By Country:
Cuba | Dominican Republic | Haiti
Ok, I’ll admit, when I left the USA with my five month old baby and my adventurous traveler husband I didn’t know if it was possible to do what we were setting out to do: continuously travel the world on a tight budget, $25 to $30 a day for the both of us AND a [...]
Breastfeeding in Public while Traveling I exclusively breastfed Petra for five months before we went to the Dominican Republic, so I was pretty comfortable feeding her in public. I am not super modest, but I’m also not used to showing the world my breast either. It takes a little practice to be able to discreetly [...]
With my new found Dominican friend and her little baby, it wasn’t long before we started commenting on the things we did differently. Mothers love to compare and give advice, people from different countries also love to do the same. There are always new fads and new fears in child raising. Here are some of [...]
Traveling with a 5 month old infant in the Dominican Republic, I find that a baby opens a lot of cultural doors. After flying in from Maine, we arrived in Santiago, tired but happy and immediately took a bus to Sosua where we rented out a studio room for a month. We are now looking [...]
Air Travel from Maine to the Dominican Republic We said goodbye to my family in snowy Maine and boarded a southbound plane. Petra and I took her first plane trip when she was two months old , and now at five months she was already a traveling pro — having logged more in the air [...]
Really the decision was already made before Petra was born. I believe it was promised the minute we found out we were pregnant: Yes, we can keep traveling with a baby. After roadtripping for a couple months around the US, we felt we had gotten our feet sufficiently wet, and Petra was sufficiently sturdy at [...]
Hermits on the islands of Belize BELIZE ISLAND, Belize- “We are on a deserted island!” a young American tourist whooped upon landing on the white sands of a Belizean cayo. “That is a real stupid thing to say!” boomed an unexpected voice from the interior, “this island is not deserted, I’m here!” —————— It is [...]
Travel to Belize Cayos Cays Keys Islands BELIZE CAYOS, Belize — On my third incident of travel through the tapering isthmus of Central America, I have finally set foot on Belizean soil. I helped lead a tour out from the Finca Tatin in Guatemala to the southern cayos of Belize. A two hour speed boat [...]
Perhaps it is because no American has been busted by the US Treasury’s Office of Foreign Assets Control for going to Cuba for a couple of years, perhaps it is because 42 new travel service providers have been validated by the US government to operate between the two countries, perhaps because these last reminders of [...]
CAP-HAITIEN, Haiti- The following is a video of my walk out of Cap-Haitien in the north of Haiti along with a couple stray anecdotes of conversations that did not get published with the rest of the Haiti travelogue entries. I have been trying to publish this video since returning to the Dominican Republic from Haiti [...]
RIO DULCE, Guatemala- The Backpacker Hotel sits on the bank of the Rio Dulce in the eastern fringes of Guatemala. It is made of large plank boards and looks like a plantation storage house, its common area extends out over the river, and the rooms look out to the jungle beyond. Iguanas play on the [...]
SANTIAGO AIRPORT, Dominican Republic- “No se acceptan dinero. Ni pesos, ni dollares, ni Euro,” was written on large posters stuck to the front of each immigration booth at the Santiago international airport.
Apparently, these signs are suppose to keep the immigration officials honest. My experience can only attest that these posters do not function as intended.
SANTIAGO AIRPORT, Dominican Republic- What to do about extremely early flight departures? What do you do when your flight is set to leave at 3:27 AM from a foreign city where you have no friends, no form of personal transportation, and a tight budget? Do you pay for a hotel room for an entire night [...]
SOSUA, Dominican Republic- We said a lot of goodbyes as we left Sosua, the place in the north of th Dominican Republic that my family had made our home for the past six weeks. “I really hate saying goodbye,” my wife spoke just before leaving our room behind. But the number of goodbyes you say [...]
SOSUA, Dominican Republic- Projects and traveling should be synonymous. To do something when traveling that you can build upon with each day that passes — a mission, a purpose, a project — is the first and last steps, in my opinion, to building a full life on the road.
Floating around the world without a tether, occupation, or commitment sounds romantic — and it is for a month or two — but even the greatest of romances often turn stale with age.
HAITI- And then the bus exploded. I am not joking. 30 Haitians clogged the minibus’ door in a solid mass of black arms, legs. A dish of rice when flying, I saw a large butt squeezed in there somewhere, people were yelling, while hot steam and smoke was shooting out from the engine all over the inside of the bus.
I jumped out a window.
LABADIE VILLAGE, Haiti- “I live in my own little world, but it’s okay, they know me here.”
