From: leeper@cbnewsj.cb.att.com (mark.r.leeper)
Subject: Puerto Rico and Dominican Republic (3 of 3)
Organization: AT&T
Date: Wed, 11 Nov 1992 15:56:31 GMT




       Caribbean Travel Log            1992                         Page 25



       gratuity by law the service is just not very good.  When the food
       came, probably forty-five minutes later, the French toast was
       something strange.  It was grill-fried toast made without egg and
       served with a sticky, half-empty bottle of Aunt Jemima syrup.

            Evelyn had assumed her dish would be made of sweet plantains.
       It wasn't.  It was sort of like mashed potatoes, a sort of light
       green color with oil and rings of raw onion on the top.  I generally
       like local cuisine, but this really appealed to neither Evelyn nor
       me.

            After breakfast we set out for a park that had several museums.
       It occurred to me for the first time that the Dominican Republic
       looked a lot like the last place that Hannibal Lecter was seen.  If
       you look at the final scene of the film THE SILENCE OF THE LAMBS you
       get a very good feel for what the Dominican Republic looks like once
       you get away from the tourist areas.  Some areas are a little more
       built-up, but there's a lot of the feel of that final scene.  I
       should check to see where that was filmed.

            The walk to the museums was longer than we'd initially thought.
       It turns out we'd asked the desk clerk at the hotel to put a dot on
       the map to show where the hotel was.  In fact, the clerk apparently
       did not know where the hotel was.  It turns out we were considerably
       nearer to the Colonial Sector and further from the museums than we'd
       thought.  So it was a long walk in the hot sun.  By the time we got
       there we were both hot and dry.  There is a big park-like area with
       the museums around a central courtyard.  Not a bad place to go,
       though the museums are soon to be relocated to the Lighthouse.

            Ah, yes!  I should tell you about the Lighthouse.  Over Rio de
       Janeiro is a huge statue of Jesus.  The Dominican Republic wants to
       create a similar religious wonder of the world.  They are building a
       huge government building in the shape of a cross (on the ground,
       that is; the floor plan is a cross like that of a cathedral).  It is
       to be seven stories high, so it looks like a huge oblong pyramid.
       It will house government buildings and museums.  And it will shine
       into the sky an immense cross.  I think you will be able to tell it
       is a cross only from the air unless there is a cloud cover overhead
       to be illuminated.  I think the way it works is that there are
       spotlights or searchlights at intervals along the cross-shaped
       building, so they really make a connect-the-dots cross rather than a
       solid cross.  That's a guess; it was not explained to me how the
       thing was really supposed to work.

            In one sense, it is not working at all.  There were riots by
       the faithless of Santo Domingo who wanted to see this tax money
       spent instead for something more of this world and less of the next.
       We saw women carrying water to houses that probably do not have
       running water and it is this sort of temporal discomfort that they
       wish to see the money alleviate.  They have a shocking lack of











       Caribbean Travel Log            1992                         Page 26



       spiritual values, I guess.  I am sure most right-thinking Catholics
       recognize the need for the great spiritual comfort that a crux
       gigawattus can provide.  And the rest are due for a "rood
       awakening."  Actually, about 95% of the Dominican Republic is
       Catholic, so it is easy to see where this idea gets its support.
       But it is scary to see a country this poor spending so much on
       something so surreal.

            The Museum of Dominican History and Geography was closed so we
       went instead to the Museum of the Dominican Man.  It was not open
       yet, so I got some pictures of the statues in front.  In the right
       rear and left there were statues of a black slave and of an Indian.
       And in front of the two of them in the center was the statue of a
       Catholic priest holding a cross in front of him.  Of all the
       visitors to the island, which type gets highest billing?  The whites
       with Catholicism.

