Hanging With Dave Part 1

Both David Richie and I each live half an hour from Santiago and on Friday our curiosity and desire to explore the Dominican Republic's second-largest city got the best of us. That morning we agreed to meet at the Hotel Aloha del Sol. Aside from giving me the thrill of navegating public transit in the DR's second-largest city, this gave me an opportunity to find my regional consolidation point given in the Peace Corps Emergency Action Plan.

Medicare brand soap

Unlike Santo Domingo, which has been thoroughly gutted by the construction of an expressway through the heart of town, Santiago does not suffer from a scarcity of civic space or a single-minded devotion to sprawl and cheap retail. While it does have its share of malls and big-box retailers, I feel they have been more gracefully integrated into the urban fabric without costing the city its character.

Four-lane throughfares at street level connect neighborhoods of low-rises throughout the town, broken up by comercial districts that feel like part of the city and parks of the kind only found in tropical climates where enormous trees explode over streets and into courtyards. The city is likewise dotted with enormous private estates whose well-tended jungle greenery softens the oppression of concrete and asphalt.

Hanging out in Moca: Kiko, Chilo, Merelis, and Antonia