I appreciate the apology. I felt like I had actually done a lot of my due diligence before posting here and got a little bit attacked off the get go. I'm not the normal American coming down to hang out at all inclusives in Punta Cana and then maybe decide that's a bit boring. I'm flying into Santo Domingo, catching the Caribe Tour bus to get to Saman?, then taking a guagua, or whatever else I can find to get to Las Galeras. Spending my time there in some cabins without hot water. I plan on doing some of the touristy stuff, Los Haitises, Cayo Levantado, etc. But, unfortunately, or fortunately depending on how you look at it, that's not my normal style of travel. I couldn't be that close to another culture and not experience it -- especially feeling like right now Haiti needs the tourist dollar as much as possible. So, I'm going to Haiti; my outbound flight is from Cap Haitien to Miami. I'm going to make it there, and spend three days there. Now the question is how and what day. Based on everything I've read here, I might take either a later bus the day before or a private car to Santiago, spend the night in a hotel, and then take the Caribe Tours bus the next day. I had already set aside a full 24 hours to get from Las Galeras to Cap Haitien in the midst of my two week vacation. The whole reason I had posed my question was the hopeful chance that maybe I could not waste a late afternoon/night traveling to Santiago (or Santo Domingo) to catch the bus if it were possible to catch some kind of transportation (no matter the cost) to get to the bus before it left from Santiago at 12:15 pm (or so I've read). If I got a private car rented at, say, 4 AM to take me to Santiago, I would arrive before the bus and it would cost me....? That's the question I really came in search of.
Thanks again,
Chris