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SOSUA, Dominican Republic- $570 was the total cost I had to shell out for me and my small family to purchase air tickets on Spirit Air from Santiago, Dominican Republic to Guatemala City. $285 each will get us one click away from El Salvador, our next base of operations.
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RURAL SOSUA, Dominican Republic- The crowing of roosters filled the air and the pickup truck bounced and rattled over the stones and potholes of an ill maintained driveway. I bounced around in the back of truck as it tore quickly into a round about and came to an abrupt halt.
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SOSUA, Dominican Republic- Never hesitate when looking for a plane ticket. The moment you find a good price, buy it. Don’t wait on the chance that the price will come down, don’t monkey around with indecision about departure dates:
Just buy it.
Once an air ticket is purchased, that is the path you are going to travel: [...]
SOSUA, Dominican Republic- A golden necked Shanghai strutted about inside of wide open grass lot in Sosua. He pecked at the ground and chased a couple hens as I watched. I have been walking around this city looking for such a sight. Accompanying the rooster were a few chickens, and a couple geese. There was also chicken coop in the corner of this field, which was right near the center of town, and a broken down concrete building on the other side near a main road, and an assortment of sheds scattered about the property. I noticed that there was a nice green lawn, nicely mowed.
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SOSUA- Dominican Republic- A traveler has few social obligations — few social obligations besides sharing notes of the road ahead with other travelers.
It is my impression that this is how you pay your dues in a world of perpetual motion, this is how you stake your claim to respectability. Nobody cares where you have traveled, [...]
Travel Insurance for Long Term Travel — A calculation of an expense/ risk ratio
There is rally cry amongst the Lonely Planet class of travel websites and literature that travel insurance is an absolute necessity for any trip abroad. I am now hearing this cry being reverberated in the hostel halls and bars of the backpacker [...]
CABARETE, Dominican Republic- But the beach is nice. Chair vendors charging 100 pesos to sit down, ladies swarming in droves with little photo books trying to put braids and beads in my beard, white people basking in the sand under foot, a wrinkly lady listening to headphones drunk by the surf — I think she [...]
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CABARETE, Dominican Republic- Cabarete is one of the Kitesurfing capitals of the world. People come from all over the world come here to be pulled through the waves attached to a giant kite.
Kitesurfing, or kiteboarding, is just what the title says it is: surfing with a kite.
The equipment for this venture is a rectangular [...]
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CABARETE, Dominican Republic- All beaches sit at the end of the road. Traveling to one means coming to a point where you cannot go anymore, it means removing all impetus to travel elsewhere, to remove your boots, lay down, do nothing, and enjoy what sits directly in front of you.
There is nothing else to do [...]
My wife Chaya has continued to work diligently at showing the world of traveling from the perspective of, first, a pregnant woman, and, later, as a mother.
Most traveling families that we have known of are either going on resort tours or have a very flexible budget. We have neither. These entries from Chaya show the [...]
SOSUA, Dominican Republic- “Where are you from?” a French Canadian expat in Sosua asked me when I first arrived in town.
“America,” I answered.
“Oh, you mean that really big continent to the north?”
“That’s the one.”
“So you are an American,” he continued, “that means that you are from the 32 countries of the Americas? No, you are [...]
SOSUA, Dominican Republic- This is the future of milk: it is called UHT milk or long life milk. It comes in a box, it can live without refrigeration for 6 months until opened. It can be shipped far from its source of production, it can be traded internationally, it saves money that would otherwise go [...]
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Sosua, Dominican Republic- I often go for walk into the countryside outside of Sosua, in the Dominican Republic, with my six month old baby, Petra. The sun shines perennially here, it is a little hot. Thus being, the local people occasionally show concern for Petra when out on our hikes.
It is good hearted, honest concern, [...]
SOSUA, Dominican Republic- I rate countries on how often I smile while walking down the street. I call it the smile index, a more simplified and personalized form of Bhutan’s Happiness Index. If something about a walk through the streets of a country makes me smile, laugh, or stand in bright eyed wonder multiple times [...]
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SOSUA, Dominican Republic- It is my impression that the internet was started as a way for people across the world to share information, content, and knowledge in a way in which other people could use and conglomerate it into something new and ever changing, ever connecting, ever growing.
The internet is a way to give and [...]
SOSUA, Dominican Republic- “Where do the Dominican people get their food from here?” my wife rhetorically asked in a huff, “They are in the same stores we are but I can’t believe they are spending this much money!”
“If we had the answer to that question we would have our food strategy,” I replied while inspecting [...]
SOSUA, Dominican Republic- When shopping for juice it is absolutely imperative to look at the ingredients before purchasing, otherwise there is a very good chance that you will end up with sugar water with very little fruit content.
It was once a habit to just look for “100%” written somewhere on the outside of the container. [...]
“Is there a deposit on the bottles here?” I asked a friend after finishing off a beer together in the front entrance way of our hotel.
“If there is a deposit I will come to your room to get it,” he spoke with a laugh.
Then I had to wonder: there are a lot of bars in [...]
The average wage for a common laborer in the Dominican Republic is around 3,000 to 6,000 pesos a month. I came to this estimate after reading through some apparently well honed statistics earlier this morning. Though this knowledge stretched the bounds of my observations, and I had difficulty believing that this amount of pay could [...]
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30 cents a crap. That is just about what we are paying each time Petra soils herself here in the Dominican Republic. 30 cents six times each day equals two USD of travel funds shat upon. That is $14 a week, $56 a month. Our budget can withstand this onslaught — Petra gets $10 a [...]
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