I love the DR!!! I love the people, the culture, and of course, the dancing. (So much better than Canada) I went there for almost 5 weeks, I started off in Santiago for some Spanish lessons for a week with a host family and I love that city!!! I then moved onto Puerto Plata/Sosua and volunteered for 2 weeks in small villages building houses, did activities with children, handed out food and clothing to people living in the dump near Playa Dorada and gave children milk and eggs. After that, we travelled all throughout the DR doing different activities like cliff rappelling, white water rafting and all that. I love the DR so much that I'm going to come back after I graduate from university and teach English for a year and volunteer in a women's organization. For anyone thinking of visiting the country, DO IT!!
- Thread starter tk toronto
- Start date
The DR is the best place I have ever been in my life!!!
you need to give us a full report, actually break it down, the voluteering, the fun activities or do it by city. Glad you enjoyed yourself. thanks for helping.
Full Report on the 5 week trip!!
I'm responding to the idea that I break the trip down, I would have, but I didn't think that everyone would want to see all that.
Well, the trip was actually organized by the International Student Volunteers (ISV), which is an American based organization that takes students to different countries such as the DR. Other countries included that I could have chosen from were Costa Rica, Ecuador, and Thailand for community work. I don't know why I chose Dominican Republic because I didn't know much about it, but I did and I'm glad!!!
My journey didn't start out that well, as my flight to Miami was at 7am and I got to the Toronto airport at 6am. (For some reason, I couldn't find flights that go directly to the DR, so I took the group flight that was leaving from Miami). I ran across the airport with my own luggage and huge bag of donations for children. I got on the plane, but had to wait over 5 hours for the flight from Miami to Santiago. We finally get to Santiago at like 9pm and it was HOT AS HELL!! I had a sweater for the plane and was hot, but I couldn't take it off for risk of being eaten alive by mosquitos and I couldn't risk that as my bug spray was lost in my luggage somewhere. We had to wait for UK flights before we could all be bused to our host families. Finally, me and my roomate get to our host family's house where I saw the hottest guy in my life that turned out to be my host brother. But anyway, the whole family only spoke Spanish and me and my roomate from New York only spoke English, so we said "Hola, como esta?" and that was it until we had to resort to the Spanish-English dictionary. I have never been in a place that I could not communicate with anyone, so it was pretty new and interesting. I loved our host mother so much!! She made such good food!!! I had fried plaintains, sanchoco, her well marinated chicked, and other stuff that just tasted great!! For that one week, there were Spanish lessons everyday from 9am til about 3:30pm and then we had dance lessons til 4:30 and we did different sight seeing activities. I saw the Monument, the Cultural Centre, the downtown shopping market and everything. Our host brother took us dancing and to different bars on different nights. I loved the culture and the people!! It was so different! I had such a great time!! I LOVE PRESIDENTE!!! LOVE!!! I loved the live music!! It was such a good atmosphere!! I miss that now that I'm in Canada. Unfortuantely, the week ended and it was time for us to go to Puerto Plata for the volunteer part of our trip. We drove for 2 hours, seeing more of the Dominican and met our tour leaders at the POP airport. We then drove through some small villages until we got to the charity Crossroads where we were staying. Okay, so I'm a city girl and I realized that we were getting into more and more country area and I started to become more and more terrified. We finally get to our destination which was about a 20 - 30 minute drive from Sosua and I was up in like a mountainous area. I was kind of upset, as they warned us of bugs, snakes, and other apparently friendly critters. I was a little terrified, but the experience was worth it. We worked with mostly Haitian refugees and helped build their houses and did different games with the children. We went to their church with them, even though it was in Creole, as that was all the adults understood. We went different villages everyday and moved cinderblocks and constructed rubar for frames of houses, we made and poured cement for houses without concrete floors, and painted people's houses that were already constructed. With the children we played games and did crafts with them. As well, we did something called "Milk Ministry", where we handed out milk and eggs. They informed us that people did not have access to essential dairy products, so we gave that out, although I was a little concerned about the milk, seeing how it was unpasturized, which I thought wasn't right, but they informed me that they're bodies could handle it. We also went to a dump where mostly Haitian refugees lived and handed out clothing and food. We also handed out bags of clothing to a small village of poor Dominicans and Haitians and that was pretty intense because we had people yelling at us in Spanish when we ran out of bags and children trampling the truck when we tried to leave. We also visited the a community hospital, I don't recall where it was, but it looked okay from outside, until we when inside with an unsanitary looking hospital, with not more than 2 nurses on duty, and we found out that when one came to the hospital you had to be accompanied by a family member to take care of you and to bring you food, as there was no food in the hospital. We handed out toothbrushes, toothpaste, soap and deodorant packs to people because the hospital wouldn't provide or couldn't provide those items. We sang to people in the hospital as well. We were singing in English, so the patients looked kind of confused, but were still going to the beat. We left there feeling depressed and pretty appalled at the conditions. I was especially, as I work in a hospital in Toronto, so to see one like that was really shocking. We came to the end of our volunteer portion, and I think it was the best experience of my life. I loved all the children who remembered all our names, they were wonderful. As well, how proud people were of their homes and their possessions was wonderful, when we in North America are rarely happy even though we have so much. I was kind of glad to leave Crossroads, although, we got to once a week to go to the beach in Sosua for American, or should I say German style food and got to buy souvenirs and use the internet. I'm not a huge wilderness person, so I was glad to leave. Although, we did the 27 waterfalls in Puerto Plata, which was new, but exciting for me.
