I came to Puerto Plata 34 years ago on a sailboat. I bought my first property from the venerable Don Luis Pelegr?n 30 years ago. If you want a snapshot of how ex-pats fared back when Puerto Plata was still Puerto Plata (40,000 inhabitants versus ~480,000 today), here is the story from a collection of accounts of my experiences as an ex-pat, mostly on the north coast of the DR.