Day by day in the DR: Day 7: Organic Coffee Farm & Santa Domingo

At breakfast we discovered some member's favorite TV shows, which included Friends, CSI, and My Little Pony.. We still haven't dropped that one. The bus ride up to the coffee farm was breathtaking, for those who managed to stay awake. From the openings in the trees, we could see countless palm trees sprawled over the infinite green valleys and rolling hills, with the winding rivers snaking between. The coffee farm was interesting, and those who could hear the tour guide learned lots. For those too engulfed in the view and picture possibilities (emma and I), or those feeling sick from the bug spray incident the previous night (James and Fergie), among others, this tour was still as fun, but very very buggy. Still, we got to trek through the jungle and try exotic fruits that tasted like sweet tomato-mangos, learn about the coffee bean process and observe the breathtaking view again from a hike to the mountaintop.

Pretty flowers on
the mountainside

Beautiful dewey flower

Coffee Farm tour guide showing us
red beads (ripe beans)

View from the mountain village

Juliana trying the mango-tomato fruit

MOTO on the mountaintop!!!

(as you can tell, I haven't quite got the hang of the photo arranging on here yet...)

Outside the slums
(we weren't allowed to bring cameras in)

Afterwards, we set off on our l o n g drive to Santa Domingo, but not before splurging on a variety of ridiculously cheap snacks from a nearby store. Through the city we drove, until we arrived at the starts of the Dominican slums. We walked through a technology school, where many citizens learn sets of skills they can use to find jobs, and then down a long and steep set of concrete steps to the bottom, where countless, poverty stricken Dominicans lived. The rickety shacks that housed these people were tiny and many members of our GLA group who had never seen slums were gobsmacked at the sight. I think Dave said over a million people lived, cramped in that tiny slum-area. Because the DR government doesn't provide many public services, like trash collection, these slum-inhabitants have no where to put their trash, so they empty it by the river. The river that serves as their baths, washing machines, and faucets for drinking. We saw pigs and chickens crowd round a freshly dumped mound of trash, rooting through the remains before moving on. This idea of poverty, water availability, sickness, job search and so many of the other problems we had been discussing was an evident reality here in the Santa Domingo slums, and many of us were moved by this fact.

Music began blaring from a nearby house, and a crowd of children congregated around us; a dance contest began. Wesley was pushed into the center of the circle to represent our group.. Let's just say the Dominican children were a little better than us. Haha! The light was waning, and so we made our way back up the steeep trail of stairs to our buses, waving goodbye to the children, some teens passing the kids sugar cane they'd bought out the windows.

Some of my group members felt very uncomfortable while walking through the slums, particularly many of the boys, as the Dominican men seemed to glare at them. The children at one point were chanting "matar americanos" translating to "kill Americans", which unnerved several group members. However, from a slum inhabitant's perspective, I can see why they'd be angry, feeling hatred towards us. If I were a poverty stricken slum inhabitant whose residence was being invaded by a bunch of touristy, rich Americans as if we were some sort of zoo, I would be pretty irritated as well.

Tuyen and her face-sized pizza

Afterwards, we were bused through the city to our quaint little hotel. However, because of a room-space mix up, only the boys stayed there because just 3 rooms were available. So we girls weaved our way through the SD streets to another hotel, where we got settled, got dressed up, and left to re-meet the guys for a night on the town. Jane and Dave led us to a fast food pizza place, where we inhaled some 14 HUGE pizzas. And when I say huge, I mean pizza-the-size-of-your-face huge. We walked around colonial SD for a while, taking touristy pictures in front of the famous statues and stone buildings, before being police-escorted back to our hotels.

Our hotel had lost electricity to the second and third floors, so when we arrived back, everything was pitch black. We entertained ourselves during that light-less time with flashlights, cameras and lots of laughing. The end result was a bunch of really cool pictures, a night of fun light shows, and a few arm bruises from where we accidentally whipped ourselves with the flashlights as we wildly spun them around.