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| Our anchorage in Luperon, Dominican Republic |
We are loving the Domican Republic. It’s beautiful, quaint, and very friendly. Luperon is a small, bustling town with
motorbikes, Latin music blaring and people everywhere. It's considered a rural town. The larger city, Puerta Plata is about an hour away by motorbike. Everyone is friendly here and even if they
don’t understand English they will try to figure out what you are saying and
help you. We are working very hard on our Spanish. Terry has impressed me with how quickly he is picking up phrases and words.
We first went to Wendy’s a
restaurant that we found out caters to expats. It has wifi and cheap drinks and
food which make it the perfect spot for gringos. In fact the sign even says,
“Gringos Welcome”. It was a good first
stop for us because we met a few other boaties and learned a bit about where to
go and where to buy supplies and how to exchange money, etc. In DR they use pesos. Things are much cheaper in the Dominican
Republic overall, especially if it’s grown or made there. Much, much, cheaper.
Especially after coming from Turks and Caicos where everything was atrociously
expensive, even by St. John standards.
The exchange rate is 43.1 to 1.
So for instance a 22oz. Presidente is 80 pesos, equivalent to about
$1.83 US. For comparison a small beer in
TCI we paid $5.80US! (therefore Terry had one and that was it.) We ate a great
lunch of garlic conch, rice and beans and vegetables for under $10 US for both
of us (and we think we probably overpaid for that, being the gringos that we
are). Let me just say we love the DR and
are thinking of relocating. At least,
we’ll be back for a visit, and who knows . . . . .
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| Motorbikes are the transportation of choice. They're cheap, and it's surprising how much and how many you can put on them! |
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| Julia and Elva are Special Pioneers in the Luperon Congregation. They've been here for about 10 months. They invited us to their home for lunch. Julian knew a bit of English but Elva none. It was fun visiting and they fed us a delicious lunch. I'll post more pictures of the Kingdom Hall later. We went to two meetings while we were here. |
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| The DR is a beautiful, mountainous country. |
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| We rented a motorbike for the day. ($10 with fuel!) and drove over to La Isabella, a beautiful little town. Then enjoyed a lunch of chicken, rice, avocado/tomato salad, fried plaintain and a beer for $275 pesos ($5.00 US) Plus the owner brought us more salad, dessert and even some of his yucca he was eating for lunch! It was such fun! |
We are headed out tonight so we're going to stock up on a few things here. Produce is so inexpensive and wonderful. I bought 5 avocados yesterday for 50 pesos. Basically $1 US! I'm going to miss it here!
I will post more on the DR in a later post, once we get to St. John. I wanted to at least share a snippet since we've really enjoyed our time here.
Camile n' Crew
