Wednesday, July 3, 2019

Dominican Republic: Santo Domingo, Tres Ojos, and Zona Colonial

After three full days of water-related excursions, we took an excursion to Santo Domingo for our fourth excursion while in the Dominican Republic. Santo Domingo is the capital city and largest city in the Dominican Republic. Besides seeing the most famous sites of Santo Domingo, it was interesting to see the harrowing driving that occurs there. We were definitely happy to have a driver driving us to, around, and from Santo Domingo. The parts of this large city that we most focused on in this Dominican Quest's Santo Domingo - Bayahibe tour were Los Tres Ojos National Park and Zona Colonial. The Dominican Quest page about this tour provides a nice overview of the tour and I add some personal perspective and details in this post.

Our three previous excursions had started on time (or even a little early), but we had a rougher start for our excursion to Santo Domingo. Dominican Quest was really good about keeping in contact with us and letting us know when the departure time from our resort changed (in advance) from 7:45 am to 8:50 am (a change our party welcomed!). They also kept in contact on the morning of the tour when they would not be able to arrive until 9:20 am due to a delay caused by other customers. Our party of six departing from Bayahibe joined a party of eight who had departed from Punta Cana. This seems to be the reason for the change in pickup time at our resort: they needed time to pick up the people first in Punta Cana and then pick us up on the way to Santo Domingo (Bayahibe is closer than Punta Cana to Santo Domingo, though neither is a short ride). I suspect that one or more individuals in the other party were not ready for the revised departure time and that held everyone up. It's been rather remarkable that different parties being picked up at different resorts has not caused this type of trouble on more of the excursions we've participated in here in the Dominican Republic.

The ride from Bayahibe to Santo Domingo was longer than the ride on the previous day from Bayahibe to Punta Cana and we needed to get gasoline for the van first. After getting gasoline, the driver drove the fourteen of us from Bayahibe to Santo Domingo. My favorite parts of the drive included crossing bridges over chasms and rivers, seeing the transition from beach/tourist towns to rural areas to metropolis, and seeing the vibrant red flowers of the "Flamboyant Trees" (Delonix Regia). The flamboyant trees were particularly striking when there were several of them close together among an even greater number of the many trees with deep green leaves common to the DR. The red and green contrast is striking!

The one place we knew we wanted to see when booking this first trip to the Dominican Republic was Los Tres Ojos National Park and this was our first stop on the day's tour and was a great way to start. Our tour was on a Saturday and our son who had been to this park multiple times before on weekdays said it was significantly busier on this Saturday than it was on the Mondays in which he had previously visited.

Even with more people, there was incredible and interesting natural beauty at Tres Ojos.

The three "eyes" ("three main underground lakes inside caverns") are different from each other and are named ("Lago de Azufre", "La Nevera", and "El Lago de las Damas").

The fourth body of water (called "Lago Los Zaramagullones" and not one of the "eyes" because it is not inside the caverns) is arguably the most stunning of the group.

Leaving Tres Ojos requires walking through a short walkway with sellers on both sides offering various trinkets and wares for purchase. These unsolicited sales attempts are common in the DR (and sometimes even within the resort), so we were relatively used to it by the time we went to Tres Ojos. We purchased some beverages at a snack stand just before exiting the park and the prices were similar to what one would pay for the same beverage in a convenience store in the United States. The ice cold drink was very refreshing after walking up and down the stairs in the warm humidity!

After Tres Ojos, our van took us to two stops where we were able to get out of the van to hear more about the sites we had stopped at and were able to take photographs. We stopped in front of Faro a Colón ("Lighthouse to Columbus"). It is claimed that Christopher Columbus's remains are interred there, but this is controversial. From this point, the guide also showed us a street from which some well-known Dominicans rose from rags to riches.

We also stopped in front of the Palacio Nacional (Dominican Republic National Palace). Our tour guide explained that the while the president of the Dominican Republic has an office in that building to conduct government business, the president does not actually live in the building. We took photographs next to the guard who stood guard in front of the gate and enjoyed some fresh pineapple the tour guide purchased from a street vendor near us. By the way, the pineapple in the Dominican Republic is unbelievably sweet and tasty! It was also refreshing on a warm and humid day in Santo Domingo!

