Dominican Republic Part One

At the airport I ended up drawing out less money than I paid in charges, because I really had not sussed out the exchange rate correctly. And to think i teach maths. Pity my students. I was trying to figure out in my head how much it was going to cost to get to town by taxi, when I was approached by a Swedish guy who was headed in the same direction. This was the beginning of my odyssey with Filip and Anders. They would bail me out of shitty situations over the next couple of weeks and I effectively turned their holiday into one long charity volunteering session. But all that was for the future. Anders managed to haggle the taxi driver down to 25 dollars and we headed into the zona colonial. They had lost their Caribbean Lonely Planet in Rincon while surfing and it turns out we´d been on the same flight into Santo Domingo. When we arrived in the centre, the taxi driver could not find their place and the hotel could not find their reservations. I was going to walk on from there to the place I'd booked but they suggested I share the room if I wanted and cut the costs. Considering I'd booked the other place with a now cancelled card (meaning there was no danger of them charging me) I took them up on the offer. The room was kind of smallish and had only two beds. The guys would end up having to share for the whole trip and I did feel a mix of guilt and relief that I always ended up with my own smallish bed. We went out to take a look at the town and concluded it was pretty, but not as nice as San Juan. Like a shabbier version. We had an overpriced dinner that was quite nice, although I don't think Filip enjoyed his that much and settled in. In the morning I woke up and I had no passport. Shit. Fuck. I don't think I was as concerned as I should have been at the time as I figured I had time for a replacement, but I knew I was in trouble and I knew Haiti was out of the question. Which was crappy as I figure the two of them may have come along.

I spent the morning frantically searching around town for the passport to no avail and then we met up and toured around the fortress. It was fairly run down but they do allow you to play around with the military equipment onsite, which enabled me to learn a little bit about Swedish military service. I talk so much and we travelled together for a reasonable amount of time that we both got to learn an awful lot about how the other country functions. On the whole I was not disappointed with the insight into Swedish functionings as I have long thought they may be the next evolutionary step in human governance following the last step taken by the Yankees 250 years ago. I decided to dash across town to see if I could get some information from the UK embassy on the island. At the same time Filip had lost his bank card. It turns out he had left it in the machine the night before after admonishing me for doing the same thing 5 seconds beforehand. I had even been shown his bank card when I had gone to the bank looking for my passport but was obviously unaware of this. Anders later let me know in Las Terrenas that they had initially thought I stole it. Only natural. I had irrationally thought they may have stolen my passport, but it was evident I would have more use for their bankcard than they for my passport. Ah the hazards of things going missing when relationships are untested. Anyway they got their card back from the bank. In my rush to get to the embassy I realised I had forgotten to actually check where it was specifically. I ended up charging down one road, getting pissed on by yet another rain storm (I know I always mention rain and it seems I get a lot, but actually I have had lots of sun and sure as hell don't miss the English winter) and ducking into the Marriott hotel for directions. They phoned up and found the place and their taxi driver offered to take me for 300 pesos. A ridiculous amount. I protested that it was only 2km away and the desk girl said it was way more than that. It was actually 1.5km but the building is hard to spot. No flags and buildings like at home. The UK embassy is on the 7th floor of a nodescript concrete tower block that would not look out of place South of the river back home. After all this effort I discover the embassy is bloody shut (missed it by half an hour) and I would have to go back the next day.

