.  We were going to go to the gate when we felt a gust of
       hot humid air and decided it would be uncomfortable at the gate.  We
       sat on the metal platforms in the check-in.  Finally we did go to
       the gate and it was hot and very humid.

            They had us line up to get aboard a small ATR42 propeller
       plane.  I love a small prop plane.  I like air turbulence.  I like
       the massage of the vibration.  There was no air in the plane and I
       didn't even mind that.  I did mind that they said because of the
       rain there would be no beverage service.  I was looking forward to
       some orange juice, particularly because my cold was acting up.
       Still, I did enjoy the flight.

            From the air the Dominican Republic looked a lot like Puerto
       Rico.

            Customs was a bit harder to get through than in the United
       States.  They actually had us open our luggage for them to take a
       quick look at the surface.  United States customs has not done that
       in quite a while.  I guess since I have matured, people just see me
       and can feel character and integrity.  Yessir, these days you can
       just tell I am a hell of a guy.  Either that, or perhaps they just
       think this shlump couldn't put together a flashlight, much less a
       drug deal.

            We took a cab from the airport to the Hotel Cervantes.  (It is
       so called because you might as well sleep in the courtyard and
       because the restaurant has a lot on the menu but doesn't have
       anything in stock.  Okay, Don Q fans, come up with your own joke as
       to why a hotel might be named after Cervantes.  You might win the
       pony.)

            The road from the airport follows a nice stretch of beach with
       lots of palm trees.  There is a different look to Santo Domingo than
       there was to the grungier parts of San Juan.  The bad parts of San
       Juan looked like the grungy section of town.  In Santo Domingo the
       look was more of poverty than one of just a single bad section.  You
       pass through neighborhoods where houses are patched together from
       wood or corrugated steel.  It is probably good it does not get too
       cold here.  Things didn't look as bad as they did in Romania, or at
       least different, but clearly the standard of living is a lot lower
       here.

            As the cab stopped for a light, a teenager jumped out and
       started to clean the windshield.  He must have been pretty desperate
       to expect much of a tip from a cab driver.  Actually, he didn't get
       any tip.

            Of course, the fact that there are as many privately owned cars
       as there are may indicate that even here things are a little better











       Caribbean Travel Log            1992                         Page 21



       than in eastern Europe.  My comment at the time was that often you
       would see what looked like an accident that nobody got out of alive,
       then the light would change and it would drive off.  Actually, it
       just looks like a lot of cars have been in accidents.  Many are
       pieced together from unmatching parts.  Some will have what looks
       like homemade sheet metal fenders.

            There are a lot of motor scooters and while obedience of
       traffic laws is not good among the cars, it is far worse with the
       scooters.  They swarm around the traffic in random directions.  One
       made a sharp turn in front of our taxi and would have been hit
       without quick reflexes on the driver's part.

            There was one place where road work was being done.  The
       workers just set logs in the road to mark the spot, then started
       digging.

            We got to the hotel and checked into our room.  It was clear
       that unlike at the guest house in San Juan, the air conditioning
       really did cool off our room.  This was not a fancy room, but it was
       sort of the quality of a cheap motel room in the United States.
       Also, it had a small refrigerator which we figured would be useful.

            The hotel had its own restaurant which purported to be a steak
       house, but that seemed touristy and Evelyn and I are both avoiding
       red meat anyway, so we went out on the street to find a restaurant
       that would have a more regional cuisine.

            We found a restaurant that wasn't too touristy.  In fact, we
       were the only tourists (there was one other group there).  I ordered
       a pulpo dish (octopus).  "Pollo," the waiter corrected (chicken).
       "Pulpo," I said, pointing to the menu item.  Not many tourists order
       pulpo apparently.  Evelyn ordered conch.

            After lunch we went to exchange some money.  As we were
       approaching the bank it started to rain.  As we went inside the sky
       just opened up.  We were sort of glad to be inside.  By the time we
       had the paperwork done and were at the window getting money the rain
       was slowing down.  When we left there was still a mist in the air,
       but the rain was over all in the course of less than ten minutes
       later.  (It is odd to note that the symbol for the Dominican
       Republic peso is the dollar sign [$].  But the dollar sign's origin
       is a narrow "U" superimposed over a wide "S," "U.S." being short for
       "United States.")