One of our tour stops was near the Obelisk of the Malecón de Santo Domingo after passing by the "Obelisco Hembra".

The paintings on the obelisk are by Dustin Muñoz. This provided a brief taste of the Malecón of Santo Domingo and it was a welcome respite to feel the breeze and occasional splash of water coming off of the ocean.

We enjoyed a traditional Dominican buffet lunch at a restaurant in Santo Domingo that our tour guide took us to (the lunch was included in the tour). The food was excellent, the restaurant was modern and comfortable, and the service was top-notch. I tried to locate the name of the restaurant on its exterior, but was unable to see it displayed anywhere that I looked. I wish I could have located its name to recommend it here. We were able to try authentic La Bandera Dominicana, excellent pina juice, and even concon (the concon is the only thing I didn't care for, but this wasn't surprising).

We toured the oldest cathedral in the Americas, called Basilica Cathedral of Santa María la Menor. We saw numerous gorgeous cathedrals in our trip to Europe last summer, including several of Gothic or Baroque architecture, but what made this particular cathedral interesting to me was its place as first in the Americas and its twelve unique side chapels. This tour was based on audio recordings for a particular chosen language and we listened to the clear English narration (with Spanish accent) regarding the cathedral and its side chapels.

We exited the cathedral into Parque Colón (Columbus Park) and briefly stopped there before proceeding to the National Pantheon of the Dominican Republic. There was a guide in the Pantheon Nacional who led just our English-speaking group of six through the main chamber and told us about the famous people memorialized there. I was surprised at how much he knew about United States history that he tied into his presentation for this group of six from the United States. This was a short but interesting tour that gave one a bit deeper understanding of Dominican culture, history, and politics.

The last major sight we saw on this tour was the oldest paved street in the "New World" ("Calle Las Damas").

We stopped once more at the ocean for some photographs and then headed back to Bayahibe. We did have a couple of visits to local stores and vendors along the way that I did not mention previously. We were not interested in buying anything, but the often air conditioned or at least shaded spaces were pleasant enough to spend a few minutes between sight-seeing attractions.

Overall, we were happy with our introduction to Santo Domingo and are happy that we chose to do it, but there were some minor disappointments. Because we were picked up last after a large group from Punta Cana had already boarded the van, our party of six was distributed throughout the van rather than being together with four of us in the very back row of the van. It was hotter back there and definitely less comfortable than other rows (which had at most three seats) in the van.

At Tres Ojos, it seemed like our party of six got to see less of the park than the party of eight because of the way we were split up in crossing (and returning) on the boat to (and from) the fourth body of water. The irony of this is that I suspect we were rushed because someone in the other party caused us to depart 30 minutes later than planned. I also suspect that if everyone in the group had been traveling to Santo Domingo from Bayahibe, things might have gone smoother for everyone. Even though the other party had more comfortable seats on the van than we did, I did not envy them needing to ride for nearly another hour from Bayahibe back to Punta Cana after we were dropped off! The bus driver got us there quickly once he was finally able to pick us up and he got us back quickly and safely, which is nothing to take for granted with Santo Domingo traffic!

Perhaps a bigger issue than the two starting locations was the fact that the two main groups of people were more comfortable with different languages. The other party (eight people from Colombia and Puerto Rico) spoke Spanish and our party spoke English. The tour guide made valiant attempts to communicate with both groups, but this meant spending double time in certain places (which was a benefit in some cases) and/or leaving out portions of the discussion given to one group when repeating it for the other group. There had been multiple languages used on our other excursions in the DR, but in those cases discussion was far less significant and was typically limited to instructions or brief descriptions before spending most of the excursion time in activities with little need for discussion. For the Santo Domingo tour, discussion was a much heavier aspect of the tour and so the need to cover every thing in two languages did have a greater effect.

The Santo Domingo - Bayahibe tour provided a nice introduction to some of the most famous sites in Santo Domingo with special focus on Tres Ojos National Park and Zona Colonial. With this introduction to the area, I'd be more comfortable exploring the city on my own in the future as long as someone else drove me to the area and back again when finished. I'd recommend this tour for anyone visiting Santo Domingo for the first time, especially if not staying in Santo Domingo.

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