            I guess the difference between the Museum of History and the
       Museum of the Dominican Man is that they cover the same subject
       matter, but from a different viewpoint.  The history museum part
       would probably concern itself with Columbus and the government and
       in general officialdom.  Dominican Man shows more everyday life.  It
       deals with festivals and customs.  The most interesting section is
       on the pre-Columbian religion and customs.  As in Puerto Rico, the
       Indians were Tainos and there was also a display here of cemis, the
       triangular stones that the Tainos carved.  There were instruments
       that they used for smoking rituals and sticks they used to cause
       themselves to vomit before the smoking ceremony.  And there were
       demonic masks.

            There was more on the Indian culture than on the African
       culture.  For that mostly they had things like shackles and bonds.
       The Africans left a large part of their culture behind in Africa.
       There was nothing of European culture in the Museum of the Dominican
       Man.  That, presumably, was over in the history museum.  Perhaps
       this is a subtle (or not so subtle) political statement, having one
       museum of the European culture, and another for blacks and Indians.
       And in front of the museum for blacks and Indians there are statues
       of a black and an Indian being led by a Catholic priest with a
       cross.  In the four-story building there were only two floors of
       exhibits.

            Following this, we visited the Natural History Museum.  As
       natural history museums go, this is a rather minor one.  They have a
       set of stuffed animals, some in dioramas, some not.  They had a
       stuffed lion who looked too lean somehow and who had a comical
       expression on his face.  They had a large fat fish, not a coelacanth
       but looking like something similar, forged in plaster or fiberglass.

            Each of four floors is built around an open space three stories
       high in the center.  There they have the skeletons of two whales.











       Caribbean Travel Log            1992                         Page 27



       Perhaps because they don't have the horizontal space to display the
       whales, they have been mounted here in the position of diving,
       actually a fairly clever idea and one I have not seen elsewhere.

            Well, that was that.  Now our lack of planning started to catch
       up with us.  We'd come to the Dominican Republic mostly to find
       Evelyn's uncle.  This one spoke no English at all.  Her uncle in
       Puerto Rico spoke some English and the visit was awkward.  The uncle
       in the Dominican Republic spoke no English.  This visit would be
       even more awkward.  Well, we sort of changed our minds on this
       second visit.  But then that left us with the question of what to do
       with our remaining day and a half.

            Evelyn suggested that we go to some of the fancy hotels and see
       if they had local tours for sale.  Well, we went and the hotels were
       indeed posh and the prices on the day tours were even posher.
       Neither of us wanted to spend what these tours would have cost.  I
       suggested that we steal one of the tours.  Well, it isn't really
       stealing.  It is just taking their suggestion for sights to visit.
       We just provide our own transportation.  In this case, we'd rent a
       car.  It was getting hot in the afternoon sun.  So we returned to
       our room to formulate plans.  On the television we watched the
       second half of SOME LIKE IT HOT and all of BIG BUSINESS.  We chose
       some sights outside of the city to visit the next day.  Then we went
       out to see if we could lease a car.  There was a branch of Budget
       Rentals nearby.  The guy behind the desk was clearly *not* Dominican.
       At least he talked like a native from the United States.  When he
       found out what we wanted the car for, he told us that a taxi would
       be both easier and cheaper.  So that was decided upon.  Nice of him.

            Okay, so we'd take a taxi the next day.  For today we decided
       to walk back to the Colonial sector.  We went and found it fewer
       blocks than we'd expected.  This was now Saturday early evening.
       There were fewer people bent on getting to tourists.

            We didn't actually walk into the Colonial Sector but on the
       streets surrounding it.  The street blocks seem to have one long
       building a block long but are in fact houses set right against each
       other.  The color of the building changes as you go from house to
       house, but there does not look to be a noticeable seam on the first
       floor.  Of course, some will be one story, some two.  Those that are
       two stories will have iron balconies on the second floor.  There
       will be some people in the houses, but to escape the heat most of
       the people will be out of the houses and on the streets.  This is a
       society with a strong social life on the sidewalks, not unlike New
       York in the 1930s, before television or air conditioning.

            On the sidewalk you see chairs with mothers holding babies.
       The teens are out too, but away from the parents and off on corners.













