We Are Alex Family

Fish
Originally uploaded by Pookah.

Day three in Punta Cana was actually day one in the Dominican Republic. And by that, I mean that Jimmy and I spent our first day away from the Resort. What you see above is my favorite picture from the whole trip (although I only had 22 to choose from as my digital camera only came with a really small amount of memory).

Jimmy and I had planned to take one of Apple Vacations day trips and had decided on the Outback Safari. It turns out that we picked the best day for it as cloudy, rainy weather would have made for a really miserable beach day.

As it was, it made for a semi-miserable day-long outing in the back of an open-air truck, whipping along sometimes paved and sometimes not Dominican roadways.

Our local tour director was Alejandro and our driver was Dani, who didn't speak a lot of English and forced me to practice my Spanish when bathroom needs arose and Alejandro was too busy pouring Pepsi and rum drinks for the other tourists.

The Safari taught us about the local people and lands, and allowed us to see firsthand many parts of the Punta Cana area, away from the resorts. The first stop of the morning was at a typical family's home, where we saw the living conditions of the Dominican people.

Most homes are built out of the trunks of a type of palm tree that is too hard and dense for termites to destroy. The planks are roofed with a wavy aluminum, the design of which is for gathering rainwater that the families' use for cooking, bathing and other household necessities. All water for drinking is bottled water as the rainwater is not fit for consumption (several years ago, a certain amoeba was infecting the locals, a health risk which inspired the change to bottled water).

The home we visited had r rooms for 5 people: two small bedrooms, a living room, and a tiny indoor kitchen that is only used to cook when the weather is bad. The indoor kitchen has a propane tank they use for their stove.

The outdoor kitchen has more of a grill setup, but they burn the wood of a certain type of palm tree to cook. This is a smokey process, which is why they don't employ it in the indoor kitchen.

This particular home had an actual toilet in a hut outside, but I don't think most families have access to this kind of plumbing. The home has no electricity, but they have a television which runs on batteries and can sometimes catch Puerto Rican stations.

The average income per year is $2,500 and the estimated cost of comfortable living is $3,000 so most Dominicans live in poverty. It is also a country in which 85% of the population are Christians and it is tradition for the women not to work, but to stay home and raise the family. I can't even imagine.

In any case, the family set up a table to serve us Dominican coffee in their backyard. Admittedly, I am not a coffee drinker, but I did try some and I think their coffee is pretty tasty. It is bittersweet, with an emphasis on sweet. If American coffee tasted this good, I just may have yellow teeth like the rest of caffeine-addicted America too.

After another freezing turn in the back of the truck, with cold wind and rain heaving around the sides of the truck at us, we arrived at a local school. The schools are really only slightly bigger than an average home, and are one-room institutions. It is obvious that the teachers do their best with what they have, but there were only chairs and desks for about twenty children and a few posters. I didn't see any schoolbooks, or other learning materials, or any kind of a playground for exercise. It is so completely different from what we are used to here in the U.S.

Many children walk several miles to school each day, or ride horses or take the public bus. With the price of cars and diesel so expensive relative to their earnings, many families live without automobiles. And, on the day we were there, not a single child showed up for school due to the weather. Again, what we all take for granted...

Jimmy and I, being the wonderful examples of American tourism that we are, took pictures of each other drinking in the classroom - Jimmy double-fisting it, and I laughing so hard that my eyes somehow seem to disappear into the skinfolds above my cheeks.

Alejandro didn't let us stay long though - no school children=no fun. While he was hanging off the back of the truck, and we were all doing our best not to freeze (by the way, I was the only one in jeans and a sweater and I am fully prepared to admit that it still wasn't enough when Dani was sprinting down the roads at 50mph), Alejandro told us all about how we were all family members for the day and must treat each other as such. And then he taught us a new song:

"We are Alex family
We come from here
We are so happy
After 20 beers...!"

Apparently this song is to be sung at the top of one's lungs after each Pepsi and Rum round. This is, of course, how everyone stayed warm.

The next stop of the day was at a native coffee and chocolate plantation trail, where it downpoured for a few minutes and I didn't get to play much with the snakes and tarantulas they had caged on the side of the trail. Instead I tasted my first Dominican hot chocolate, and this elixir they call something very similar to "Marijuana." The elixir, however, is not an illegal drug, but rather some mix of native herbs that you soak in rum and water for a certain period of time. They claim this elixir can fix ailments ranging from a simple headache to arthritis. My thought is that if you drink enough rum, you can "fix" anything!

So I bought a cannister of coffee for my Anthony at this stop.

Next stop: a traditional Dominican lunch at some sort of ranch. The food was buffet-style, as all the other Outback Safari trips were visiting this same location for lunch. The seating arrangements were picnic tables under a long roof. We were one of the last groups to arrive, so we were pretty far away from the one wall against which the buffet tables were placed and the wind blew cold rain into us during our meal.

The food was excellent! Oddly, it was one of only two meals where I found fried plantains, which I think is a really tasty food item. There was also red beans and rice, some kind of chicken, bread... While it doesn't sound like much now, it was one of my favorite meals of the trip. The Resort seems to cater to foreign tastes, while this meal felt distinctly authentic. Everything was just so wonderful.

We spent most of our meal with a couple from Wisconsin, or was it Montana? In any case, they have a lovely story: Husband was a truck driver based out of Kentucky, who one day helped out his future wife over the CB Radio. She and a friend met up with him at a truck stop while they were on some road trip and had a drink. That turned into several dates in Wisconsin/Montana every time Husband drove up that way, which turned into being re-stationed in Wisconsin/Montana once his supervisor found out, which turned into a marriage proposal and happily ever after. It's so rustic, yet so romantic. You don't see a lot of men willing to relocate for their women, nor do you rarely see that same kind of situation where it all works out for the best and He never has to change jobs. I like to see happy endings (even if I like some of my movies to be gritty, just like life can be).

The afternoon ended with a rum shack where we are charged only local prices (again, I thought of my Anthony, and our favorite alcoholic, Mike, here), and then boogie boarding at a local beach. I have pictures of Jimmy with his boogie board, but I am a temperature wuss and didn't think I could handle drying off in the back of an open-air truck, on a chilly, rainy day, while we're moving along the highway at a steady clip. So, despite the bathroom-temperature water, I still have not boogie boarded since I was about ten years old.

In due course we said our farewells to Alejandro and Dani and RACED to our hotel room for hot showers. This was also the CNN evening, so I don't even have to go into that now.

Needless to say, we had an early dinner at the only restaurant on site where they charge you a surplus fee because of the gourmet food. Jimmy and I weren't overly impressed by the food, but we had a wonderful conversation (as always). Mostly we discussed our Safari and all the people we met on it (Jimmy was especially pleased at meeting a gentlemen who was clearly very religious, what with all his Catholic jewelry, but still reacted very kindly to him - we talked a little bit about how first impressions can limit you from getting to know really great people.)

The final portion of our evening was devoted to the nightly show: Club 54, which turned out to be a 70's dance music review. Of course, Jimmy ended the evening onstage with the dancers, shaking his little tushie...