Dominican Rpb: A ride across the South and the Center

[08/02/18] Sated with the colonial flavour of Santo Domingo, I decided to spend some time outdoors and get to a remote and hard-to-get-to beach Bahia de las Aguilas located on the south-east of the country, near the border with Haiti.

I have everything I need to spend a night in the open air, except for the gas for my stove. This problem I bypassed by buying supplies that don't require cooking, such as canned food and vegetables.

And water, of course, lots of it. As a result my titanic backpack swole even more and started towering over my head, its weight passing 33kg mark by the most conservative estimates.

At the beginning everything was going my way, I was getting picked up by cars quickly and the riding was a pleasure. But the farther I was from the capital into the bumfuc... rustic and remote parts of the DR, the harder it was to hitch a ride. Eventually the cars ceased to stop for me at all.

Nobody but the buses were willing to take me in. And so, somewhere near Azua I had to take a bus to Barahona and when I arrived there it was kinda late to go further. In the best case scenario I would get there by sunset and even that was unlikely. I tried, though, with no avail.

Then I found a relatively inexpensive hotel, rented a room for a night and went to the local beach to have at least some of my plans fulfilled.

Now, this beach is not particularly clean or beautiful or free to visit. All of it is bought up by hotels built there, sporting a multitude of different flags at the gates in a vain attempt to make them look important.

They were all empty, of course, as nobody wants to go to this unknown place with muddy sea and littered beaches.

That said, I was adamant to not let the circumstances get the best of me and I sneaked through some bushes in a remote part of the beach with a small island 30 meters away, where I spent some time sunbathing.

Going back was a breeze, I just walked to the beach in front of a hotel and when a supervisor approached me to ask if I stay in this hotel and to drive me away, I just asked where the exit was and out I went.

Later in the evening the sunburns (that I got from hours in the trunk of a hitched car) became apparent, so I ditched the idea of going to any kind of a beach anytime soon and decided to go to Constanza instead.

The following morning I started moving in the opposite direction and got stuck in the same place, as the day before. And then again. And again. Somehow I managed to make it to a village named Sabana Larga where I learned that the next 90km to Constanza are only passable by bike and no cars ever go that way (even though treacherous Google Maps showed a highway-level road there).

The locals were nice enough to find a bike for me with a driver that was ready to take me there for 50$.
That was not the price I would gladly pay and I had to go around instead, drawing a semi-circle by unpaved roads, which I partly passed by hitchhiking and partly by local public transport called gua-gua.

In the process I met a local guy John with fluent English who gave me a ride on his bike and explained that his English was a gift of God. Apparently he was a self-learner like me.

Be it as it may, the final part in gua-gua was the hardest - they crammed as much people as possible in the covered trunk of a car, which was constantly leaking water as the car was making its way through the rain and darkness by windy mountain roads.

And all that I heard and seen there were fat old women (3 of them taking as much space as other 7 people), laughing and shouting in the most obnoxious way, all of 1.5 hours that seemed like an eternity.

It is very surprising how much time it takes to cover such small distances in such a small country.

After an exhausting day like this I only had enough energy to locate my hotel and fall flat on the bed.

^Constanza

They say that God is everywhere but he lives in Constanza. It was only on the next day that I saw what exactly this place was. The green hills surround the town and pierce the low heavy clouds that pour rain on the farmers working in the fields below - such is Constanza, a town lost somewhere among the hills of the Dominican Republic.

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^{The driver of another gua-gua fixing a cover for the trunk on the way out of Constanza}

To be continued...

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Dominican Republic: 26
Turkey: 21, 22, 23, 24, 25
Iran: 11, 12, 13, 14, 15, 16, 17, 18, 19, 20
Tajikistan: 7, 8, 9, 10
Kyrgyzstan: 4, 5, 6
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