Yesterday morning, we woke up for the sunrise and actually walked to the beach by half past six. There was a cloud in the east, exactly where the sun rises. Luckily tho, there was a strip of clear sky between the clouds and the horizon, so we could see the sun and the rise. Instead of running as planned, we went to breakfast, and after that we finally managed to book the late check-out.
Before lunch, we still managed to go for a quick run, and after that, one more jump in the sea. Life’s Caribbean.
We ate, packed and went to the reception to check out. We received a small piece of paper with the date of departure written on it and waited for the taxi with the paper in hand. Ten local bellboys were standing around and some chatted with us. The taxi pulled up, I finally put the paper in my purse and we started to get into the taxi. And right then and there, three bellboys jumped into action and let us know that they needed the check-out paper...
At the airport, one can choose between various US fast food chains, such as Wendy's and Taco Bell. It was also my first time to fly on a plane that made a stopover. A stop to get on and off, like on the urban tram. We took off an hour late at eight in the evening from Punta Cana, and about half an hour later we landed at the Santo Domingo airport (which is rather located in Boca Chica, being about an hour's walk from our hotel there). Some of the passengers disembarked, the cleaning crew came in, folded the blankets again, put the headphones in plastic bags and cleaned up other trash. Why someone thought it would be necessary to wrap themselves in a blanket on a half an hour flight and start watching a movie is beyond me. New passengers got on and after a 1h45m stop we continued the journey. The flight from Santo Domingo to Paris was supposed to last 9 hours, but the pilot informed us that since there is a favourable tailwind, he will arrive in about seven hours, and despite the departure being delayed by an hour, we will arrive earlier than planned.
The ravioli we were served for dinner was tie pasta in a cheese-spinach sauce, and just like on the initial flight to Punta Cana, Air France never offered water during the entire flight. On every other airline, the flight attendants walk through the cabin with bottles of water about once an hour or every few hours and offer a drink to those who want it, but for some reason Air France does not do this. The movie selection was lame again, but at the same time, 7 hours is such a short time that a little reading, a little napping, a few games and you're arrived.
In Paris, I forgot that I put two yogurts in my backpack on the plane, and thus my luggage was pulled for an additional check at the security. The first thing the security officer did was to lecture me like a student, because her “colleague asked if there were liquids and why I left them in the bag”. I got completely irritated after this almost a minute long rant, because, in addition to other things, yogurt is not considered a liquid in most airports and you can bring it through. In any case, she completely unpacked my bag and took away the soft sherbet because it was “not allowed”. The yogurts, which were significantly more liquid, remained. Since she had unpacked all the things, I took my time of more than ten minutes there packing my bag. She did suggest me to use another table for packing, but it was much more convenient for me to do it there :)
The flights to Helsinki and Tallinn were uneventful. Except that in Helsinki we walked to the correct gate of the Tallinn flight (we double checked on the screen at the gate that we were in the right place) and when over an hour later that airport wing was still completely deserted, it turned out that the gate had been changed and we walked back to approximately the same place, where we had previously got off the plane from Paris.
In somewhat relation with Helsinki airport, I also wanted to talk about Dominican dairy products and high-end resorts. At some point during the trip I noticed that my body was passing the local cuisine through my digestive system much faster than Scott's body did with what he consumed. We generally ate similar things, the only difference could be either coffee or dairy products. In Helsinki it turned out that the reason was dairy products. I ate those two yogurts and 10 minutes later I had to use the toilet. The "problems" actually only started at the Punta Cana resort, which on our more exotic trips is the more fancy one and all inclusive, so that the end of the trip would be a completely relaxing vacation, where you wouldn't have to look for places to eat or doubt whether the shower in the accommodation would actually have water. During the previous week and a half, we had eaten all kinds of street food and dined in local eateries, but we only had issues with digestion in the most expensive hotel. It was the same pattern in Mauritius, where I had actually some stomach ache for a whole day right before the return flight. Go figure.
Also, fruits, especially pineapple, lost their flavour in the mentioned resort. Scott, who in general eats rather less fruit (especially compared to me, who could live on fruit only), always made sure to get his half of the pineapples from our fruit plate and often complained that there were so few of them. Until the fancy resort. Even papaya seemed more or less ok to me, although in my opinion it is the most boring fruit ever. The only thing that was mostly good at the resort was the watermelon. Everything else tasted just like Greek strawberries. I think that in the bigger hotels and resorts the fruits are purchased from larger industries and not from small farmers.
Scott has been extremely frustrated over the last few days that I didn't mention in my Boca Chica posts that a local called him a niggar. We had just bought a portion of empanadas and were walking past a local department store with them when a homeless (?) young man sitting in front of it asked us for money. We didn't give him any, so he called us (or maybe Scott only) a niggar.
In a nutshell, I would say about the Dominican Republic that the beaches are beautiful, the water is blue and, depending on the beach, transparent. The street food is good - especially the chicken, empanadas and arepas. Meat they love to overcook. And not just overcook, but already overcooked meat is also overcooked again and a sawdust-like product ends up on the plates. Seasoning is not well known here, nothing much is used, even the salt seems to be in deficit. Which was a total surprise to us, because we expected the Caribbean cuisine to be rather full of flavours. We would consider ceviche, salsa and some kind of green sauce as the best experience in terms of them being flavourful (the latter is added by Scott, because I didn't try it). Everything sweet is mainly sugar - sugar is probably the first ingredient in the bowl, then wheat flour is added, and after that maybe some more ingredients. Even the cappuccino milk was sweet. The price level is rather high - accommodation prices are average in compare to the USA, but the quality is more like a backpacker standard in Southeast Asia. We paid 150 EUR/night for our Boca Chica hotel, for which we got a large, fairly spartan room, where the safe door did not close, the furniture fell apart due to excessive humidity, the shower was mouldy and rusted, the sink had a screw instead of a faucet, the seams of the initially white, now grey towels split, and the pool area was cleaned when the stuff remembered doing it. They did remembered it rather seldom than often. The weather was great all two weeks - it was warm during the day, hot at noon (the only place where it felt a little too hot was noon on Saona Island), it got a little cooler in the evenings. It was difficult to understand the locals' Spanish, and they shot to speak like they were running out of time to talk. My Spanish is at a beginner plus level and I am able to formulate most of my questions relatively comprehensibly. At the same time, it is quite clear that I don't have the level to have long discussions on current political issues, but from their answers, you could have guessed that they considered me a local from birth, to be talked to as one of their own. English is rather rare. Uber, which in other countries functions as a platform for ride sharing, is more of an environment for starting negotiations in the Dominican Republic. After placing the order, there were generally three options - the taxi came, picked you up and took you to the desired place (happened less often), the taxi driver sent his own price quote through the app (usually twice the app price), or the taxi driver came and said that he would not go anywhere for that money and wanted double the amount in cash. With a few exceptions, however, the locals were rather friendly. Especially in Boca Chica, where weed, women and cocaine were offered on every street corner.
