Black Cloud Over The D.R. -- Part I

Is there a black cloud really following me? When I was a little girl, my father always used to refer to this “black cloud” following him around. I didn’t really get it at the time, but as I got older I became very familiar with the black cloud that follows people with my last name around. I don’t want to sound paranoid, but you miss the train by .5 seconds, get gypped out of your reservations after you’ve driven 5 ½ hours to get to the hotel, get hit in the head with multiple pigeons enough times and you would be paranoid, too.

On our vacation to the Dominican Republic, Derek and I rented a car with 4 wheel drive, thinking we could “off road” around the “real” D.R. Well, after we’d driven 3 hours into the “real” D.R. -- we “really” broke down. The car wouldn’t start, in fact it wouldn’t move. We were on a beach with D.R. locals on their weekend holidays. Problem numero uno: I only spoke very broken Spanish…Derek didn’t speak any. This is where it got hairy. Some guys came over to help us and we think they said one was even a mechanic! But, alas no one could figure out what was wrong with our car. Problem two: the phone card we bought for our D.R. cell phone did not work. We had bought the wrong kind somehow or another. I tried desperately to see if the woman who ran the villa we were staying at (she had given us the phone as part of our stay) had programmed her number into the phone. No luck. Or should I say, black cloud? After standing around in the mind splitting heat for an hour or two, Derek and the husband of the nice family who was helping us went to look for a phone. When they finally reached the only “bar” that had a phone, Derek stepped into the steamy thatched roof shack and was immediately met with Dominican men who were very unhappy to see white tourist boy invade their local party space. He was pushed and shoved and yelled at (though he didn’t have a clue what they said to him). The man who was with him, Orlando, led him to the bar and asked the tender where this alleged phone was. Derek and Orlando were soon led to a back, back, back room of the shack/bar. In this room was a cot and a bucket/urinal filled with urine. After the initial shock of all of that, Derek realized that YES there was a phone! Orlando dialed the number we had for the rental company that we got the car from. After a heated conversation, Orlando looked at the receiver and then at Derek and said simply, “De nada.” This was a very universal thing to say, as Derek knew, we were fucked.

Orlando wound up towing us to the “resort” we had been looking for all along. What was once hailed by Lonely Planet as a bohemian paradise was, well, a shithole set against a backdrop of paradise. We bid Orlando goodbye and thanked him profusely. Derek even tried to compensate him with some pesos, as we had found that every single person in the D.R. thus far on our trip had tried to obtain our pesos some way or another. We soon realized that we were dealing with a real Dominican working class guy (kinda like us) because he refused the money and was just glad to help us in any way he could.

We approached our “bohemian paradise” with much trepidation. I decided enough was enough and walked across the dirt road amongst stray chickens and dogs to the door. I scanned the establishment and saw that people had been bussed in from their resort locations and were from all over the world. I finally spotted someone who looked like they were in charge and more importantly…looked like they may speak English.

To be continued…