Adventure Tour!!
1) Cabarete - We stayed for four days in Cabarete and went surfing, and windsurfing, and rappelling, all which were new for a city girl like me. The city was very European, specifically, German. Even the restaurants were very European, I was hoping for more Dominican cuisine, but I guess it was a tourist area, so .... I liked it here, but we had to leave
2) Las Terrenas - We didn't do much here, just went rappelling and stuff, this city didn't hold much for me besides a very good looking Dominican man for the two days that I was there. The beach was nice though, and the Dominican guy I met in that city took me to a local danceclub, and I rode on a motoconcho for the first time even though it was forbidden by our group leaders because helmets aren't used and they are responsible for our safety.
3) Jarabocoa - We went whitewater rafting here, we were at the Gran Jimenoa, which was really nice, but up on a hill somewhere, which wasn't cool with me. We went to the city to a nightclub once and it was really live!!
4) Bahoruca - I don't recall the activity that we did here, but I don't recall doing much except just hanging out
5) Casa Bonita - This was a beautiful serene place. We went horseback riding and saw fresh water waterfalls and got to swim under them. I was terrified on the horses because the terrain was so rough and a few people's horses fell and stumbled, but we made it okay. A few nights here were great, although we couldn't get to the city from here
6) Santo Domingo - We ended our trip here in Santo Domingo, this was more of a site seeing thing. We were in the Zona Colonial and our hotel was the Mercole near the pedestrian walk. On the first day our tour leader took us to the area where there are a lot of tourist gift shops and the vendors are so pushy! We walked through this one really big market and we would say that we didn't want something and they would be ****ed off and wonder how on earth that we couldn't buy their stuff. For some reason, there was no such thing as browsing in stores, this was the same on our weekend trips to Sosua with store vendors actually stepping out of their stores to pursue us! Our tour leader than gave us sketchy directions back to the hotel and then left us, and inevitably we got lost and had to wave down police officers on motoconchos, who of course only spoke Spanish to get directions to the hotel that we of course didn't remember the name of at the time. By this time, it had been almost 5 weeks, we were leaving in 2 days, so I could understand what the officers were saying. My friend then panicked me and said what if they were leading us to be raped and killed, so we ran until we found the Pedestrian's walk, we were terrified!! Although, it's funny now. And finally we all said tearful goodbyes and got on our flight to Miami, only to run to our flights once we hit Miami to our respective cities. A few people missed their flights, as the flight from Santo Domingo to Miami was late. I MISS THE DR!!!!! Good news, I'm going back hopefully for a year to teach English.
So that was my trip, and it was great!!!!!
I'm responding to the idea that I break the trip down, I would have, but I didn't think that everyone would want to see all that.
Well, the trip was actually organized by the International Student Volunteers (ISV), which is an American based organization that takes students to different countries such as the DR. Other countries included that I could have chosen from were Costa Rica, Ecuador, and Thailand for community work. I don't know why I chose Dominican Republic because I didn't know much about it, but I did and I'm glad!!!