       Caribbean Travel Log            1992                         Page 28



            We stopped in a drugstore not unlike a United States drugstore
       and bought a couple of Spanish-language comic books for a friend who
       is an enthusiast.  We got into a line of about eight people to pay
       and then found out we had to go to another counter to get a tally.
       Evelyn didn't understand why they do things that way, since it is
       less efficient for the customers.  I think it is because the store
       does not trust the clerks.  There is less chance the cashier will
       intentionally overlook an item in return for some money on the side.

            It was now getting dark and we started looking for a nice
       restaurant for dinner.  We passed quite a few, but this one was
       closed and that one seemed mostly a bar.  One that looked nicely
       quiet and set back from the road was called ominously Mesquito (not
       Mosquito, but even so...).  We were a little hot and sweaty from the
       walk, but they brought plenty of water.  The service was quite good.
       We started with chilled gazpacho.  They poured the broth and then
       let us choose from finely diced begetables to add.  As a youngster I
       know that gazpacho is something I would not have liked, but I have
       learned a lot.  And this was just about the best I ever remember
       having.  I had Shrimp Bilbaino--very large shrimp in a garlic sauce.
       Evelyn had some sort of fish soup.  In any case, it was very tasty.
       A good choice for dinner.

            After that we walked back to the hotel to read, write, and
       watch a little television.  I should probably say something about
       the history of the Dominican Republic.  The country makes up the
       eastern two-thirds of the island of Hispaniola.  (I am pretty sure
       this was not the Indian name of the island.) About a million Tainos
       lived here happily in 1492.  Columbus landed on Hispaniola at the
       very tail end of both his first voyage and of the Taino occupation.
       By about 1542, just fifty years later, there were only about five
       hundred Tainos left on the island, but those five hundred were
       exposed to the Word of the Lord so the invasion and the murdering or
       chasing away of 99.95% of the inhabitants was a lot nicer than it
       initially sounds.

            Just as in Puerto Rico, the government was finding out it was
       using up the native population too fast.  African slaves were needed
       to fill the gaps and were imported.  Also, there were no doubt
       Spanish conservationists who would have become alarmed at the loss
       of a million slaves in fifty years and would have instituted
       enlightened policies for making the slaves last longer.  In the
       1600s the number of French settlers in the west part of the island
       increased and in 1697 Spain gave that part of the island to France,
       and that part later became Haiti.  In 1822 France decided to take
       the whole island, which they held until 1844 when Juan Pablo Duarte
       led Dominican forces which liberated the east part of the island.
       For seventeen years they had independence, had enough of it, and
       voluntarily returned to the Spanish empire in 1861.  They left again
       two years later and were again independent.












       Caribbean Travel Log            1992                         Page 29



            In their independence, the Dominican Republic built up a
       whopping foreign debt.  A ruthless dictator ruled from 1882 to 1899
       but was assassinated.  Then the debt really started to increase
       until the country declared bankruptcy in 1905.  European powers
       threatened to intervene, so to save the Republic Teddy Roosevelt
       occupied it and set up a military government.  The country had
       already been put into a customs receivership by the United States,
       and Marines enforced it from 1916 to 1924.  The receivership
       continued until 1941.  Raphael Trujillo Molina became dictator in
       1937.  Trujillo made moderate improvements in the country, but he
       suppressed any opposition.  In 1959, exiled Dominicans in Cuba tried
       to overthrow Trujillo but failed.  In 1960 the Organization of
       American States imposed sanctions on the Dominican Republic over a
       little matter of Trujillo trying to have the President of Venezuela
       killed.  The United States also broke diplomatic relations.  In 1961
       Trujillo was assassinated.  The previous year Trujillo had made
       Joaquin Balaguer nominal president.  Balaguer turned against the
       Trujillo family and pushed for democracy.  Still he was deposed and
       the governing council introduced a new constitution.  Free elections
       in 1962 brought in Juan Bosch as president.  In 1963 a military coup
       overthrew Bosch.  "Turmoil" is the proper word to describe the
       political situation since.  In 1990 deposed President Bosch ran
       against deposed President Balaguer for the new presidency.
       Allegedly Balaguer got 35% of the vote and Bosch 34%, but there were
       claims of election fraud.  The situation is very unstable and lots
       of people have guns.  But who knows?  Maybe things will all work
       out.  Anything's possible.  Isn't it?

