Monday's Adventure to Puerto Plata

So Monday we set off together in a taxi, hoping to see a few historical sites, but also looking forward to a little bit of time on the sunny beaches. As it turned out, nothing went exactly as planned. Go figure.

As part of the original itinerary, my friend Neici was going to accompany us from Santiago on the journey northward to the coast. The idea was to take the old road, and to stop along the way to see the place where the Hermanas Mirabal had been so viciously detained, attacked, and ultimately murdered. Unfortunately, Neici became ill and we were forced to go it alone. No worries, I figured. I've travelled the country plenty on my own. This should be a piece of cake. Plus Neici had told me exactly what to tell the cabbie, reminding me that it was the "calle viejo" to Puerto Plata, not the now-used highway. So I found an amenable taxista and made plans for him to meet up with us in the morning.

After the taxi driver, Miguel, assured me he knew what road I meant and had been to the monument we sought, I settled in to enjoy the sights along the way. The Cibao, or central mountainous region, is gorgeous, and it's so much nicer to see it with the windows rolled all the way down than from the chilly interior of a large bus - which is the only way I had travelled this part of the country in the past. Soon, I began to notice two things. First, I kept seeing the aforementioned buses. Second, the road looked awfully familiar. What I knew was that the buses don't take the old road and I had never taken the "calle viejo" before. But then again, I though, who knows. Maybe you take this road and it connects to the old road. Trying not to be pushy, I asked once if this was the correct way, then settled back into my seat.

Eventually we reached the monument. It looked familiar, and I realized I had past it several times without even knowing what it was. It had three large geometrical stone walls, along with what seemed to be a sundial and three flags, two of which I could identify as the Dominican flag and that of the Movimiento 14 de Junio, the party formed by Minerva Mirabal and others. Most of all, however, it was intensely neglected. After seeing the immaculate shape of the Mirabal house and museum, it was somewhat shocking. However, it is also unsurprising when money for monuments and museuems is not available. So we took some pictures and continued on, marvelling at the lack of attention it received in comparison.

Shortly after we reached Sosua, we spent some wonderful, albeit cloudy time on a little beach know as "Playita Nueva," the nueva simply identifying the beach as having been "discovered" and colonized by the nearby hotel, who were gracious enough to let us use "their" beach and charge us for chairs and umbrellas. We finished the trip with a simple, delicious meal at a tiny restaurant overlooking Sosua Bay - Michael's - and returned to Santiago in the rain, our cabbie chatting platitudes at me the entire way, as Benjamin and Catherin slept.

The most interesting thing about the trip, however, occcurred the next morning as I chatted with Neici. After merely a few minutes I discovered that we had not, in fact, visited the monument to the sisters. Despite the cab driver's insistence, the monument was actually a tribute to the failed invasion of Constanza, Maimon, and Estero Hondo (hence, the three shapes) - after which the movement led by Mirabal had taken their name (hence, the flag). Relating the news to Catherin and Benjamin shortly after, we mused on our cabbie and his confidence in his own historical knowledge. What does it mean to remember a place's past? How did it matter that he was so wrong in his monument identification? Did anyone really care, or are monuments merely empty signifiers? Either way, we decided that we would nonetheless attempt the trip to the actual monument to the three sisters, hopefully with a bit more luck . . .

Museo de las Hermanas Mirabal

The "Mueseo de las Hermanas Mirabal" was amazing. The gardens were beutiful and had a lot of variation. The museum has perserved most of the things in the house as it was when the sisters were still alive. It is very easy to imagine what their life at home was like as you walk through it. This makes walking through what was once their home very disturbing. It felt as if I was intruding into their life because it was as if they were still there. As one follows the tour guide and she explains all of the things inside the rooms we walk into it is very hard not to feel sadness over their death.

The sisters' rooms were kept very close to what they were like when they were still alie. Their closets contain some of their clothes, they have their maquinas de coser, their paintings, their beds, and other things. Maria Teresa's beautiful long hair is kept in a case in her room. Shirts designed to look like the Dominican Republic's flag are still kept in Minerva's room even though they're yet to be finished. Patria's wedding gown is still kept in her room.

Once we were done with our tour inside the museum and we were done admiring the beautiful gardens we had the oppostunity to speak with Dedé Mirabal. She is a very graceful and charismatic woman whom was nice enough to answer any questions we had about her sisters.

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Beginnings . . .

So after a very LONG day of travel (4am arrival at Louis Armstrong, a rapid whip through MIA followed by 3! hours on the tarmack, landing in StoDgo, taxi, 3 hour bus ride to Santiago, and yet another taxi) we arrived at our hotel, the Aloha Sol. A lovely family meal followed, along with some much needed shut-eye. The next day brought us some wonderful weather, a beautiful change from the previous days dreary aguaceros. Along with our chofer, "Broncosin," we headed out to Salcedo and Ojo de Agua, the childhood home of the Hermanas Mirabals. There we found the amazingly well-keep museum and gardens, maintained by the surviving sister, Dedé Mirabal.

Sunday 24th May 2010

Today we visited the Centro Leon. It's a private museum, and the mixture of birds in the wire enclosed aviary was quite remarkable. I'm told the aviary used to be a japanese garden, which explains the bridge. The wire hatching was too close to fit the camera through, by the way, so the clarity of every bird but one is due to the fact that you can't focus on the near and the far at the same time. The camera, it seems, focuses so exclusively that the fence becomes a smeared gray which in the right light, disappears completely. Another part of the museum held art of various kinds. I wish I could explain more about it, but while thoughts were provoked, they were quickly replaced by the thoughts provoked by the next work, and so the effect was rather muted. The museum also contained a lovely gift shop (of course) and an exposition on the history of a local entrepeneur whose name completely escapes me. Catherin and I went to Mao, her hometown, and met quite a few of her relatives. As my Dominican Spanish is barely functional, I had some trouble understanding what was going on. There is a tendency to drop or swallow certain consonants. It's relatively accepted in the wider spanish speaker world for instance, that some speakers pronounce past participles without the "d", so ado and ido become ao and io. However, the dropping of an "s" is something I'm not altogether used to, and in some cases, renders a perfectly innocent sentence into something rather curious (rather like that joke about the mispronunciation of quiche) . The talk of the family was her uncle's skill and ability with sinning. It was all they could talking about; how he'd been sinning for so long, how he'd been doing it right down by the river over there, and how he caught one that was this big- you guessed it, they meant fishing. Pescar is to fish. Pescando is fishing. Pecar is to sin. Pecando is sinning. In any case, I tried to avoid interaction with Catherin's family, so that she could catch up with them (not an easy task, the status of guest confers all kinds of attention) and took photos of the gardens, tried to fruit from the local trees, and in general enjoyed myself until it was time to go home and fall into bed waiting for the next day.