Santo Domingo is the oldest garbage dump in the entire New World. I will tell you about the main attractions and show photos of the streets of this bright and colorful cities. Let's go!
To get to Santo Domingo, we had to travel half the country.
Early in the morning we left the Samana Peninsula, drove 300 km and handed over the car at La Romana airport. We drove for 4.5 hours. At the end of the road, they were stopped by a stern female police officer, but that was just a document check. Although a couple of times they were almost hit at speeding - the radar squads are actively working on the roads of the Dominican Republic. Keep in mind if you are renting a car.
The guys from the rental office helped out a lot and gave us a lift from the airport to the center of La Romana - thank them very much, otherwise I would have to pay 20-30 bucks for a taxi.
We found a bus in Santo Domingo and arrived in an hour and a half.
How guidebooks lie to us
The old town of Santo Domingo is included in the UNESCO World Heritage List. Where does this honor come from? It's simple: the city is the oldest permanent settlement in America, founded by Europeans. From here it all began, which is why Santo Domingo is appreciated. The city was founded in 1496 by the younger brother of Columbus, the admiral himself visited it many times, and it was from here that the conquest of the entire New World by the Spaniards began.
The city has really great historical significance, but before you rush there at full steam and culturally enlighten, you need to learn about the dark side of Santo Domingo. More precisely, about his true face.
Guidebooks, as it should be, write complete crap about the city:
"People come here to get acquainted with the colonial culture - the local architecture retains the features of the Renaissance, Arabian, Gothic and Romanesque styles. [...] Bright, noisy, picturesque Santo Domingo invites its guests to enjoy tropical beauties, penetrate the mysteries of history, learn life in the Caribbean style ". Subtleties of Tourism.
And now let's translate these phrases caressing the ear into the language of truth and harsh reality:
- "To learn life in the Caribbean style" is, as I understand it, to grab n *** a.
- "Bright, noisy, picturesque" - translated into Russian means: littered with multi-colored garbage, full of marginals, unlike civilized cities.
- "Enjoy tropical beauties" is, probably, about pissing and piled up with bottles of palm trees.
God, who only composes these opuses!
All in all, let's take a better look at the real Santo Domingo.
What Santo Domingo really is
The capital of the Dominican Republic is something! Such trash I saw only in African slums in the releases of the beloved travel-youtuber "Petenka Planetka". The city is one huge trash can. Chaos, cacophony, traffic jams, beggars, drunkenness and other marginal people, scary shabby houses, heaps of trash and consumer goods for sale, and mountains, mountains, mountains of garbage, in which this anthill simply drowns. One big dump!
Security in Santo Domingo is bad... If poor Asians of Buddhist, Hindu and traditional oriental religions are calm, pleasant and peaceful people, then Christianity raised savages, thieves, robbers and murderers in the New World. This is how European missionaries raised the poor in Latin America, Africa, and the Philippines. Refugees from neighboring Haiti pose a particular danger in the capital and in the Dominican Republic in general - they are the poorest, reckless and evil here.
In Santo Domingo, there is only one place where the safety of the tourist is guaranteed - Colonial Zone, in other words, the Old City, where by some miracle a bit of colonial architecture has been preserved. Outside of these few streets is the Latin America we know from crime movies. There you walk at a brisk pace, and you only get a phone with a map at the intersections where the police are on duty. Some areas of the city are completely under the control of the gangs: if you go there, it’s not a fact that you can get out. Of course, they did not look into the dark areas. We saw the Santo Domingue treshachok only from the window of the bus, taxi, and during a short walk from the stop to the Colonial Zone.
Below I will tell you what you can see in Santo Domingo from the main attractions.