            September 13, 1992: This was our last day of vacation.
       Breakfast was cheese and fruit juice from the refrigerator.  We went
       out late morning and hailed a cab to see the local sights.

            Our first stop was just to see--from a distance--the Columbus
       Lighthouse.  In a poor country that has serious problems with its
       electrical power, this is at least $70,000,000 worth of building
       intended to light up the sky with a huge cross.  We got to the
       Dominican Republic a bit early to see it actually in use.  The
       Lighthouse will be inaugurated early in October.  The building is a
       huge cross a half-mile from top to bottom lying flat on its back on
       the ground and still seven stories high.  They expect the image of
       the cross to be visible from Puerto Rico.  The power to run this
       baby is said to be enough so that when it is turned on, local lights
       dim and television pictures get reduced to ribbons.  Pretty darn
       inspirational, huh?

            According to an article in the New York Times, several foreign
       dignitaries had agreed to be present for the lighting ceremony, but
       have since backed out because of the controversy over the huge
       cross.  There are five active and competing socialist parties in the
       Dominican Republic, but they all agree this monument is a huge cross
       for the country to bear.  The Pope, who promised to be there for the











       Caribbean Travel Log            1992                         Page 30



       lighting, has announced that his visit will be delayed two days.
       Local legend says that anything connected to Columbus's name will be
       an unholy disaster and the Lighthouse certainly seems to be that.

            Our next stop from the tour book was in commemoration of the
       end of pollen season.  Tres Ojos de Agua (Three Watery Eyes) is a
       limestone formation.  It is a large grotto dissolved out of the
       ground.  You basically climb down into a huge sinkhole in the ground
       and see three underground pools (well, actually four--apparently
       somebody lost count at some point).  It is claimed one is warm
       water, one lukewarm, and one cold.  We didn't actually put a hand in
       to find out since the pools look just a bit scummy.  But I am
       getting ahead of myself.  The first thing you see as you approach
       and pay for your ticket is that someone attaches himself to you like
       a polyp claiming to be a government tour guide and anxious to show
       you the site.  "I show you *four* eyes, not just three.  There is a
       boat ride.  I will pay for the boat ride; otherwise you would have
       to pay."  It would be twenty or thirty minutes' worth of work. I
       figure to myself that there is just not that much to tell.  It is
       worth maybe 30 or 40 pesos.  40 pesos would be about $3.25
       considering the exchange we have been getting.  However, I am fairly
       sure he has a lot more money in mind.  "How much?"  "150 pesos."
       Nice work if you can get it.  There are people with Masters' degrees
       at AT&T who don't get 150 pesos for thirty minutes' work.  And there
       are darn few who get it for twenty minutes' work.  It is some
       effort, but I shake off the entrepreneur.  The boat ride,
       incidentally, is three pesos.  Oh, three pesos each.

            What we have is a large cavern--well, large by human standards,
       small by cavern standards.  Assuming caverns have standards.  It is
       hard to think of it as a cavern since most of it is open on top.
       From ground level it appears as two big holes in the ground.  Two
       pools are relatively small; two are larger.  With the sunlight
       overhead two of the pools are a nice shade of blue.  There is a
       large underground pool that is just dark because it does not have
       open sky over it.  There is a ferry raft on it and cables for the
       ferryman to pull his raft back and forward.  The pull is to the
       fourth pool which is a sort of grotto.  Another reason why it is
       hard to think of this as a cave is that in all the sunlit areas
       there are ferns and tropical plants.  There is also in the center of
       it all a stand with postcards.

