Bayahibe, DR. Via SarahMC
When we arrived in SD we promptly parked our asses by the pool with some alcohol. The wedding was held at a 16th century church in Ciudad Colonial; the ceremony and it’s participants were breathtakingly beautiful. The reception was filled with lots of Latin music and dancing. And eating and drinking.
Monday we left for Bayahibe – more or less a small fishing village surrounded by a few large resorts. On our first day there I began to feel run-down. I did get to enjoy a day and a half at the beach but my chest congestion only worsened and I started running a fever. I spent Wednesday and Thursday under the covers in the hotel room, shivering and sweating and coughing. It really, really sucked. Luckily we were traveling with another couple, so the boyf got to enjoy some activities with them. I am still not fully recovered, but by Friday I was at least able to walk around without feeling faint.
We stayed at a small hotel that provided the very basic amenities. All-inclusive luxury resorts like Dreams are buying up land down there, crowding out the locals and leaving less and less public beach space for people to enjoy. In fact, we were stopped by Dreams guards as we walked along the sand because we’d accidentally stepped onto their property. I find those luxury resorts depressing: rich white people whooping it up, eating and drinking like royals, “protected” from the locals just outside the gates. Such resorts displace people from their land and wreack havoc on the ecosystems (the tourism industry does the same thing in other countries too, of course, including the US). The thought of staying at a place like that is a buzzkill, but it’s also a buzzkill to be hassled (to buy things) everywhere you go.
This was my first time in a “developing” country, and I have a bunch of disjointed thoughts swirling about in my head. I was constantly aware of the power disparities (including the racial one) between ourselves and the residents of our host country. I was distracted by the poverty, the starving dogs roaming the streets, thoughts about appropriation and exploitation, etc. Since I’ve been back, the other harpies and I have been corresponding via email re: our views on foreign travel. Naturally, some of the same issues apply in places like Hawaii, too, so it’s not one that can be easily avoided if one wants to visit a tropical destination! I’d be interested to hear your thoughts on the subject.
We were really disappointed that our romantic getaway turned out to be one spent mostly in separate beds, our nights highlighted by the soothing sounds of my wheezing and coughing. I am glad to be home but sad to be returning to work and class. BUT, I have not had a cigarette since Friday (which I could barely finish) so hopefully this latest sickness will prove to have been just what I needed to quit.
It’s interesting the third world thing because to be honest the most shocked I ever was was in Texas where i stayed with a Mexican migrant family – the sheer contrast between their poverty and the wealth around them was astonishing.
Also in New Mexico I met families (in this case white) whose children had never been to school and who could barely afford to feed/ clothe them.
And i could probably find similar cases in the UK so it’s not a US-alone thing, I think we have a big tendency in the supposedly developed world to ignore the poverty on our own doorstep while getting het up about poverty elsewhere.
Anyway that sounded criticial, which I didn’t mean, I just wanted to make the point. Other than that I enjoyed reading the post particularly as i’ve never been to Santa Domingo and always wanted to.
My husband and I never took a honeymoon. Part of this is because of how rushed the engagement and marriage were, and the fact that we’re paying out of pocket for grad school at the moment so we’re not exactly flush.
Another big part, though, the part we don’t tell people when they inquire so as not to get preachy and be total buzzkills ourselves, though, is what you mention here. I’d love to go somewhere tropical for a week, but there’s the problem of either buying into a Dreams or Club Med-type economy or being right beside it and being hassled to buy things wherever we go. There are obviously other honeymoon things to do besides go somewhere tropical, but whenever we start to talk about some far-off, week-or-more-long vacation, this comes up so we just shelve the idea indefinitely.
Emily’s right about ignoring the poverty around us, too, though. I do think about it, but I’m not especially sure of what to do other than donate to local food banks (and other charities that help the poor) and volunteer my time every now and then with disadvantaged kids. It seems simpler, I guess, to just abstain from a vacation than to take on the issue of domestic poverty.
As I mentioned yesterday in the Harpy email, I really have only seen something like that here in the US. Granted, I am not really experienced in international travel, but going to South Dakota was extremely upsetting. My dad was born there, and my grandma was raised in oppressive poverty on a Sioux Tribe reservation, dealing every day with the racism that engendered. Seeing that for myself, knowing what my grandmother lived through and how my own life was 1,000 times removed from that was really hard to wrap my head around.
