Traveling isn’t the same these days.
Let me count the ways:
- we are using less public transportation
- we look for ways to learn from the outdoors rather than museums
- we do more cooking in our kitchens rather than sampling local dishes at restaurants
- rather than seeking contact with locals, we mainly keep to ourselves
- researching a country is now less about reading up on the guide book and more about staying apprised of ever-changing travel restrictions and case-loads
What is still the same?
- we can still extract ourselves from our current point on the map to sample another
- we can see oceans, mountains, rivers, gullies, and any natural wonder you might imagine
- wildlife is unaffected—actually better off and more readily seen!
- people in the tourism industry still need a job and welcome our presence, though from a little farther away than normal
- coconuts still grow on trees in the tropics, and sheep still graze on the hills in the UK
In other words, we can still experience a lot of what other countries might teach us, even if the job is a bit more awkward than it was before.
We decided to try out the Dominican Republic because of a little co-op school project that launched on January 11th. It seemed an excellent way to achieve the goal of exploring the world while minimizing the risk of spreading covid to local communities or ourselves. We could double down on our Spanish learning and eat some glorious tropical fruit while the kids bubbled with a small group of peers. Que buena idea!
In order to create this safe bubble, the school instructed us to take a covid test before coming to Cabrera, the small town on the north coast where the school would commence. And that was an experience all by itself.
What was that?
Being in a foreign country that speaks a language other than your native tongue is a challenge. A layer of potential misunderstanding covers everything. Cultural differences also lend to the excitement, of course. How was navigating the medical system in a foreign country in a foreign language during a worldwide pandemic? Well, that experience has so many layers it’s like getting to the center of an onion—and yes, it made us cry a little.
After an uncomfortably CROWDED airport experience (will I ever get used to being around people again?), we arrived in Santo Domingo late Sunday night, expecting a nice person with a sign saying “Santillo” to take us to our hotel. That didn’t happen, so we paid a handsome sum for a taxi, what else can you do? BUT we made it safely to the hotel, where the young man at reception apologized for not noticing our names—highlighted though they were—on the guest list and invited us to wait by the pool while he cleaned our room. We got to bed around midnight, the first layer of the onion peeled!
Did you know that the Dominican Republic’s capital, Santo Domingo, was founded by Christopher Columbus’ younger brother, Bartholomew, and Christopher’s son was the governor there for a while? That kind of blew my mind. Did you further know that this island was the first place Europeans set foot in the new world? (Wait, what about Leif Eriksson?) It has an impressive collection of old colonial buildings built with bricks hewn from ancient coral reefs and many monuments for the historically inclined.
We were poking around Old Town’s “Poetry Park,” reading Julia de Burgos’ eponymous work when a friendly policeman politely explained that we weren’t allowed to be there; like super sorry-to-bother-you-but-you’re-breaking-the-law kind of polite. It turns out we were violating curfew. What!? News to us! We’d heard about curfews from the school but expected them to be at 7 or 9 PM. It turns out the curfew laws change every two weeks here. Ah, Covid, you feisty foe.
Hungry Children
We quickly realized that everything was shut down, and we had no food plan. The hotel chef who had promised to make us dinner had decided to leave early instead. So, when Chris saw a delivery guy on a bicycle, he encouraged me to get some info—was there still a way to eat tonight? Long story short, the guy took our pizza money and ghosted. Another layer peeled; sometimes, I like onions more than other times.
This post could also have been titled, “How NOT to order a pizza in a new country: Dinner tonight, kids, is a lesson on trust.” OR “If I paid for dinner but didn’t get food, am I a bad parent for not getting other food for my kids?” But I digress.
The next day was devoted to covid testing; what a tutorial that was! I speak Spanish reasonably well, but the DR accent is reeeeaaallly thick, so I could feel the gears’ turn in my brain as I struggled to understand the information coming at me. After an hour of standing in line, we ascertained that there are two kinds of tests offered at the clinics, and we needed the more expensive nasal swab kind (versus the antibody test by blood draw). Great! Now we were getting somewhere… except that they didn’t offer the nasal swab at that clinic. Doh!
Luckily, like in so many places, businesses here seem to group themselves—this is where you get your tires, over there is where you can choose between a variety of water tanks, etcetera—and we were in the medical clinic neighborhood, so we just went next door. “Sorry,” they said, “We can’t see you today, but you can have an appointment at nine tomorrow morning and get the tests. They will cost 5000 pesos per person.” That’s about $450. (Ouch!) Another layer of that pesky onion gone—with a rip!
So much for the hope that it might be cheaper to do our obligatory test in the DR rather than back at home.
La Clinica
We showed up at nine the next day and milled around outside the clinic until someone noticed us and asked for our passports. There was a certain amount of scanning and printing and checking in while we watched people wait in their cars for the lab tech’s attention. While waiting, we were warned about letting the kids out of our sight—they were ten paces away, playing hand games so as not to be underfoot. We wondered if the safety concern was a cultural difference, built on legend, or simple truth—mental note.
Then we went through an unmarked door to an unmarked window, where we were ushered to another window, where we took a number—ninety-one—and saw that they were serving customer number three. Every family needs a game to play in cases like these. Our kids tried to figure out why a scuba diver was found dead in a tree while we stared at polished white walls and floor and waited for our name to be called; the other patients assured us that the numbers were actually irrelevant. There was a kerfluffle when the ladies behind the counter realized we needed five tests, not just the three for the kids, and we went back to the drawing board.
The kids finally figured out that the diver had been scooped up by a plane on its way to put out a forest fire, just as it was time for us to go back outside and wait in a new place. Haven’t we all become better at waiting this year?
At last, the moment of triumph arrived. A woman wrapped up in a diaphanous blue coverall, hairnet, and booties called out ‘Yak’ and led our eldest son to the nasal swab tent. And then the tears came—not because anyone was sad, mind you. We all felt immensely grateful that the trials of achieving a covid test in a foreign country were about to end. It’s just that when someone puts something so ever-blooming-far up your nose, your entire face squinches and cries silently for it to GET OUT!
Soldiering On
Is there a lesson in all of this? What is at the center of the onion? Well, at the apex, it felt like a sensation to inspire pure marvel at the human body’s capability of turning electrical impulses into pain values. That feeling was also accompanied by many thanks to the fearless blue-beckecked woman for soldiering on with her cotton swabs. And a realization that the nature of travel has changed for us—how would we have experienced Santo Domingo differently a year ago? Well, we would have had an awesome dish of Dominican stew for dinner rather than undelivered Little Caesars pizza, for starters. Nevertheless, here we are, soldiering on in our own way.
And it’s worth the trouble—vale la pena! Next up, we’ll share the experience that no cruise will ever buy you in the Dominican Republic—the hike up the tallest peak in the Caribbean. See you then!
PS Happy to say, our test results came back negative.
