We had to cancel our scheduled flight to Hanoi last February, leaving in March instead, so we could help Dorothy’s parents pack up for a financially necessary relocation from California to Tucson. We weren’t able to rebook on Delta, and we’ve been carrying that credit for the last year, unable to use it. We were staring down the barrel of use-it-or-lose-it, and there was no way we were just handing that money to Delta and getting nothing in return. We discussed flying to Europe and flying right back, just to use the credit. Fuck the man!

We hadn’t been back in the US long enough to set off on another leg (OK, I had, but Dorothy needed more recovery time), so we hunted Delta’s map to find out where we could go for a winter getaway with: the funds available; not so far away that it was burdensome to get there; and with affordable accommodations. Thankfully, the answer was the Caribbean, and the pricing for Airbnbs quickly led us to the Dominican Republic.

The first weird thing about this is that the Slow Travelers are taking an eleven-day vacation. Not at all on brand. The second weird thing is that we’re staying in Punta Cana, which is kind of DR’s Cancun. Not our style, but we wanted this break to be all about the beach. The capital, Santo Domingo, would normally have been our likely base, but the accommodations were, surprisingly, more expensive than Punta Cana, and the beaches are near to Santo Domingo but not directly accessible. We wanted to be able to walk to the beach from our apartment every day.

The Apartment

The Airbnb itself is actually fine. The setting is lovely, right in a garden, and it may be the only one we’ve stayed in that didn’t require purchasing something to fill a gap. There are enough hangers (!), the kitchen is exceptionally well equipped, everything works. I mean, there’s a garlic press. That’s officially wtf for an Airbnb.

But.

We went 24 hours without water, which we spent refreshing ourselves on Airbnb’s cancellation policies, the only refreshing available. I’ve probably never appreciated a shower more than the one I took after the water came back on. Then one of the dining chairs collapsed while Dorothy was sitting in it, trapping her ass down and legs up through where the seat had been. Thankfully no injury, or my laughter would have been problematic. In my defense, I didn’t laugh until I was sure she was unhurt. But it was an objectively ridiculous situation. I had to tip her over so she could wriggle out.

Then there’s the resort being built next door. Specifically, behind a fence about five feet from our bedroom window.

8:00 AM to 5:00 PM. Every day except Sunday. Which wouldn’t be so bad except we had two late night ragers just across the fence, so there hasn’t been a moment’s peace. After the second one we thought it was a thing, but it was just those two nights.

But that’s OK, because beach. Which, while we can walk to it as promised, is a little farther than expected, about a mile walk each way, and then a little walk to a quiet part of the beach.

There are beach clubs where you can have lunch and take a lounge under a palapa, but they are $50 USD/person. Which includes lunch, but still. Yikes. We are budget travelers locked in a resort environment.

One of the resorts has a lovely pool and a lax enforcement protocol, so we enjoyed their pool our first two days here. Then I think they clocked us, because on Day Three there were security guards at every entrance checking wrist bands and denying us access. Probably not because of us, but it still felt personal.

Fine, we’ll walk the mile back to our apartment and relax with the open windows (fan only, no AC) and the construction crew. We like to imagine, solely from the unintelligible shouting, what injury has just occurred. Like car bingo, but with blood. “Everybody cross out Head Wound.”

Shopping

The grocery shopping setup here is outstanding. There’s a small supermarket a block from us and a pair of hypermarchés about a ten minute Uber from our apartment. Which is super important because we’re in a resort area, and the food is priced accordingly. We got plates of beans and rice and beef at a shack on the beach and the tab was $16. Delicious, but we’re not making a habit of that.

The big supermarkets are in malls or are mall adjacent. We even spent some time in the local Ikea, to find solace in its air conditioning in the shank of the day. We’re obviously not huge mall fans, but they often showcase an aspirational side of a culture that we wouldn’t ordinarily witness. Or this:

Children were wheeling about the mall astride their steeds, and they offered grownup rides. I suspect they’d have looked askance if we weren’t accompanying a child. Regrets suck.

Local Crafts

While we’re here for the beach, we will never overlook the opportunity to pick up a stunning bit of local handiwork. We didn’t really know much about craft customs here, and it turns out there isn’t much to know.

On the one hand, there’s larimar, a beautiful blue/green mineral uniquely native to the Dominican Republic, which is pretty cool. We bought some beads at this beachside market.

Then there’s the indigenous Taino culture. Or there isn’t. The Taino live on genetically, obviously, but they died out as a distinct culture in Hispaniola (DR + Haiti) in the mid-1500s, thanks to the traditional colonial stew of smallpox and slavery. A sancocho of death. Some recipes never go out of style.

But they left behind cave paintings and pottery, whose iconography has been appropriated to sell trinkets flavored with the dreams of a long-dead people. This and this…

Have become this…

It is, of course, exactly what we did to the Native Americans, but Hispaniola is an island, so it was easier to pull off the genocide that we couldn’t quite complete. Had we finished the job there would have been nothing left of Native American culture but branding. Which is all that’s left of the Taino. Branded gift shops selling imagined ghost merch.

