Country for sale

Not having the internet working at the house any more is a major annoyance and it means that I've not been able to post in a week or so. So much has happened over the last days, its impossible to put it all down or even remember it all. Although the pace of life here is pretty slow, time does fly when you're enjoying yourself. Last week we dropped by the baseball stadium to catch a midweek game. We had great seats, but the atmosphere is a lot better at weekends according to the locals - especially when Licey (pretty much the Manchester United of Dominican Sport) are playing. We also went out on Thursday night to a bar/club where we encountered some serious reggaeton dancing, which is mostly reminiscent of a Sean Paul video only not taken so seriously, its all about having fun, the looking cool aspect isn't so important amongst friends. We met some really great people there, and I expect we'll see them again at some point, SD's a small town at heart.

This weekend we made a trip up to the North coast. Although the main focus of tourism in the area is the swathe of all-inclusive, walled-in resorts of Puerto Plata and Playa Dorada, one beach has risen up as the destination of choice for the independent traveller. Cabarete is known around the DR as a centre of watersports such as surfing and kitesurfing. Unfortunately, on the days we were there, the waves weren't up to much, and the kitesurfing schools are very precious about letting novices loose on the equipment, so I had to be content with swimming and generally chilling out on the beach - not such a hard consolation to accept in all fairness. The town is very relaxed and quite small, with a few bars and restaurants pulling in the majority of an audience that is mixed between American, European and Dominican about equally, the European influence being mostly from Scandinavia, which is a little odd to witness when you've spent the last two weeks living amongst the locals.

The drive from South to North takes about 5 hours in total, and taking a cross section journey through the middle of the country gives you an idea of some of the issues facing it's economy today. "Se Vende" is the most widely read sign, almost every plot of land is looking for development and it seems it has been that way for years. Land owners simply don't have the resources to develop the land themselves and when investment comes in from outside or from the goverment, the results are often a sorry sight. Unfinished houses, apartments and even hotels are dotted around the landscape, construction abandoned, with funds running out and no-one with enough earning potential to move in, these "shells" are an all too real reminder that the most that many Dominicans can hope for is a life in the US, with Dominicans now representing the fourth largest Latin immigrant group in the States. One sorry building was a medical institution, billed as groundbreaking, but standing hollow. In another town, a large mall had been built less than 100 metres from a slum in which one of the houses was made from old fast food restaurant signs, yet the modern building was only half filled with retail space, supply outstripping demand by a huge factor, a sight that seems to be repeated where the objectives of eradicting poverty and developing into a "western" country come head to head and the latter inevitably wins out.