            We then got what we needed to visit the Colonial Sector of
       Santo Domingo from our hotel room and set out.  We went a few blocks
       to where we could catch a local bus, called a "guagua."  There seem
       to be a real variety of types of buses in the Dominican Republic.
       You occasionally see a full-sized bus like you see in the United
       States, but those are actually pretty rare.  More common are the











       Caribbean Travel Log            1992                         Page 22



       kind of bus we got.  They are actually a model we would use as a
       school bus.  These are public transit buses.  Since a school bus
       does not have facilities to collect money, somebody stands at the
       front of the bus to collect fares.  This man exits the bus when it
       stops and he stands outside and collects from boarding passengers.
       The scale of the buses goes down to mini-vans.  These are usually
       tightly packed with passengers.  A man stands at the sliding door
       and yells the destination.  I think he also collects.  It is
       surprising to see how simple a device will be replaced by human
       labor.  Much like in China, human labor is cheap.  Rather than
       putting a changeable sign on a bus (or van) to tell the destination,
       they will hire someone to perform the same function.

            We were on the school-bus style bus.  The bus was filled but
       people made room for each of Evelyn and me so we could each squeeze
       in as the third person on a two-person seat.  The people seemed
       moderately friendly.  At least they made space for us.  It was only
       a short ride to the Colonial Sector.  Like San Juan, Santo Domingo
       has preserved its older part of the city by packing around it an
       upscale shopping area that scares off the locals.  Not as fancy, you
       understand, since Santo Domingo does not have the affluence of San
       Juan.  The Dominican Republic has a sort of mystique built around
       how good things are in Puerto Rico.  Puerto Rico has done things
       right and is getting the tourism, it is thought locally.

            Santo Domingo has its tourist area, but it is as bad as parts
       of Egypt were in one sense.  That is that the locals see you as a
       bag of coins with two feet.  Speaking of two feet, that is just
       about how far you can walk without someone asking you if you want a
       taxi, begging for coins, offering to shine your shoes, trying to
       sell you jewelry, etc., etc.  I wanted to get myself a button that
       said, "NO!  Gracias."

            Well, it was quite a struggle getting through this mob, but we
       did.

            Just as we were near the Cathedral of Santa Maria the Minor, it
       started to rain and someone near the Cathedral started gesturing to
       us to come in.  I had a bad feeling about that.  Sure enough, there
       were a bunch of street hawkers by the door.  We went in.  This is
       one of three or four holy places where Christopher Columbus is
       buried.  How can he be buried in so many different places?  Well,
       that is the power of faith and tourism.  He is also buried in
       Seville and Havana.  Back when I lived in Dayton, Ohio, a church
       down the street claimed they had him too.  How would he have gotten
       to Dayton?  Where the faith is strong enough, all things are
       possible.  The chapel that had the alleged Columbus remains had a
       guard with a hard hat posted in front, but without a gun.

            That leads me to a digression.  The only country I remember
       visiting with more guns obvious than the Dominican Republic is











       Caribbean Travel Log            1992                         Page 23



       Israel.  The military drives jeeps with mounted machine guns.  A
       private house is either poor or guarded by a man at the end of the
       driveway.  And the man, of course, has an automatic rifle.  There
       are lots and lots of guns on the streets.  There are also lots of
       political buildings of various parties.  There is apparently a
       Marxist party here.  I remember when the idea that a country like
       the Dominican Republic would go Marxist would scare the heck out of
       the United States State Department.  It just doesn't seem to be all
       that scary a prospect anymore.  The fear of communism being exported
       is now a lot smaller.  And nobody is going to give Cuba or the
       Dominican Republic nuclear missiles anymore, nor would they be
       likely to want them.

