A different world…. 22/05/2022
I decided that it would be a good idea to take a few days and visit the mountainous interior of the Dominican Republic. So Saturday 21st saw me at Las Americas airport, only a few miles from the marina, where I picked up a hire car and headed inland, bound for Constanza, about 180km/110 miles away. This was a strange trip for me: it marked the first time I had not slept on Manuka for 448 nights! It was also the first time I’ve driven a car since mid-February 2021 – this novel experience made even more strange by driving on the right hand side of the road. Not to mention trying not to knock people off motorbikes and avoiding oncoming traffic that sometimes swerves in front of you…
At 1,200 metres above sea level, Constanza is the highest town in the Caribbean. The contrast is huge. Heading inland, you gain a bit of altitude, but it’s basically a coastal plain and still hot. Then, all of a sudden, you’re heading up a never-ending mountain, twisting and turning through forest. The temperature drops: from a humid 32 down at the coast to a dry 24 degrees at midday. You end up in the mountains, surrounded by high peaks and fertile valleys. Down below the crops are bananas, papayas, mangoes, palm oil plantations etc; up here it’s potatoes, apples, strawberries, grapes. Quite extraordinary: it’s in the tropics, but the things grown are those that thrive in Europe, Northern Europe even.
The road passes through numerous small villages, pretty poor by the looks of them – mostly makeshift wooden shacks (which will be fine in the summer, when the temperature at night goes down to maybe 15, but must be pretty chilly in the winter when it’s approaching zero). The town of Constanza is sizeable and chaotic – narrow streets, small motorbikes whizzing everywhere, loud music playing. Fortunately where I stayed is up at the top end of town and quieter. It’s a great place, basically two houses on opposite sides of a road, run by a guy in his late thirties who’s a cinematographer. The place is full of art, most of it related to the history of film… we had a long chat about Marilyn Monroe, James Dean and Marlon Brando – strange the conversations you have in the most unlikely places!
Today I drove the 17km into the nearby Parque Nacional Valle Nuevo to visit the waterfall called Salto de Aguas Blancas (if Google Translate is correct, literally ”The Jump of White Water”). Well, almost… the final 8km stretch is on a pretty rough dirt road, which as I feared finally became impassable to a 2-wheel drive motor car. A steep section of road was so badly rutted that it looked impossible – I even got out of the car and walked up to see if I could make out a path. It looked unlikely and was: after scraping the bottom of the car, the wheels just spun, so I reversed back down and ditched the car on the side of the road. No problem: I was only 1.3km from my destination, an easy walk. Another car came along with three young people from Santo Domingo, who spoke English. I told them they wouldn’t make it, but they were determined… after scraping their bottom much longer and much more horribly than I did, their wheels also started spinning. So they ended up parked behind me and we walked together up to the waterfall. Which was pretty impressive, plus it was a nice albeit steep walk, through local Hispaniola pine, which gives that wonderful smell that you associate with mountain pine forests. So that was a successful trip, accomplished without any visible damage to the hire car. (I imagine that Budget rent-a-car would be less than impressed to know what their car was up to).
Having just got back from dinner – a great steak, sautéed vegetables and an extra side order of tostones, which are medallion-sized discs of fried plantain – I’m happy to report that the locals’ appetite for partying and loud music is undiminished even on a Sunday! The centre of town is party central, no different to Saturday night. It’s all ages too – I noticed last night sat in the town’s gastropub and drinking their craft beer (all very modern!) that there were quite a number of old men among the predominantly younger crowd (although the old women clearly stay at home, suggesting a very socially conservative older generation). One nice thing: parking the car and then walking the streets, I felt completely safe – I wasn’t hassled once, and there were no signs of bad behaviour, no signs of security at the busiest establishments, and no police in evidence. So people seem to enjoy themselves without criminality. Which does makes you think… no Saturday night on the typical UK high street would be complete without people fighting, bouncers in doorways and police lights flashing!
And finally, some curious things about the Dominican Republic… The country adheres to the metric system in distance, weights and volumes, except for petrol and diesel, which are sold and priced by the US gallon (3.78 litres or 0.833 Imperial gallons). And a standard bottle of the main local beer, Presidente, is 355ml – which seems a bit of a random measure, but isn’t when you calculate that it is exactly 12 US fluid ounces.
Oh, and Constanza itself: the town has around 60,000 people, which includes three substantial immigrant communities: Spanish (no surprise), Hungarian and Japanese. Most came in the 1930s, and all three continue to live mainly in their own “colonies” in the town. Based on agriculture, Constanza is a productive place – it comprises a little less than 0.6% of the country’s population but produces 4% of the national output.
Tomorrow I will drive around the country, heading northwards before driving back down south to the capital…