My journey didn't start out that well, as my flight to Miami was at 7am and I got to the Toronto airport at 6am. (For some reason, I couldn't find flights that go directly to the DR, so I took the group flight that was leaving from Miami). I ran across the airport with my own luggage and huge bag of donations for children. I got on the plane, but had to wait over 5 hours for the flight from Miami to Santiago. We finally get to Santiago at like 9pm and it was HOT AS HELL!! I had a sweater for the plane and was hot, but I couldn't take it off for risk of being eaten alive by mosquitos and I couldn't risk that as my bug spray was lost in my luggage somewhere. We had to wait for UK flights before we could all be bused to our host families. Finally, me and my roomate get to our host family's house where I saw the hottest guy in my life that turned out to be my host brother. But anyway, the whole family only spoke Spanish and me and my roomate from New York only spoke English, so we said "Hola, como esta?" and that was it until we had to resort to the Spanish-English dictionary. I have never been in a place that I could not communicate with anyone, so it was pretty new and interesting. I loved our host mother so much!! She made such good food!!! I had fried plaintains, sanchoco, her well marinated chicked, and other stuff that just tasted great!! For that one week, there were Spanish lessons everyday from 9am til about 3:30pm and then we had dance lessons til 4:30 and we did different sight seeing activities. I saw the Monument, the Cultural Centre, the downtown shopping market and everything. Our host brother took us dancing and to different bars on different nights. I loved the culture and the people!! It was so different! I had such a great time!! I LOVE PRESIDENTE!!! LOVE!!! I loved the live music!! It was such a good atmosphere!! I miss that now that I'm in Canada. Unfortuantely, the week ended and it was time for us to go to Puerto Plata for the volunteer part of our trip. We drove for 2 hours, seeing more of the Dominican and met our tour leaders at the POP airport. We then drove through some small villages until we got to the charity Crossroads where we were staying. Okay, so I'm a city girl and I realized that we were getting into more and more country area and I started to become more and more terrified. We finally get to our destination which was about a 20 - 30 minute drive from Sosua and I was up in like a mountainous area. I was kind of upset, as they warned us of bugs, snakes, and other apparently friendly critters. I was a little terrified, but the experience was worth it. We worked with mostly Haitian refugees and helped build their houses and did different games with the children. We went to their church with them, even though it was in Creole, as that was all the adults understood. We went different villages everyday and moved cinderblocks and constructed rubar for frames of houses, we made and poured cement for houses without concrete floors, and painted people's houses that were already constructed. With the children we played games and did crafts with them. As well, we did something called "Milk Ministry", where we handed out milk and eggs. They informed us that people did not have access to essential dairy products, so we gave that out, although I was a little concerned about the milk, seeing how it was unpasturized, which I thought wasn't right, but they informed me that they're bodies could handle it. We also went to a dump where mostly Haitian refugees lived and handed out clothing and food. We also handed out bags of clothing to a small village of poor Dominicans and Haitians and that was pretty intense because we had people yelling at us in Spanish when we ran out of bags and children trampling the truck when we tried to leave. We also visited the a community hospital, I don't recall where it was, but it looked okay from outside, until we when inside with an unsanitary looking hospital, with not more than 2 nurses on duty, and we found out that when one came to the hospital you had to be accompanied by a family member to take care of you and to bring you food, as there was no food in the hospital. We handed out toothbrushes, toothpaste, soap and deodorant packs to people because the hospital wouldn't provide or couldn't provide those items. We sang to people in the hospital as well. We were singing in English, so the patients looked kind of confused, but were still going to the beat. We left there feeling depressed and pretty appalled at the conditions. I was especially, as I work in a hospital in Toronto, so to see one like that was really shocking. We came to the end of our volunteer portion, and I think it was the best experience of my life. I loved all the children who remembered all our names, they were wonderful. As well, how proud people were of their homes and their possessions was wonderful, when we in North America are rarely happy even though we have so much. I was kind of glad to leave Crossroads, although, we got to once a week to go to the beach in Sosua for American, or should I say German style food and got to buy souvenirs and use the internet. I'm not a huge wilderness person, so I was glad to leave. Although, we did the 27 waterfalls in Puerto Plata, which was new, but exciting for me.
Adventure Tour!!
1) Cabarete - We stayed for four days in Cabarete and went surfing, and windsurfing, and rappelling, all which were new for a city girl like me. The city was very European, specifically, German. Even the restaurants were very European, I was hoping for more Dominican cuisine, but I guess it was a tourist area, so .... I liked it here, but we had to leave
2) Las Terrenas - We didn't do much here, just went rappelling and stuff, this city didn't hold much for me besides a very good looking Dominican man for the two days that I was there. The beach was nice though, and the Dominican guy I met in that city took me to a local danceclub, and I rode on a motoconcho for the first time even though it was forbidden by our group leaders because helmets aren't used and they are responsible for our safety.
3) Jarabocoa - We went whitewater rafting here, we were at the Gran Jimenoa, which was really nice, but up on a hill somewhere, which wasn't cool with me. We went to the city to a nightclub once and it was really live!!
4) Bahoruca - I don't recall the activity that we did here, but I don't recall doing much except just hanging out
5) Casa Bonita - This was a beautiful serene place. We went horseback riding and saw fresh water waterfalls and got to swim under them. I was terrified on the horses because the terrain was so rough and a few people's horses fell and stumbled, but we made it okay. A few nights here were great, although we couldn't get to the city from here
6) Santo Domingo - We ended our trip here in Santo Domingo, this was more of a site seeing thing. We were in the Zona Colonial and our hotel was the Mercole near the pedestrian walk. On the first day our tour leader took us to the area where there are a lot of tourist gift shops and the vendors are so pushy! We walked through this one really big market and we would say that we didn't want something and they would be ****ed off and wonder how on earth that we couldn't buy their stuff. For some reason, there was no such thing as browsing in stores, this was the same on our weekend trips to Sosua with store vendors actually stepping out of their stores to pursue us! Our tour leader than gave us sketchy directions back to the hotel and then left us, and inevitably we got lost and had to wave down police officers on motoconchos, who of course only spoke Spanish to get directions to the hotel that we of course didn't remember the name of at the time. By this time, it had been almost 5 weeks, we were leaving in 2 days, so I could understand what the officers were saying. My friend then panicked me and said what if they were leading us to be raped and killed, so we ran until we found the Pedestrian's walk, we were terrified!! Although, it's funny now. And finally we all said tearful goodbyes and got on our flight to Miami, only to run to our flights once we hit Miami to our respective cities. A few people missed their flights, as the flight from Santo Domingo to Miami was late. I MISS THE DR!!!!! Good news, I'm going back hopefully for a year to teach English.
