Unhurriedly

Sleeping in was very nice… We woke up late and they were still making breakfast. After some tasty food, I was able to get online for the first time and make my previous post.

We made a trip via taxi into Puerto Plata to get some more cash from the bank and see the sights a little bit. Our taxi driver, Yovany (like Giovanni) was a gruff but nice older man who gave us a little impromptu tour on the way, pointing out bits of the city. Yovany cautioned us about not walking in the streets and dropped us off at Banco Popular which was recommended by out concierge at the resort.

Almost immediately we were descended upon by a yellow shirted tour guide, David, (the yellow shirt is meant to denote an official guide). He was very pleasant and kept several hovering beggars away from us as we got some pesos out of the ATM so we decided to let him take us around the city. There were a large number of children who should have been in school instead on the streets begging for their families.


First we walked to the San Filipe fort on the waterfront, a important location in Dominican independence. After walking through the city for a while, we stopped at a restaurant called Polanco in the old city. While the meal was good, we all had a local beer called el Presidente in 650ml bottles and ate the Sandwich Polanco Especial, we may have over paid (or been over charged) by a relatively significant amount.


I made a strange observation; Even though the monitory conversion rate makes for higher numbers of pesos in a price (our beers were $120RD, which we knew was overpriced, but that was a little more than $3USD). Oddly, the larger numbers don’t seem to set off the same flags that a smaller number of USD. Bethany paid $10 (300 RD) for 2 pirated CDs, obviously too much, but she said about the young man, “he’s so pretty”.

Though we asked for some indigenous wares to purchase, our guide took us to two touristy shops that sold things for way too much, about 4x what they would cost in the US which is already inflated. We really liked David, but think we can do it “libre” manana. While some of us found gifts, there really wasn’t much for us. So, we called our cab a little early an went back to the resort.

It rained heavily for about 20 minutes but was still warm and “moy tranquila”. Alicia and Bethany went to get us more beer in large bottles, this time Bohemia, and finally found a lone cigar to share and make the evening better. At this point we’ve been through two bottles in rum and are at nearly a one to one ratio of rum versus coca-cola.

While not as thrilling a day, it was very pleasant.

This entry was posted on Monday, January 28th, 2008 at 10:03 pm and is filed under Real Life. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.