Just a quick Sunday morning post before going to Boca Chica today with my roomies and some other friends, and i'm having a bit of nostalgie :( BCN times... crazy times...
However things are great here, last week-end we wnet to Casa Campo a really huge, hype location, closed to the public, you can only
get there if you have been invited, pass teh security, leave your driving license... Lucky we were invited by Carla a girl from Porto Rico, i personally didn't know, but she welcomed us anyway to celebrate Jolly's birthday. So tehre we were Jolly and his great escort girls jajaj 6 lovely ladies.
This place was maybe a bit too much for me, too perfect, perfect people, houses, grass, fake medieval village, golf cars to get around, beach cleanned and set for tourist. Was fun being in another world for the week-end.
Coming out of croudy Santo Domingo, to Casa Campo, were you are not a minority anymore, things are all european-like, a real resort for rich people. Experience i'm sure i won't be able to do again, good to do once, but only once.
Amazing how DR is full of constrasts, i read in a guide that it's the country were 42% of its population lives with less than 2$ a day but has the greater rate of Mercedes Benz in the world...
Actually in Santo Domingo there is a big gap as well, not even in the housing, but also in the leisure offers. For example monday night we went an Happy Hour in Segafredos (150RD$ for 2 Margaritas!!). And this place is very weirs, as soon as you get in, it looks like one of these "Cool" bars in the Born in BCN, design, black white and red, with a huge back room filled with beds, tables, Dj, air-conditionning...And not only "rubios" (dominican name for white foreigners, or guiris in BCN) go there, it's full of dominicans that want to "show". My colleague Felipe told me when we sent to La Vega to visit a partner local NGO, that dominicans work a lot on their appearance, at all levels.
(Wealth Dispersion measure by the GINI Index: Lower dispersion is in Iceland with 25 and the highest in Sierra Leone with 63DR 51, FR 31, Spain 34, NZ 36, Oz 35)
That was for the Development issue of the day jajaj ;)
I'll be able to tell you more about Development next week, as i'm going the whole week to Barahona, to visit 2 projects for BioFuel: one which is ours with 150 families working for a banana cooperative, trying to diversify their activities and grow Jatropha, a plant from wich you can extract oil used for making BioFuel. Tecnically this is great not to be dependent on the price of the banana only and try to boost the use of biofuel in these poor communities do be less dependent as well on the incresing and outrageous price of fuel here.
The other project is even more toward the border with Haiti, but financed by the EU. So.. It's a lot bigger, towards selling on international markets..
I am sooo excited to go there and finally see a project, it's beneficiaries, how it's actually being implemented etc ect !!!! Yepee!!!
Ok have to go, we're going to la playa Boca Chica, a very tipical beach were the people from Santo Domingo go for a Sunday (as there is no beach in Santo Domingo muf muf)
Finally some dominican destination!!!!! Do local, Be local!!!
I'll tell you my impressions when i'll get back next week-end (or maybe tonight if internet works)!!!!!
Que vaya Bonito!!!!!!
La Soph
Coool Soph!!! You're really doing a lot of things! It always seems to me that you a 3 person in the same body! LOT of ENERGYYYY!
ReplyDeleteWhat about your salsa teacher? ....
jajaj
Celine