The Dominican Republic – Part 1

Greetings from sunny Puerto Rico. As the girls and Julie have written, we had a great time in the Dominican Republic. Over the next few posts, I’ll do my best to give my impression of this great place, its people, the culture, the cuisine, and our adventures.

In this post, I’ll focus on the people…

We’ve met some really friendly people on this trip – many, many more genuinely nice people than not so friendly ones. That being said, I can say without a doubt that the Dominicans are the nicest, most genuine, and truly friendly people I have ever met. Every storekeeper, restaurant owner, and person walking down the street was smiling, greeted us with a ‘hola, hola’, helped us with our broken Spanish, and seemed to be in a good mood. Now, I’m aware that some of the ‘niceness’ may be attributed to the fact that the cruising community is a major contributor to the Luperon economy – but this is different. The folks we met weren’t just nice to us and other gringos – they were nice to everybody. It was great – and really put a smile on my face when I walked around town. It’s easy to understand why many people come to Luperon planning to spend a few weeks and end up staying for years (seriously… we met several people who did just that).

One example was Jose – our tour guide for our ventures around the island. Again – being a tour-guide and local politician, I’d expect Jose to be a ‘nice guy’ – but he is more than just a ‘nice guy’. Wherever we went, everybody loved Jose – and it was because that he wasn’t just a nice guy, but because we would take the time listen to everybody, and (as we later found out), speds a lot of time and money helping out the less fortunate folks in and around town.

We also made friends with Isaac – the owner of the marina where we did some work on our boat- and his family.

I enjoyed getting to know Pedro – the guy with the best English at the hardware store who helped me find a a screw extractor and a few other things not in my Spanish / English dictionary. I even felt a bit of a connection with the owner / chef of the chicken shack where we had 2 fantastic lunches (more on that in my ‘food’ post). In Luperon, even the most transactional relationships like buying tools or a plate of fried chicken became personal – and that was great.

Other than locals, we ran in to a lot of cruisers. Unlike the Dominicans – who were universally awesome – the cruisers are a mixed bunch…. Most are great – lots of interesting folks who have chosen for one reason or another to leave the comfort of ‘normal’ life and take to the seas. Too many stories to tell – but many are pretty similar to ours– especially the ‘younger folks (and in this crowd, we’re still young)’.  There is a definatetheme of ‘life’s too short to not follow your dreams NOW’.  We’ve made lots of great friends along the way – and Luperon was no exception.

While most of the cruisers were great – a handful were downright grumpy – and while they didn’t ‘ruin’ the place, they sure did take a bit of the ’shine’ off it. Just about all of the grumpy folks were people who had stayed there for too long – and were all Americans (read into that whatever you want…). Seems as if they brought a sense of entitlement south with them – its not very attractive…. Oh well – it made leaving a bit easier (but still difficult – as I really enjoyed Luperon).

I really hope that some of the genuine niceness of the Dominican people has rubbed off on me.

Until next time,

Mark