So that was my trip, and it was great!!!!!
Great report! I suspect you are in your early twenties? Thats a great time to travel, I wish I had done more travelling then. I remember when the girl I dated in college wanted to go backpacking across much of Europe after our freshman year. I didn't want to go. I was 19. We broke up and she went. I left school and took a civil service job. I can guarantee you that the path she took was more enjoyable.
I hope you do come back here to teach. Follow your dreams, you only live once.
Larry
BTW, how did you enjoy walking over those shaky manmade bridges at Salto Jimenoa?? lol
I hope you do come back here to teach. Follow your dreams, you only live once.
Larry
BTW, how did you enjoy walking over those shaky manmade bridges at Salto Jimenoa?? lol
"Great report! I suspect you are in your early twenties? Thats a great time to travel, I wish I had done more travelling then. I remember when the girl I dated in college wanted to go backpacking across much of Europe after our freshman year. I didn't want to go. I was 19. We broke up and she went. I left school and took a civil service job. I can guarantee you that the path she took was more enjoyable."
Boy did that sound bitter. Sorry to hear that. But hey, it's never too late so long as ur still breathing, right?
Great trip report tk. I like hearing things like this from people who know how to have a good time and appreciate things no matter what the circumstances. I'm 22, from NY (dominican)--been on a few charity trips myself to the DR but I want to travel around the country just for fun w/ fun groups. Maybe when you're teaching there, you can join us and anyone else for that matter.
Boy did that sound bitter. Sorry to hear that. But hey, it's never too late so long as ur still breathing, right?
Great trip report tk. I like hearing things like this from people who know how to have a good time and appreciate things no matter what the circumstances. I'm 22, from NY (dominican)--been on a few charity trips myself to the DR but I want to travel around the country just for fun w/ fun groups. Maybe when you're teaching there, you can join us and anyone else for that matter.
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I didn't mean to sound bitter, I am not. I just wanted to encourage the OP to enjoy herself.
And, yes, I am still breathing (at 34) and no it's never too late. I live in the Caribbean and life is good
.I hope the OP continues to post here. I like her attitude.
Larry
Great !!!
Hello,
I have 6 weeks off at the end of the year and i would love to have a DR experience like you. I have been to the DR once but i am not too thrilled about the whole all-inclusive resort thing. It's very tourist-like and i'm a little more endearing. Any ideas? I have volunteered before and i loved it. Any ideas will be greatly appreciatred.
Regards, TG 11
Hello,
I have 6 weeks off at the end of the year and i would love to have a DR experience like you. I have been to the DR once but i am not too thrilled about the whole all-inclusive resort thing. It's very tourist-like and i'm a little more endearing. Any ideas? I have volunteered before and i loved it. Any ideas will be greatly appreciatred.
Regards, TG 11
Wow tk that was wonderful!!! Like someone said here, you enjoyed every circumstance and learned from it also.
Most young high school or college kids should experience that at least once, it must be a life changing event, to help people in need and to see how these people live and survive.
Does the volunteer agency schedule the fun trips also?
Most young high school or college kids should experience that at least once, it must be a life changing event, to help people in need and to see how these people live and survive.
Does the volunteer agency schedule the fun trips also?
Hey, that specific organization (ISV - www.isvonline.com) does not sponsor only fun trips, but I would really recommend it as it was all fun, even though there were parts that were difficult. There is a website called www.volunteerabroad.com that has links to other sites that are abour teaching, studying abroad, etc. But, if one wanted to find adventure travel, I guess you could just google it.
I was just wondering if when someone volunteers to that organization do they also book the fun trips at the same time, is it all in one package, as an insentive to the volunteers?
thanks for the info I'll keep a note of it.
Yes, it's all in the same package (volunteering and adventure travel). The spanish lessons are optional, but highly recommended.
TK what a great time you had! It sounds wonderful and I'm pretty sure once you come back from your year there, you will most likely be fluent in spanish too! That is fabulous! Make sure you keep us posted on the happenings when you do go for a year! I would love to hear about that adventure!