DR: Touring turistas

Through the eyes of a tourist in the Dominican Republic... Touring the DR on the tourist belt was really interesting for me to see. The areas that we went were packed full of people vacationing in the DR for a week or few and those people from Europe who decided to up and leave home to start a hotel or tourist agency of sorts. Needless to say I was blown away with how different the overall feeling of this part of the island was in comparison to Sabana Perdida and those areas we visited with our participants.
We started off our trip on the Zona Colonial. This is a part of Santo Domingo that I have spent a lot of time in on days off or with the kids. It is a hot spot for those who get off the cruise ships to get a peek at colonial life of the Dominican Republic. The streets are lined with your typical tourist gear and paintings while all around town are ruins and old churches in which they now hold a number of dance nights or wedding photography. Alec really enjoyed getting to walk around the ruins and getting bits of the history behind everything that lines the little sector or Santo Domingo.
From Santo Domingo we headed north, bypassing the mountains because of the rain that tends to get stuck there. I decided this because of a past day off when I had my hopes set high to hike Manabao with a friend of Alberto and it poured all morning and stayed sunny with intermittent down pours through the rest of the weekend,  I wasn't ready for heart break again. Thus, we trekked north to the beach town of Sosua which huge draw is snorkeling and, forgotten by me at the time, the ladies of the night. We scored big with our hostel, which I picked merely because if its name: Coco Hotel. What we didn't know was it had private beach access that led to an uninhabited beach where all the scuba instructors bring their groups to dive.  So after getting setting out to get Alec a taste of some Dominican food and waking up in the morning only to find four "ladies of the night" in their short dresses prancing out of the hotel we decided it was a good idea to hide away on our easy beach access. While we were out there we enjoyed the clarity of the water, buoyancy,  and got to use my snorkel gear to follow the scuba boats marking the reef so we could see massive schools of bright fish I couldn't even start to identify. This was pretty wild and super lucky- I felt like we were part of some secret club. Despite or awesome location we decided to head over to the next beach town, Cabarete. Sosua during the day was only filled with old men sitting at the bar around noon with a pretty obvious objective for their evening.We found a much better fit for our company at the surf hostel we found in Cabarete. This town has a huge draw for kite surfers and surfers alone. Meaning the energy level and thrill for new things with palpable through the air. Although we didn't surf or kite surf during our stay, we enjoyed walking the beach with the sky painted with eating at our hostel (which apparently had the best dinner in town), and experiencing the night life that also is part of Cabarete's claim to fame. It was wild to me seeing so many restaurants and tourist agencies run my retired Europeans and experiencing the night life felt like I had landed myself back in the states. Bachata and merengue could only be found at one discoteca and only for the start of the night. It was definitely the tourists lens of the DR. I had a small debate with a guy from Spain that the DR was loosing its culture because of all the tourists. Which it was easy to agree with in the north, but I could not make him believe how different life was in Santo Domingo. I suppose the longer the tourists don't try to see outside of the Zona Colonial the longer I will be right about that.
Upon leaving Cabarete we booked a trip to see the 27 waterfalls in Puerto Plata and visit a Dominican farm, taste some good coffee, see how Domican cigars are made and taste, and of course go up and down the first 7 of the 27 waterfalls. I finally got some great use out of my waterproof camera- which was enjoyed by everyone in out tour group.
After this trip Alec and I headed back to Santo Domingo. We stayed the night in the Zona Colonial and took off in the morning to Elio Franco. It was really important to me for him to see the DR I know and love and not that that was described by the Spaniard. We toured the neighborhood  and visited some of the kids and friends before sending Alec off to the airport.
Being unemployed with nothing to do in Elio Franco turned out to be just what I needed to top off this summer. My friend Yeiron's family was so great to me. His Grandma is a great cook and his brother is a riot. I had lots of fun with him and their neighbor Yessl washing clothes/having a nice impromptu bath, making all sorts of jugo, batidas, and OH! and ending up on a national TV program promoting a new Dominican Artist (I ended up being a kind of back up dancer with Yessl and her family that was there. As a thank you to Yessl's mom helped me make dulce de coco for people in the neighborhood and to send to my parents as a recruero (sorry Mom an Dad... We didn't have a fridge so it may not make it.) It was also great to spend some time with our director Alberto and the family when he wasn't crunching numbers for Visions. He even got up at 3 this morning to give me a hug goodbye which made my day :)Don't you worry I didn't leave without a lot of Bachata. A neighbor had a birthday party this weekend and Bachata dominated the radio... Along with some to retry intensive dembo dancing. They just didn't want to hear no when I wouldn't dance with them.
Now I find myself landed in Panama with another tourist lense, but extremely thankful and grateful for everything at happened in DR and the perspective it has given me.