morning and when I reached San Juan, there were storms coming through so I didn’t make it to Santo Domingo until something like 11. I stayed at Bettye’s Guesthouse in the Colonial Zone—a hostel which I would highly recommend! It’s also an art gallery, so it really has a cool feel to it. I took a taxi from the airport and got there in ther pouring rain. Bettye met me and helped me in. There was just one other person in the hostel—Nicholas from New York. He was getting ready to go out to a bar he’d found when I got there. He invited me but I was completely exhausted. I skyped with some people to let them know I was there and pretty much crashed. The next day I got to talk to Nicholas some more. He’s originally from L.A. but but studying and working as a make-up artist in N.Y. He’s 29, and is studying Spanish—something inspired partly by his
Mexican heritage and the people he grew up with. We went down to breakfast together and 11—yeah, I slept a lot that night—and started talking about going to Boca Chica for the day. So we got dressed and explored the city a little bit—there’s a Chinatown in Santo Domingo that’s pretty cool—and then went looking for the guagua to Boca Chica. Some guy figured out that we wanted to go to the beach—I was already wearing a bathing suit—and asked us if we wanted help finding the guagua to Boca Chica. Nicholas said yes, so we followed him up there. Of course, it turned out he worked for one of the companies that runs guaguas to Boca Chica and wanted kind of a ridiculous amount of money for walking us up there. We were both pretty pissed and said we’d
go somewhere else so we walked away and went walking around for awhile longer. I don’t remember exactly how we got rid of him—I think we ducked into a store or something. It was pretty annoying, and Nicholas had been scammed similarly in the bar the night before, and we just didn’t want to pay. Anyway, we originaly went looking for the other guagua company, but it turned out that it was actually in the same place as the one we’d just been to. So finally we went back and got in a guagua belonging to the other
company, so as to avoid being hassled again. As the guagua started pulling away, we noticed that someone had left their backpack and gotten off the bus. We started to ask the driver to stop when the guy came running up and got back on. Relieved, we told him we’d been worried.
Nicholas said he’d been planning to watch the backpack if he didn’t come back. So then we got to talking. The guy’s name is Lolo, and he’s from Haiti. He speaks something like four languages—or more? I don’t quite remember. He’s a travel guide and was with four men from Nepal at the time. I found out later they were UN peacekeepers from Nepal working in Port-au-Prince. They were on vacation and traveling through the DR. We decided to hang out with Lolo the rest of the evening and got off the bus with him and the peacekeepers. We followed them around for quite awhile looking for the cheapest hotel in Boca Chica (“They are very miser,” Lolo said)
and finally decided to let them meet up with us later. We found a restaurant on the beach and had pasta and tequila. I really liked Boca Chica—the restaurants were right—on the water, and it wasn’t even crowded. Later that night a group of people even put their table in the water and had dinner in the ocean! When I went swimming I had a chat with a Haitian woman in the area looking for work and held her baby for a while. Lolo and the Nepalese guys showed up eventually and we all had some presidente and watched the waitresses dance on the bar! It was really interesting and fun, and a beautiful night. We exchanged emails with Lolo too, and I said I’d invite him to fbook.
We headed back around nine and I decided to go with Nicholas to the gay bar he’d been at the night before—it was Friday night after all! I got all dressed up in a brown cotton dress and blow-dried my hair and everything. Nicholas did my make-up, which took a really long time but looked amazing I’m not sure my eyes have ever looked so fancy. We went and sat and drank Brugal and juice in the Plaza Colón first, as I figured Nicholas really needed that experience. No one came up to talk to us though—that’s the difference, when you’re with a boy. We finally headed over to the bar, and I think it was one of the funnest places I’ve been in! I ordered my favorite drink at Jay Dee’s and for a while we just watched people dance. There were two guys dancing salsa who I swear were the best salsa-dancing couple I’ve seen! I was mesmerized. Then I got to dance bachata, which I was pretty damn excited about. I got asked to dance pretty quickly—and I was the only girl in the place by the way. At first I thought I was safe from tigres, but I soon found out I was wrong about that after a couple of dances. Now, there is a good story that follows this, but I’ve decided I’d rather not have it available to all readers of my blog…let’s just say it was a crazy, late night. I journaled the rest of the story, so let me know if you want to hear it.
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