I was passing back through the museum district so I stopped off to see the modern art museum. It was an interesting place and the first gallery I had been to for ages. Standouts included a Miro painting of a person painting a painting. Yep like it says. There was alos an exhibition obsessed with breasts and a wedding dress that had lots of plastic headless grooms sticking out of it. Following this I ducked into the Museum of the Dominican Man. It was an interesting museum but not that exceptional. The exception was the display on the Dominican Carnival upstairs which was colourful and quite intimidating with the costumes. Would be a fun place to be for the carnival and at the rate my passport is being replaced I may be able to experience it firsthand. Though I still aim to be in Guatemala or El Salvador. Once I left the museum I figured I should report the loss to the tourist police. This is a small office with one desk in the middle of town. The guy clearly could not be arsed and the fact I did not know my own passport number or where I was staying (I did not book it) did not help. He filled out a letter for me in Spanish explaining what I needed from the main police station and so I headed out that way. Eventually after asking many people for directions I came to the main police station and as I was headed in I was stopped by the security guard. "no tiene pantalones". What? I could not enter because I did not have any trousers. Shit. I had put all my clothes in the laundrette in the morning and was in swimming trunks. So I could not enter the police station. I rather forlornly explained in Spanish that my clothes were in the laundrette, that I did not have a passport and that I needed a form. I looked rather forlorn and useless, like a kid on the first day of school, as I handed him my Spanish slip of paper. He clearly thought I was so pathetic he would permit me to flaunt the rules and he let me head to the reception. This was in the side of the building and composed of one woman on a chair with a phone. Not even a desk. She got annoyed at me for interrupting her conversation and sent me round the corner to what looked like a mobile home. Inside were two detectives who were clearly about to head off home and had no interest in my case. The fact my Spanish sucked and I did not know my passport number pissed them off more. Well pissed them off as much as you can piss off someone who is disinterested. I offered what I believed it to be and they printed up a police report with a guessed passport number and my name spelt incorrectly despite my doing it letter bby letter. I met up with the other guys and we had wanted to see the baseball (home side was away) or cockfighting (nothing till january), so we walked around and ended up watching 'Body of Lies' which was not bad and started the first of our many incessant discussions on politics. I had almost lost my cards in the cinema and I should have realised that these Banana Republic shorts were a liability (they were what I wore when my mp3 player went, when my passport went and when my cards would eventually go). Obviously they design pockets for easy loss in America. Or maybe there was a curse of the lost Banana Republic haunting me. After all I had visited the country they had ruthlessly exploited for many years (Guatemala and its the actual Banana Company) and thats where the curse started. Its all clear now. The Banana Republic and Peter Frampton were out to haunt all my movements. Bastards. Not sure how I shake this curse. Maybe I will have to offer up a sacrifice to a volcano up in Guatemala next time I am there. Or hunt down and kill that little shit that started my bad luck rolling.

In the morning I got up and headed for the passport office again. I found out the emergency passport only flies you directly home. That sucked. I checked flights at one point when i hit a low and figured it was the easiest option. Flights home started from 1000 pounds. That option was quickly scrapped. At this point Haiti was up in smoke and Canada was a problem. A passport takes up to 20 days as it has to be dealt with in Mexico City (great) because they have a biometric passport manufacturer. Tomorrow was a bank holiday and I would only have 1 hour to gather everything I needed impossible. I filled out the form and got them to check it over. So far so good. I needed two passport sized photos. This was done by a guy they recommended who takes shots with a camera against a white wall that he digitally edits. It looks like one of those lead x-ray machines and fires the camera shot at you. He doctored it well. It took ages to find him in the first place, because the first 20 people I asked had no idea where it was (even though it was on the opposite side of the road right in front of their faces). That killed any chance of getting the application started that day. Now I had two more problems. One was that the government had threatened me that if I lost another passport I may not be entitled to a new one as I had lost so many. I knew we had dug up one of the old ones and sent a message to my dad to send it in to the passport office to speed things up. Ten days later he eventually sent it in. That must have sped it up loads. My mum phoned the passport office after Anna (an Argentine friend of mine) had contacted her from Ireland via facebook. Sometimes you wonder how people coped before internet. They said I would at least get a trail one year passport to see if I could be trusted. Another obstacle covered. Finally the vouch on the passport. It needs to be someone who is a British citizen and has known you for two years. Hmm. I knew noone on the island and certainly no British citizens. If there was noone I could use a local who had known me for 2 years. I had been on the island 2 days. Shit. Finally they suggested I could use my hotel manager. I tried to clarify, because its a small hotel and the owner only speaks Spanish. They said it was ok. I doubted this all the while, but the application is apparently being processed in Mexico as I speak so it must be ok. Anyway I get back to the hotel and explain to the assistant who speaks some English what I need from the owner. So the three of us sit in a room and I try to explain in Spanish what he has to write. He fills in the back and says he has known me for 2 years, even though its barely 2 minutes. I then fill out a mock passport photo so he can copy exactly what I wrote, but I end up spelling it letter by letter in Spanish and the first time he runs out of space. I could see that coming, but its hard to explain in Spanish to someone who is helping you out. Eventually we bundle through the process and I have two signed photos (hmm did something to the keyboard there and lost brackets. I only wanted one signed but did not know this yet as I missread it). I had 13 days from the 2nd as the office was closed on the 1st but everything was prepared and I would give it the best shot I had. It was now I realised that the Yankees might be really pissed that I lost a ten year visa in the Dominican Republic and you may well see me ending up on the baseball roster in the Major League Baseball. I am bound to get an arse raping when I next head through US airspace and I am going to avoid it if possible. Though Jose, the guy I am staying with works for the US embassy here and maybe able to soften the landing if I turn myself in here before I fly.

