After visiting DR several times and reading this message board a lot we did the move.
About one month ago my wife and I came here from Canada.
Our Cedula was not difficult to get, thanks to the friendly and professional help of Graciela Fermin (thank you for recommending her Scott). His husband was waiting for us at the airport and they helped us a lot when we arrived, bringing us to Santo Domingo two times to get the Cedula.
Getting a good and not expensive place to live was not easy.
The first place we got was a slum in front of the "Rancheta Alexia", near Plaza Turisol, in Puerto Plata.
Diane Pellerin (who at first sight seemed a nice person) rented it to us for $ 6000 plus $ 1000 for water and electricity bills.
After some weeks there we decided to move out for good.
Using some of our newly acquired Dominican relations we got a nice three bedroom department on the Malecon (unfurnished) for about the same money that we paid to Diane for her slum.
The second day I was here I looked for a wireless Flash 3G Internet connection, but I didn?t imagined it was going to be so hard to get it.
Three weeks later, after half a dozen unsuccessful visits to the Verizon store in Puerto Plata I realized that they were not going to get the connection cable for connecting the phone and my notebook ever, so I had to travel to Santiago to get the cable by myself.
Things were not very fast in the Verizon store in Santiago; since the cable was not properly catalogued in their systems and I had to wait several hours to get it.
But finally I got my wireless Internet connection working.
Other milestone was finding cheap land, at Dominican prices. After trying the Puerto Plata real state business :bandit: we found a Dominican friend who helped us to find real state by proxy and finally we got our finca in Maimon.
We still have ahead of us many tasks:
Fishing out our stuff (including our truck) from the Aduana is the next one. After I finish it I will tell here how things were.
Other difficult task is building our house. After speaking with many "ingenieros" I developed an allergic reaction to these blood suckers and decided to use they only for drawing the housing plan but build using a "Maestro", since I found a good one who is not trying to put his hands in my pocket too deep.
Spanish is my first language, so please ignore any mistakes in this message.
About one month ago my wife and I came here from Canada.
Our Cedula was not difficult to get, thanks to the friendly and professional help of Graciela Fermin (thank you for recommending her Scott). His husband was waiting for us at the airport and they helped us a lot when we arrived, bringing us to Santo Domingo two times to get the Cedula.
Getting a good and not expensive place to live was not easy.
The first place we got was a slum in front of the "Rancheta Alexia", near Plaza Turisol, in Puerto Plata.
Diane Pellerin (who at first sight seemed a nice person) rented it to us for $ 6000 plus $ 1000 for water and electricity bills.
After some weeks there we decided to move out for good.
Using some of our newly acquired Dominican relations we got a nice three bedroom department on the Malecon (unfurnished) for about the same money that we paid to Diane for her slum.
The second day I was here I looked for a wireless Flash 3G Internet connection, but I didn?t imagined it was going to be so hard to get it.
Three weeks later, after half a dozen unsuccessful visits to the Verizon store in Puerto Plata I realized that they were not going to get the connection cable for connecting the phone and my notebook ever, so I had to travel to Santiago to get the cable by myself.
Things were not very fast in the Verizon store in Santiago; since the cable was not properly catalogued in their systems and I had to wait several hours to get it.
But finally I got my wireless Internet connection working.
Other milestone was finding cheap land, at Dominican prices. After trying the Puerto Plata real state business :bandit: we found a Dominican friend who helped us to find real state by proxy and finally we got our finca in Maimon.
We still have ahead of us many tasks:
Fishing out our stuff (including our truck) from the Aduana is the next one. After I finish it I will tell here how things were.
Other difficult task is building our house. After speaking with many "ingenieros" I developed an allergic reaction to these blood suckers and decided to use they only for drawing the housing plan but build using a "Maestro", since I found a good one who is not trying to put his hands in my pocket too deep.
Spanish is my first language, so please ignore any mistakes in this message.