On another note, I thought for a moment that the SD you referred to was South Dakota. My coffee has not taken effect yet.
Welcome back Sarah! I am so so sorry you were sick for your romantic getaway. What a ridiculous bummer. I’m still glad you got away and were at least in close proximity to sand and sun.
I definitely hear you on the foreign travel thing. I can only speak for myself here but I think that part of the issue is that when we travel we are living in a false world in which we are likely to be more highly placed socially than we are at home. So like, I don’t identify as upper class here at home and would never really go to a fancy restaurant here, but because I am in a foreign place I don’t know well, it is harder to have access to the “real” places to see and eat because of language or informational imbalance, or because of the color of my skin or because it is hard to research those places from abroad, etc. etc. etc. Because of all these difficulties I most prefer traveling to visit people I know, but that’s not always an option!
I wonder if this comes to us most often when we are traveling because rich and poor are rarely as close together (geographically) in the USA as they are abroad. Rarely are the worst neighborhoods abutting the best in cities here, and a lot of our poverty is rural. Nobody just happens to find themselves in Appalachia all of a sudden, you know?
I have done both the local/authentic/mom and pop type travel and the more resort-y type travel and see the appeal in both. At least at the DR all inclusive where I stayed, the resort was a major business feeder to all the independent contractors who did excursions and dive tours and shuttled us around. And often times, it’s the nicer resorts which are people’s first exposure to foreign travel, but then they get brave enough to venture out on their own for a more “authentic” experience, which is a good thing. Sometimes I want to stay in a hostel in a hammock on the beach and eat at hole in the wall taco stands, and other times I want to park my ass in the sand with a steady stream of “Coco-Locos” until it’s time for my merengue lesson.
Welcome back! I’m sorry you were sick…sounds like you guys made the best of the situation. Just wanted to comment that I observed this sort of thing in Fiji as well. When people hear that I went there, they get all excited and want to know how wonderful it was, and they are disappointed when I tell them that it was practically third world. There is one road that goes around the whole island, and the main form of transportation appears to be hitchhiking. Most of the Fijians (at least, where I visited) live in one-room huts with dirt floors, no doors, and only enough electricity to power 1 TV set. Really depressing, actually. When I went, I didn’t stay in one of the big shiny resorts (I was there for scuba diving, and there are no big shiny resorts on the reef side of the island). A lot of people who ask about Fiji sort of discount my experience and say that they might still want to go and stay in the nice resorts. I say, go in peace. I am not going to fly 18 hours to stay at something that is the same damn thing as Sandals or Beaches or whatever. I also love the arguments I get from people like my dad: “Well, if we don’t go spend our money, their economy is destroyed.” Yes, clearly, tourist dollars are the one and only way rich Westerners can possibly aid tropical nations. Well, it’s a good thing they have pretty stuff we want to visit, because otherwise they are really up the creek.
Oh wow, ausgezeichnet. If it weren’t for us in the Global North (a term PhDork introduced me to), many places like Fiji and the DR wouldn’t be as poverty-striken as they are in the first place.
But yeah, it’s totes up to us white people to throw our greenbacks at them like a nice, suntanned band-aid. Then we don’t have to think about the reality of the situation.
DangerMouse, true but the part of Texas I was in was Houston, and I can assure you that rich and poor are pretty damn close together there – the house I was staying at was 10 minutes from Houston’s millionaire’s row. Although this is possibly more true in the UK where it’s pretty easy to walk from a wealthy area into a deprived one in a matter of minutes.
A lot of areas in poor countries honestly do benefit greatly from first world tourist dollars. It’s not the be-all-end-all of helping people in the third world, and it doesn’t touch on the causes of poverty, but does it have to? The benefit is real, particularly if you patronize small businesses and act respectfully.
Welcome back, Sarah!
It sounds like Belize; I went there for a wedding as well. But there wasn’t any giant corporate beach hotels where I was at all; it was all pretty much a poverty-striken place although on the island where we stayed there were a few “nicer” small hotels/B&Bs. But there wasn’t any sort of “nice” area versus the “poor” area.
But everyone is right – it is not just a “third world” thing; I have been to plenty of poverty-striken areas in Italy as well as the States.