I read this painted on an inside panel of a boat taxi as I rode into Labadie village on the north coast of Haiti. I had paid 60 cents to ride in a tap tap (the back of a pickup truck with 20 other people) from Cap-Haitien to Labadie beach and then 10 gourde, or 25 cents, for a boat to the village.
CAP-HAITIEN, Haiti- “Four dollar,” spoke the woman behind the counter of a restaurant where I attempted to make my first commercial interaction in Haiti.
“What!?! Four dollars for a bottle of water?” I figured that she must have meant four gourde, the Haitian standard of currency. Though this would have meant that the cost of the bottle of water would have been extremely low, around 10 cents. This did not seem right, but I handed over a five gourde coin anyway expecting change.
HAITI- “Do you know Dorthy?” a Haitian high school student asked me as we sat together in the back of a crowded tap tap. He then added, “Dorthy from Michigan?” just to make sure I knew which one he was talking about.
I had to admit that I did not know Dorthy from Michigan.
We had been talking in English for the better part of 20 minutes as waited for the pickup truck to fill with passengers. The student had a high command of the English language, which is something that I found many Haitians possess.
CAP-HAITIEN, Haiti- If you can afford 40 USD a night for a hotel room, then I invite you to come to Haiti. This is truly an great country for traveling, though the hotel costs are far beyond the purse strings of the average traveler.
There seems to be very little competition for hotels in Haiti, as there seems to be very few people traveling here. Many hotels have seemingly already gone out of business a decade ago, the few that remain are either for the luxury classes or are decrepit, ill kept love hotels.
CAP-HAITIEN, Haiti- Haiti is an in the streets culture. An “in the streets” culture is one where the people play out a large portion of their days in the public sector, simply put: in the streets. Most of these people have homes to go to, but they seem to prefer just hanging out in chairs in front of shops, in their doorways, on street corners, and in parks — talking, and watching the world pass by. There are people everywhere in a Haitian city.
CAP-HAITIEN, Haiti- On Monday they cleaned the mud.
On my arrival in Cap Haitien, I found streets caked in mud, trenches that partitioned the main roads into pieces, openings in the road large enough to fall through, and garbage strewn everywhere. I heard a group of American volunteer girls rejoicing in the fact that they were on their way out to the Dominican Republic: “I just can’t take all the trash in the street,” one said while taking a drag on a cigarette.
CAP-HAITIEN, Haiti- Haiti is a dangerous country for travel. Haiti is a dangerous country for travel as there is a very likely chance that you will fall through the streets and meet doom below. I mean this literally: there are holes, pits, and open manholes all over the streets and sidewalks. One errant step and you’re a goner — consider yourself lucky if you only break a leg.
CAP-HAITIEN, Haiti- I walked into the Croissant d’Or bakery in Cap-Haitien, and immediately met three very large, armored bodies of UN soldiers. They are here as a part of a re-stabilization mission called MINUSTAH. I walked up to the soldiers — I had little choice, they took up the entire bakery — and asked them in English were they were from.
CAP HAITIEN, Haiti- There are two main public transport options for getting from the Dominican Republic to Haiti overland.
1. Take an express bus from either Santiago or Santo Domingo.
2. Take a local bus to the border, walk across, then find transport on the other side.
Neither option is very difficult.
CAP HAITIEN, Haiti- From where I sit, on a roof top in Cap Haitien, the second largest city in Haiti, life goes on as usual. There is music here, the streets are full of people, some of them are going to work, some are sitting listlessly, some are just talking, some laughing — a Haitian woman across the hotel roof from me is singing to herself — a group of men down below are gambling over dominoes, there is a lottery brokerage on nearly every block, women sit outside of their homes selling bags of purified water, pop, candy, kids chase each other, a group of young girls in Sunday dresses walk by.
I arrived in the Haitian city of Cap Haitien around five or six hours ago by bus from Santiago in the Dominican Republic. Chaya and Petra are still in Sosua. I should only be in Haiti for around one week before going back to the Dominican Republic and then traveling on to Guatemala and El [...]
SOSUA, Dominican Republic- When traveling through the streets of a foreign city, very often you will find that the people there really seem to enjoy staring at you. Apparently, you are funny looking.
Often you are looked at with facial expressions that can only be interpreted in your own culture as menacing, judgmental, rude, or even ugly. These stares make you think that you are not wanted, that you are intruding, that if you don’t go away that someone may do you harm. These stares can be intimidating, until you return the favor and say hello.
SOSUA, Dominican Republic- The beating of a legion of drummers woke me up from a sound slumber, and I stumbled out the door to see who or what invading army was marching into town on the morning of February 27 in the Dominican Republic.
