Photo of old cock fighting ring
On Monday, with water bottles in hand, our Spanish for Cruisers and our map from Van Sant's book, we headed into town, this time early in the morning.
According to Steve's cruising guide (Embarrassment of Mango's ... again thanks Karen for giving us that book), we should be able to buy some frying cheese "Queso de freír".
I decide to be a tourist and display my camera (with a noted risk of having it stolen) and took lots of photos . . . always asking first if I could. Check out the photo gallery for new photos under the album "Luperon". Today I managed to stop and start a conversation with everyone and anyone who looked my way and whom tolerated my pathetic effort asking what they did for a living, what their name was, where they lived and how long in Luperon and most of all asking for corrections of my pronunciations and for them to repeat more slowly so that I could respond to their answers. We have found most of the people in Luperon to be really friendly and very apologetic about the state of the roads that have been torn up (the broken water mains too).

Steve:
We tried to take pics of not only the poverty which is so obvious, but also the richer homes. All houses here are fronted right up to the sidewalk, even the larger ones with court yards. Except for the very poor, all are behind steel gates and barred window coverings. Although there is a lot of neglect, even some of the poorer houses are treated with care and the fronts and streets have been swept clean and the greenery cut.

We found the cheese shop after Marg asked directions (using broken Spanish). It had obviously moved since the writing of EOM. The cheese was orange. I expected white. We haven't tried it at the time of writing.
We did find the cock fighting marina (see photo). It appears cock fighting has been abandoned for years but it must have been on par with horses racing in its day. It was in a well appointed area which must have had extensive landscaping and large trees for shade (all overgrown now). It originally had a tin roof suspended from the pylons. The rich would sit in the numbered seats inside (possibly the numbers were to keep track on who was betting) and the pour would stand along the edge from where I took the picture.

On the way back to the boat in a hot sweat, we were "enticed" "escorted" "coursed" "I don't know how it happened" into an outside street bar by a hooker. And there we sat with her and her just turned 65 year old Canadian from Vancouver that she had been shacked up with for the last week. He was less some of his teeth (I'm sure he came that way). These are not the type of people we are out here to meet but they are very prevalent in a place where the biggest draw is that "It is cheap".
The beer was cold from a bottle and was 120 pesos for 3 - 16oz Bohemia. Spelling guy this is the right spelling! And it is much better than the Presidente. (120 pesos = $3.30 US, $1.10 each). As the Vancouverite boasted, he could live well here on his Old Age pension. I'm not sure if he factored in the price of the hooker?

You can see by the photos that there are municipal improvements going on, similar to those experienced by Shorty (Marg's mum) on Truscott Drive in Mississauga. The main street and part of a paralleled street (some say the parallel street by mistake), were torn up weeks ago. People apologized profusely about the mess but everyone knows that paving is along way off .. Mañana (tomorrow).
Many of the sidewalks were only 2feet wide and we took some photos of heaved ones probably not caused by frost, maybe earth quakes. We had 2 small ones the other day. The wisdom is: better many small ones than one large one.
How would you like to run a snow plough over one of those sidewalks?

You don't run your hand along the fences that line the sidewalks; they are all made of barbed wire. The high block walls that encompass the schools are all spooled with razor wire and have guards (no gun) at the doors where the kids come and go. When the kids are in school, there are always a lot of them that are not. Which brings you to think that school is a privilege here not a right.