            I had sort of told Evelyn we should go to the Aquarium.  Since
       we were basically filling time she agreed.  It was a good decision.
       In fact, Evelyn claimed it was the best aquarium she had ever seen.
       I disagreed, pointing out that the Monterey aquarium we'd seen in
       January had a better collection.  Okay, she said, this one has the
       best price-performance.  That's not right either, since lots of free
       natural history museums have aquaria.  There certainly is some
       metric, however, by which this one comes out on top, since it is
       inexpensive and very good.  I'd describe it, but it is tough to make











       Caribbean Travel Log            1992                         Page 31



       an aquarium sound exciting.  About the most you can say is that its
       collection is pretty good.  There is a nice structure where there is
       a plexiglass tunnel right through a large tank.  You can see fish
       swimming over and around you.

            Just looking at all this blue water makes you feel cooler,
       though the museums and the aquarium are not air-conditioned.  When
       we were done we bought ourselves some Pepsis--an action very
       uncharacteristic of us.  Somehow we never seem to buy from snack
       bars at museums or movie theaters.  If you don't buy it at grocery
       prices or less and bring it with you, you can do without.  I think
       my parents were raised with a Depression mentality and passed it on.
       In spite of what appears to be extravagant tours we take (and only
       two of them really were), we live very frugally.  But in the
       Dominican Republic the heat got the best of us.  We bought two
       Pepsis.  Then we bought a third and took it to Miguel, our waiting
       taxi driver.  Miguel's cab was a lot like a lot of the cars you see
       in the Dominican Republic.  Come to that, it was a lot like the
       first car of some of the people in my high school--the ones with
       working-class parents.  This was a car in which everything worked--
       at least eventually.  (No, the brakes seemed fine.)  We had a really
       tough time getting the doors to open.  Miguel had to get out and
       come around to open the door.  He had a way with the doors.  He
       could get them to open.  Sometimes on only three or four tries.

            Miguel did not know much English so we talked in a combination
       of English and Spanish.  He didn't want to talk about politics.  We
       asked about the purple houses with the big yellow stars out front
       and he said they *were* political but suddenly the language barrier
       got in our way.  I am pretty sure they are one of the five (count
       'em, five) different Marxist parties fighting for power.  We told
       Miguel we were returning to the United States the next day and he
       knew we'd want to be picked up about 5 AM.  That is *the* flight.  I
       asked if there were taxis that early and he said that there were.
       Then he volunteered to be one.  We agreed.  We were paying Miguel by
       the hour and he seemed to be taking a very roundabout way back to
       the hotel.  My first suspicion was that he was going to try to claim
       another hour.  Actually I misjudged him.  He got us to the hotel
       about five minutes short of the hour.  He may have been just giving
       us our money's worth.

            We returned to the room.  As evening was coming on we decided
       to take one more walk around the Colonial Sector and then find a
       place for dinner.  We found the Colonial sector much quieter on a
       Sunday afternoon.  The Alcazar--the house of the son of Columbus--
       was closed but we could walk around on the city's fortifications.
       Finally we headed back.  There were posters on the walls claiming
       that the Pope was the anti-Christ and proving it by showing the
       numerological meaning of the inscription on his crown was 666.  Is
       anyone really superstitious enough to care?  Well, maybe it is
       indicative.  I got very much the feeling that the government thinks











       Caribbean Travel Log            1992                         Page 32



       things can be made okay and the republic will prosper if they can
       just find the right saint and decorate his picture with flowers.

            I asked Evelyn what she would do if she were running the
       country.  Her response was that she would say the Virgin Mary
       appeared to her and said that everybody should have no more than two
       children.  I then thought about my own question for the first time
       and said I would claim the Virgin Mary appeared to me and told me
       God wanted everyone to know as much as they possibly could about
       technology, mathematics, and science.  The entrance requirements for
       Heaven are the same as for M.I.T.

            Actually I was a bit disappointed in Evelyn's response.  There
       is the pessimistic and the optimistic strategy for the future.  The
       pessimist approach is to say we have to do everything we can to
       preserve what we have.  Stop using up resources so fast because
       there won't be more coming along.  Having so many kids is what is
       hurting the Dominican Republic by Evelyn's estimation.  Mine is that
       the country is looking in the wrong direction.  They have to be
       aggressive and intelligent.  Countries like Korea and Singapore that
       are putting a lot of effort into learning about technology and
       setting up computer networks going into every home are going to have
       the best chance in the future.  The two-children thing is a good
       idea but it is way down on my list of good ideas for the Dominican
       Republic.