Later that evening (stress dying down a little bit) I met the other guys and we had some drinks before heading out for new years eve. We ended up eating in a place called El Museo de el Jamon (the museum of ham). It was expensive but the food was sensational. They took a long time to deliver and new year struck with us watching the fireworks exploding over us for new years eve. Was a cool place to spend it and a complete contrast to the piss up in the Dublin tavern for the year before. Afterwards I was supposed to meet a couchsurfer Alejandro at around half past one outside our hotel for a late party. We wandered along the waterfront and got there just in time to grab a lift with him, his mate Rafa (who insisted he could get me any drug I wanted even I did not want any) and a girl from New York. They whisked us across town to a private party on the rooftop of a penthouse. The place had a swimming pool and a cool view across the western part of the city. We met the host Carlise (whose mum was Miss Dominican Republic 1977) and a plethora of her friends. There was a musical therapist, the guys we came with, a French/Spanish girl called Morgane who was quite cute and offered me a place to stay if I got stuck here. She also scared the shit out of me by insisting that another English guy named Joe had taken 8 months to replace his passport. Oh well better sink in for the long haul. I then met Joe, a German guy named Mathias and Jose (who is currently hosting me after bailing me out of another problem). We also met a whole bunch of other people, but they were the main actors. On the saturday 14 of them were heading out for a two day party on a deserted beach out in the west. If we could get a car we could join them as their cars were full. We could not and so we did not. Shame as it would have been fun. The three of us chatted with a bunch of people and then helped them carry stuff at 5am to the after party in Carlise's flat. We stayed till around 7am and then headed out after getting Jose and Carlise's numbers. The three of us walked back along the malecon, past scores of the good looking and the drunk strewn across the waterfront like debris from a new year´s storm. We eventually found a breakfast place where I collapsed mid sentence. The other slowly faded as well and after the Hilton had wanted to charge us a mini mortgage for breakfast we made it back.

On the 1st we got up late and what a cracking start to 2009 I had had. Great party, but I had no passport and I think this would sour my mind for most of my time here in the Dominican Republic. We were so late we just set off for Boca Chica beach in the east of the city (a recommendation from someone at the party) and chilled on the beach. We all went for swims in the water, which was shallow enough to walk all the way out and really clear and pretty. Anders and I even played some water rugby with some of the locals before grabbing some local food and watching the sunset at the beach. We had to stand for a fair way on the way back in the gua gua and Anders even got hazed by some of the locals on the way back. Completely knackered off only four hours sleep we flopped back to the hotel, where the hotel owner offered me any assistance he could provide and tomorrow morning was the day of reckoning with the passport before we could get out of the city. The others had become incredibly bored and disheartened with the city, because they had to kill time. I was so stressed and preoccupied with the passport that I did not have time to get bored, but as we had decided to travel together I had effectively detained them the extra day on account of my passport requirements.

I decided to take the other black photos along with me and my carefully prepared passport pack. Good job I bdid, given my miscalculation. Makes the old adage that everything has a use and don't discard anything or close any doors unless you have to, because you never know when they may come in handy. I got to the office and they mentioned how the photo needed to be blank. Thank god I had brought the alternative. It was also then that they informed me that because I had lost a previous passport it would take extra time to do background checks and the passport would take between 4-5 weeks. Shit. I could speed it up by getting them a photocopy of the passport or sending the old one in, but both of those were not provided from the other end in England. So I was going to have to sit it out and the odds of it arriving on time now were minimal. Bollocks. It was also a bank holiday weekend that weekend so they would not be able to send the passport application in until the following tuesday at the earliest. An 8 day turnaround from the Dominican Republic to Mexico and back was nevr going to be a possibility. I met up with the other guys who were very eager to get out. They had suggested Cabarete or Playa Limon, but I theorised if any of the guys could join us from new year, they could only do so the weekend after this, because this weekend they were out at the beach. So we opted for Las Terrenas out on the Samana Peninsula and set off on a bus from Caribe Tours.