Driving in the dr:
DRIVING IN THE DR
Car rental companies have roadmaps. Main arteries are pretty good. Secondaries sometimes are surprisingly good, perhaps depending on the Road Department officials who own retreats in the area (as in New Jersey), but don't bet on it. Tertiary roads can ruin any but a 4WD SUV, but they make for spectacular touring between amiable villages. Younger athletic tourists can take a dirtbike or burro on the next down tier of roads.
You should initially drive only in good light, or between the hours of 7 a.m. to 6 p.m.
To avoid potholes, keep your eyes 20-30 yards ahead, not hundreds as you do on roads at home. This takes practice.
Don't stop for anyone waving you down, until you understand the culture, which takes time.
On a motorcycle, do not use the middle of the road as they advise in North America. Ride the shoulder.
Dominicans like to ride the road's center and to take curves on the inside. Expecting this takes practice.
Dominicans love to meet and chat through the driverside windows of their pickup trucks just over hills and around curves or both, entirely blocking the road. Expect them, or four-legged animals, as you barrel along a country road.
Always lock up so your car isn't stolen by a deportee from the American prison system's "crime universities".
Most of the country is old fashioned free-range. It's a great old-time American system in which landless poor can raise livestock. Even better, if you kill a sheep, goat, horse, donkey or cow, by law you can take the roadkill home and eat it, and the free-range farmer has to pay your damanges as well, if you can find him, and if he has money, and most importantly, if you survive the crash! Better that you sissy-drive for your first year in the DR.
From
The Thornless Path