            This sort of reminds me that when we were in San Juan we saw on
       television an account of the Cuban missile crisis.  I am rather
       hoping that history will come to re-evaluate this event.  For most
       of the history of the Soviet Union, I am not very sympathetic to
       them.  And I do like John F. Kennedy for the most part.  But in the
       so-called "Cuban missile crisis" the villain was Kennedy.  It is one
       of those rare instances when the Communists were in the right.  Why
       did Cuba want nuclear missiles?  Because they were always very
       nervous about having the world's strongest military power ninety
       miles from their shore, and even closer they had a naval base
       belonging to it right on their island.  This is very scary to Cuba
       at the best of times.  But what does Kennedy do?  He lets the CIA
       sponsor and aid a military invasion of Cuba!  Cuba is then faced
       with the question of what it is going to do if the United States
       decides to invade again in strength with all our power and a
       foothold already on the island.  If I were Castro, I'd want nuclear
       missiles too.  I don't think anyone really begrudges Israel nuclear
       missiles in very similar circumstances.  The crisis ended only when
       Kennedy promised that Cuba would have no more need of nuclear
       missiles.  Somehow most accounts of the "crisis" seem to ignore the
       Bay of Pigs as being the real source of the crisis.  As a president,
       when Kennedy was good he was quite good, and when he was bad he was
       as bad as any president we have ever had.  His cowboy antics could
       well have caused a nuclear war.

            But I digress.

            The Cathedral was completed in 1540, a long building with
       fifteen chapels.  For the most part it seemed a dark and brooding
       Gothic building on the inside, Spanish on the outside.

            On leaving the Cathedral we found ourselves saddled with a man
       insisting that he was a government guide told to guide tourists
       around.  We tried everything we could to rid ourselves of this pest,
       but he insisted on steering us around and giving us terse
       descriptions of what we were passing.  In between, he did things
       like ask our religion, as if it was his business.  When we told him
       we were not Christian, he said it doesn't matter--we all pray to the











       Caribbean Travel Log            1992                         Page 24



       same God.  He was quite broad-minded, or at least forgiving.  He
       tried to convince us we must move to a more expensive hotel here in
       the Colonial Sector.  It would be more convenient and safer.  He was
       shocked that we had taken a public bus rather than a taxi.  We must
       spend more money in Santo Domingo, he told us.  "After all," he said
       sagely, "you have to spend money to make money."

            He complained that not enough Americans were coming to the
       Dominican Republic for the 500th Anniversary of the Columbus
       discovery.  In fact, the Dominican Republic has marginally more
       claim to the tourists than, say, Puerto Rico.  Columbus came to the
       island of Hispaniola in 1492, at the end of his first voyage.
       Hispaniola is now about one-third Haiti and two-thirds Dominican
       Republic.  Columbus did not visit Puerto Rico until his second
       voyage, in 1493.  But first of all, I don't know that all that many
       Americans feel all that much love for Columbus and very few intend
       to visit the Caribbean to celebrate the quincentennial.  Those who
       do visit the Dominican Republic will find only a few buildings of
       historical interest to them.  And to get to these buildings you had
       to pass the gauntlet of street hawkers and beggars.  The Dominican
       Republic has little to offer tourists and is expecting a big turnout
       that I suspect they neither deserve nor will get.

            Among other sights we saw was the old Jesuit convent built in
       the 18th Century, when the philosophy of the Jesuits, as expressed
       by the French Jesuit Guillaume Raynal, was: "The order of the
       Jesuits is a sword whose handle is at Rome and whose point is
       everywhere."  We followed on to the Chapel of Our Lady of Remedies.
       I wonder who she was and what remedies she offered.  We saw a
       sundial, the first in the New World, built from 1751 to 1760.  It
       was not operating as it was a cloudy day.  Next we saw the crown
       jewel of Santo Domingo, the Viceroy Palace of Diego Colon.  Yes, the
       same Diego Colon so anxious to enslave the local population has a
       palace dating to 1510.  It was the home of Columbus's son Diego and
       the seat of the Spanish court in the New World.  We were whisked by
       too fast to go in.

            I was less than pleased with our guide, who was somewhat
       disappointed in his $8 tip.

            After that we walked around by ourselves.  We very nearly went
       back to the Colon Palace, but saw too many hawkers milling around
       it.  We decided not to try to enter.  Eventually we took a cab back
       to the hotel, walked about six blocks to the nearest grocery, picked
       up some fruit juice, some cheese, and crackers.  That was dinner.

            September 12, 1992:  This was Saturday morning in Santo
       Domingo.  We decided that for breakfast we'd go to the restaurant in
       the hotel.  It was nearly empty.  I ordered French toast; Evelyn
       ordered a local dish call "mangu," made from plantains.  The food
       took a long time to come; somehow where there is a guaranteed
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