            Well, we walked a ways and did not really find another good
       restaurant for dinner.  We were covering much the same territory
       that we had the night before.  Evelyn thought that one of the
       restaurants we'd rejected yesterday would be a good choice today.
       But on closer examination we decided we had good reason to reject
       each of them the previous night.  Then I remembered we passed a
       restaurant somehow named for Don Quixote.  I didn't remember the
       exact name.  We found the place and it was open.  I didn't think it
       was particularly good, however.  We both ordered gazpacho, but it
       turned out they had enough only for one.  I decided to be the nice
       guy and let them switch me to French onion soup, which was okay but
       nothing all that great (or is it "grate"?).  I had paella.  It was
       weird paella.  There was no rice at all, more like a broiled seafood
       platter with potatoes than rice.  Not all that tasty either.  Evelyn
       had squid with black rice and found it also not all that good.  The
       previous night's dinner was far better.

            Back at the room it was work on logs and watch a little
       television and early to bed so we'd be up for our 5 AM cab.

            September 14, 1992:  I actually work up a bit early.  At about
       ten minutes to five we'd finished off the remaining orange juice and
       were out of the room and headed downstairs.  There was somebody else
       checking out ahead of us and the clerk was going over his bill with
       great concentration.  In fact, he seemed to be giving the bill all











       Caribbean Travel Log            1992                         Page 33



       the slow consideration of a problem in algebraic topology.  Now
       admittedly this was probably a complex bill since it was for the
       leader of a tour group but also it seemed to get darn little action
       from the clerk.  He would stare at a page for two or three minutes
       straight, then punch something up on the computer, then maybe staple
       some pages together, then he might use a calculator to add up some
       figures on the computer screen.  I swear we must have been there
       twenty-five minutes.  Finally I went out to tell Miguel, who'd been
       waiting patiently, that we would be out shortly.  Our own bill took
       about three minutes.  Then we were on our way to the airport.
       Miguel sort of pretended not to notice red lights.  At 5:30 AM I
       guess no light is really red in spite of what it looks like to a
       gringo.  We still made it to the airport in plenty of time.  We had
       carefully planned to have just enough left for the cab with a
       generous tip and for Evelyn to get coffee at the airport.  And just
       at the curb somebody grabbed the luggage and insisted on taking for
       us.  We kept telling him we wanted to take our own and had spent our
       money and could not pay him.  It made no difference.  We could not
       shake him.  He followed us in and all the way to security trying to
       grab our bags and carry them for us.  We kept fighting him and
       telling him we did not have money.  "Pay me in American," he
       suggested.  At this point we had only twenties.  We were not going
       to pay him $20 for lifting our bags once or twice over our protests.
       Evelyn didn't want to give up her coffee money either.  So the guy
       got nothing and I suppose that bothered me a little.  Coffee turned
       out to be expensive and Evelyn had just about enough.

            We flew to the San Juan airport and went through customs.  It
       was basically a wave-through.  A newspaper told us a second
       hurricane had hit Hawaii that we hadn't heard about.  It was an hour
       or so in the San Juan airport, but it seemed a lot fancier than it
       had seemed days before.  We got home in time to pick up our mail and
       still get in an hour or two catching up at work.

            Final comments about the trip?  Well, we visited two islands
       that were for much of their history since 1492 controlled by rather
       callous and exploitative governments.  We can complain about what
       George Bush has done over the last four years, but at least he was
       trying to please the country.  It sounds corny, but one thing that
       travel teaches you is that the United States Constitution is a darn
       intelligent document which has meant a big difference in how we live
       today.  Puerto Rico and the Dominican Republic are two places
       ratherly thoroughly plundered by Spain and to some extent by the
       United States later.  The rulers did not have to be responsible to
       the ruled.  And conditions are very different there as a result.


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