My life in Santo Domingo

Mis queridos!

I'm already in my third week in Santo Domingo so about time I give you an update! I can feel the competitive breath from my more frequently blogging friends! (How fast do you guys write anyway?)

I got some worried comments after my previous posts but I can assure everybody that I'm really having a good time! Besides the not-being-able to move around as used to in Europe I enjoy all of it. I made some great friends already. The dominicans are really funny and open. I'll try to dedicate a post to introduce them.

I'm still living in the hotel Delta which in the end is not the worst either even though I would love-love-love them to change their breakfast buffet. The street is not the nicest either, there is actually quite some prostitution going on on my pavement. But anyway, I'm not so much at "home". Still, the queste for an appartment continues...

Mondays to fridays I'm working in Alameda, Codetel's data and sattelite center which is in the outskirts of Santo Domingo so it always takes us quite some time to struggle our way through traffic. I'm still not used to things I see on the road, but getting there... slowly...

In the office it's mainly...well... cold. In general, Domincans have this thing with airco. Outside it's mostly +30 degrees while inside in general it's just simply freezing. And Codetel's datacenter is probably the worst. We haven't been able to locate the airco yet so my most worn clothing is sadly a fleece sweater.

Work is different from what I used to do in Belgium and Madrid. It's more hands-on. I'm technical project manager which means I'm looking after the end-to-end solution and making sure the thing works in the end.






The best thing about work here, is that we regularly have dinners, parties, and last tuesday they threw us an Argentinean parrillada. (Our meat doesn't stand the comparison with the Argentinean one). My colleagues are all latino's or spanish, except for me and a french guy and they're all good fun. As usual, I'm the baby and same old, same old, not so many girls in the office, so they treat me very well and I'm never without a dance partner!

See me thinking....

But work is not the most interesting part of my life so...

Weekends then: last weekend I went to Isla Saona, an island in the southwest. We drove up to Bayahibe, which is the village from where boats to the island depart. Bayahibe is a scuba diving village and is concentrated around one main bar, here known as colmado. Very small, not the nicest village you can find in la Republica but ok. After this village starts a national park, the park including also the island Saona.

Bayahibe... Where even the cyber cafe's grow on palm trees!

By accident we got ourselves some free cocktails from the all-inlcuded hotel. Hey, if they're stupid enough not to use bracelets and not to close their beach, then it's not my fault, no?

Saona is a popular destination. Everyday, some catamarans dump all the tourists on the beach to fill them up with ron and food. What we did, was rent a private small boat, which is called una lancha, and we went there early in the morning so we had the beach to ourselves. The ron we bought ourselves ofcourse which our captain Jose, appreciated a lot.





With the boat we followed the coastline which is amazingly beauty since it belongs to the national park. According to Jose, the original inhabitants used to live in these caves.


We stopped at piscinas naturales, the water stays very low for about 100 metres from the main land. Wildlife spotted:
Sea stars


CHECK!



Pelicans:

CHECK!

the funny thing about them was that there was always a sea gull following them. To catch some fish, pelicans just kinda drop themselves in the water. It looks very unprofessional if you ask me but hey, they'll know best how to do it and personally haven't been close to catching a fish yet. The sea gull would just comfortably install himself on the head of the pelican to rob him his fish! Hilarious actually! Go sea gull!!! Although on the picture the pelican just threw him off his head.






On our way to the island we passed mangrove! Mangrove are trees that grow in coastal areas in the water. And I'm a true mangrove fan.










This is Saona. You'd expect a Bounty falling of the tree any moment now. When we got there, there was nobody yet on the island except for the bartenders which according to me is a perfect balance between isolation and civilization.
The island as a whole is a national park so no hotels or lodgings are allowed. There are only a few bars on the beaches. The internals are rainsforest. The Dominicans from the bar told me that if I would go in I'd be eaten alive by the mosquitos, so I wisely followed their advice. Especially since by that time my legs were twice as big as usual. Don't know what it is, but the mosquitos just see me as a huge birthday cake.

After a few good hours of sunshine, we were once again surprised by a tropical rainfall which has nothing to do with rain in Belgium. By then I was almost dying of the itch on my legs and Jose told me to go in the sea which I did and which I can recommend everyone whenever in the tropics. It's a weird sensation because the water is really warm and salty while the rain is cold and sweet. And since it rains really strong, it's funny to see how the drops make the sea water splash up.

Well, that's all for today. To all my friends, look out after each other while I'm not there and don't do anthing I wouldn' do!