I found school children. Thousands of them.
SABANETA, Dominican Republic- “Los gallos me dan dinero, mujeres me lo quitan.”
The roosters give me money, women take it away from me.
This was written on the back of a cockfighter’s t-shirt, and as the crowd of men erupted in primal screams that bordered on verbal violence as two roosters in the center of a ring dealt each other blows of physical violence, I knew that half of this statement could have been the truth:
These men had a lot of money riding on the two roosters hacking each other apart on the stage of death and unrequited victory.
SABANETA, Dominican Republic- The men were bolstered, bristled, fired up and ready to watch one barnyard fowl shred and tear life and limb from another. We were at a Cockfight in Sabaneta in the Dominican Republic, the cockfighting capital of the world.
An all male crowd stood around in groups and in circles, inspecting roosters, weighing roosters, holding roosters, and, most importantly, hedging bets on roosters.
SOSUA, Dominican Republic- The potential for being rude is not worth the cost of getting sick, cheated, raped, or robbed. I have no fear of offending someone when traveling if my well being could potentially be in the balance. Act like a big man when traveling, even if you are a small woman.
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.
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.
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.
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 [...]
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 [...]
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 [...]
Pasteles en hoja. Worst food ever. Those were two lines that I wrote in my notebook after consuming a meal in the Dominican Republic that I felt needed some further investigation. It is a very rare occurrence in my travels when I come upon a piece of food that I cannot finish on the attributes [...]
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 [...]
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 [...]
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 [...]
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 [...]
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 [...]
“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 [...]
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 [...]
I saw a two men winding fishing rope along a side street of Sosua in the Dominican Republic. I wanted to talk with them. So I walked up and asked, “What are you doing?” The men initially looked big and moderately menacing, but, as soon as I began expressing curiosity in their handiwork, they opened [...]
There are women who walk through the streets of Sosua with portfolios of photographs of the heads of women whose hair they braided and beaded. They are looking for people with hair to braid and bead. This is how they make their living. The hairstyle that they seem to specialize in is what people call [...]
We moved into an apartment in the Hotel Romanoff in Sosua, Dominican Republic. Upon arrival we needed a room quickly — as two or three days of “shopping” for the cheapest apartment would have left us paying $75 in hotel fees. Hotels are expensive in Sosua. Read how we found the apartment Finding an Apartment [...]
There was a meeting in Evian-les-Bains in 1938 where 38 heads of state gathered to address the “Jewish issue.” Germany made it clear that they were expelling the race from their realms in Europe, and the call was offered up: “What country will take the Jews?” The British capped emigration to Palestine at 75,000 over [...]
Few people who live anywhere near inhabited areas — towns and cities — seem willing to walk more than a few blocks to get to where they want to go. Instead, they take some form of public transportation. This is almost a given in any part of the world. If you ask directions to a [...]
Apartments — not hotel rooms, hostel bunks, soft earth, or other people’s couches — is the new word in finding accommodation when traveling with my family. We will now travel the world in quick sprints, and then stay in hubs for one to three months at a time before making another quick sprint to another [...]
A travelogue entry about taking the 9:15 AM bus from Santiago’s Metrobus station in Los Jardines to Sosua on the northern coast. The two hour ride costs 160 pesos ($4.50) as of February of 2010. “What do you think of this place?” I asked my wife, Chaya, as she peered out the window of the [...]
Flying to Dominican Republic with a Baby – Not bad. Not horridly, desperately, nor incredibly bad. Flying from Portland, Maine to the Dominican Republic with a 6 month old went as smoothly as I could expect. This kid knows how to travel, though I can’t say her parents give her much of a choice. Baby [...]
“If I had had to make a bet, I would have bet that the first earthquake would have taken place in the northern Dominican Republic, not Haiti,” a geophysicist at Purdue University told the New York Times last Tuesday. The article was entitled, “A Deadly Quake in a Seismic Hot Zone.” I looked at the [...]
I was asked tonight over dinner what the condition in the Dominican Republic is like subsequent to the earthquake in Haiti. “I don’t know,” I replied, “it is difficult to trust the news to give a real impression of a place. ——————— Wade from www.VagabondJourney.com Bangor, Maine, USA January 29, 2009 Buy Travel Gear | [...]
Connect airline hubs and travel regions travel tip – After laying out the new parameters of traveling with a family, looking at our present location (northeast USA) in relation to the rest of the world in terms of flight costs, and harnessing that gut feeling that tells you that “now” is the right time to [...]
 |  |  |  |  |
