Today my internship people took me around the metropolitan area of Santo Domingo on various forms of transit that I've mentioned before: the metro, a guagua, and a carro publico. First, we took the metro. It's very new, opened in 2009, and the cars look almost exactly like the cars on the VTA light rail in San Jose.
I'm a veteran of public transit. I got my drivers license in 2008 when I was 26, the same weekend that The Dark Knight came out in theatres. The second thing I did with my freshly minted license was drive myself to the movie. The first thing I did was back up over a curb at the Boys and Girls Club near my old house and have a panic attack before fleeing.
That digression has a point. Really. Before I drove everywhere, I practically lived on BART, a subway-esque system in the San Francisco Bay Area. I took BART to work, school, baseball games, and everywhere else I wanted to go.
I was impressed with the metro in Santo Domingo. It meets with my approval. Clean, efficient, air conditioned, and cheap--fifty pesos a ride.
Next it was the carro publico. It's a cross between a taxi and a bus. That's the best way I can explain it, because the carros are regular old cars that run on fixed routes on main roads in the metro area and often times you can find a group of them waiting for passengers on certain corners and streets. What makes them different from taxis is that six passengers cram into a car, typically a smaller model Honda or Toyota, and the driver doesn't leave until he has six passengers. Two in front, four in back. And they can be six completely different people. When you want to get out, you let the driver know and you just bail out as soon as you stop.
The guagua is the bus, similar to the carros in poor quality of the vehicle, in the amount of people crammed in, and that they both take fixed routes. I saw the cobrador in full effect while on the guagua. The cobrador is a guy who hangs out the door of the bus telling people to get on. When the guagua stops the cobrador walks around asking people where they want to go, and if his guagua can get them there, he tells them to get on the bus. Then he runs after the bus, gets on, and repeats the process all over again at another stop.
I gotta say, we could use cobradors in the States.
I've been out in traffic a few times now, both as a passenger in carros and guaguas and private cars, and as a pedestrian. The traffic here is a free for all with several cars side by side in one lane, speeding, completely ignoring traffic signs and signals, and blaring horns. But it moves. Sometimes I think I'd rather deal with the complete clusterfuck of traffic here over sitting on a Bay Area freeway without moving for 40 minutes (I'm looking at you, 680). And it drives me insane when people honk at me while I'm driving in the States. Here, I accept the constant honking as the way things are.
Guagua and carros publicos are typically pretty cheap, around 25-50 pesos depending on where you go.
We walked home after our public transit tour we passed by a colmado, the corner/liquor stores I described before that deliver. I got a green apple soda and Spongebob Squarepants Cheetos. I bought the Cheetos just because Spongebob was on the bag. I love SBSP. They turned out to be really delicious, completely unlike Cheetos I've had in the States. Oh and Spongebob is called "Bob Esponja" here.
This amuses me.
The colmados and bodegas on the corners are things I'd die to have in San Jose. The best we can get is 7-11. While 7-11 can save my life at 3am, I want more. I've seen a world where I can have more, and where I can have it delivered to me for an extra 20 pesos. How can I live a different life now?
A few blocks down the street from our apartment there's a statue of someone whom I can't remember. Forgive me. In the context of famous Dominicans, it's not Trujillo, Duarte, the Mirabel sisters, Leonel Fernandez, Oscar de la Renta, or David Ortiz, chances are I don't know who it is yet.
The man honored at the statue may not be important. What caught my eye about the statue was a single Red Vine on the corner of the square base, lined up at a perfect angle. I saw another at a different corner of the base, then another, and one more. Someone had place a Red Vine at perfect angles on each of the corners of the base. I decided it was a tribute to the man I couldn't identify. At least someone thinks he's important enough to be honored with candy.
Big weekend ahead, with a film festival event at FUNGLODE and a real honest possibility to meet the president of the DR, Leonel Fernandez. Indhira and I might go out Friday or Sunday night. Then MONDAY is our trip to La Zona Colonial and I'm beside myself with excitement about that.
sigh...oscar de la renta
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