Bizarrely, the gift shops here are full of souvenirs from Turkey, of all places. Turkey exports almost $175M in tourist goods annually for sale in Dominican gift shops. No reason. They’re just cheap and colorful. And have about as much connection to the current population as the faux Taino knickknacks, so why not?

Thankfully, there are two things that DR can claim as truly authentic local culture: rum and cigars. Many Cuban cigar makers relocated to DR when their holdings were nationalized in the revolution, finding a similar climate and soil, as well as an existing tobacco business to which they could apply their particular expertise. As a result, DR cigars are considered world class. Not an aficionado myself, but we’ve brought a couple back for my nephew. Much less fraught than bringing a box of Cuban cigars back for him buried in my luggage, sweating through Customs.

Where the rum is concerned, however, I am a practitioner. We knew about that in advance, so we came equipped with a couple of padded bottle wraps.

We came back from our Puerto Rican Christmas trip in 2015 with a taste for Ron del Barrilito Three Star, which turned out to be available in the US. If we love the Brugal, that can also be added to the repertoire.

Day Tripping

We’re only here for eleven days, but we’ve squozed in a couple of day trips: one to local cenotes and another to an island beach.

Ojos Indígenas

We think of cenotes as underground, as they mostly are in Mexico, but the three cenotes at Ojos Indígenas are all aboveground. What we would call ponds. But ponds with exceptionally clear water nestled in the heart of a biological reserve. So, cenotes.

Ojos Indígenas is only half an hour from our apartment, and we probably should have just arranged a car and driver and gone on our own. Instead, we booked a tour. Even though we know better.

We’d done a little research beforehand, which suggested that the cenotes were too cool for swimming. So while we brought suits, we left them in the tour van, not realizing that we wouldn’t see the van again until the very end of the tour. The cenotes turned out to be, if not warm, not too cold for swimming. For me, at least. I’d have gone in, but Dorothy, who abhors the cold, would have passed even if she’d had access to her suit.

But the setting was scenic in an atavistic way, and the pools were gorgeous. No complaints. Before we got to the cenotes we were given a tour of the bioreserve. We saw bees, eagles, and giant iguanas. Not uninteresting, but not worth the extra cost of the tour vs. just going to the cenotes by car.

Finally, the cenotes themselves.

They lived up to the billing. Obscenely clear turquoise water in a tropical jungle setting.

And not for nothing, additional entries for our upcoming coffee table book, Dorothy Sees Patterns.

Sadly, the cenotes were followed, as is tour custom, with a lengthy stop at an overpriced gift shop. How overpriced? The $32 bottle of rum I’d purchased at the liquor store in town was $68.

On the way out we dropped a couple of guests off at a resort (technically, the entire biodiversity center and the cenotes were on the grounds of a resort) that passed a residential community called Ciudad de Canas. Cana, as in Punta Cana, obviously means reeds or canes. But the slang meaning of canas is Gray Hair, which was delightfully on the nose, and I’m sure made the developers laugh every single day.

Saona Island

One of the things we discovered on this vacation is that good travel planning takes more time than a vacation provides. Or at least the way we do it. Case in point, we thought our catamaran cruise to Saona Island was a snorkeling trip. It was not, which appropriate due diligence would have revealed.

It was a beach trip. It was an awesome beach trip and we have no regrets. But the waters were empty, the fish clearly having enough sense to stay away. The women walking the beach offering surfside oil massages were the only wildlife we saw.

Stop number one was billed as a natural swimming pool in the ocean. It wasn’t really a pool, just an exceptionally long, shallow shelf, coming up only waist high hundreds of meters from shore. It was also where all of the boats stopped, so it had a distinctly Grand Central ambiance. But it was a legitimately sweet spot for a swim.

Our second and final stop was the beach on Saona Island itself. Three hours of swimming, sunning, and a lunch buffet that was unquestionably food. This was also when we figured out we weren’t on a snorkeling trip, which explained all the free rum they were pouring. Drunk Snorkeling could easily be a reality TV show, but not one we’d sign up for.

All good, though, because the beach was everything the Caribbean promised: soft white sand, warm water, palm trees, and shaded lounges. I think we swam five times in three hours. Completely worth it.

Except for the return trip. Our boat and several others the same size were sluiced onto a larger catamaran, which announced itself as a Party Boat! An hour-and-a-half of free rum and bachata blasted through overtaxed speakers. To be fair, it wasn’t all bachata. We were also blessed with the Macarena.

I had no idea my lawn extended all the way to the Caribbean, or that it could be so painfully full. At first it made me feel old, but then I realized that there was no age at which the sound splattering out of those speakers would have been acceptable.

Roadside Attractions

No visit to a new location would be complete without documenting the local graphic design and public art. Not that these are all truly local.