Santiago Dom Rep
29 January 2008 | Luperon Dominican Republic
Capt Chris, Partly Cloudy, but no snow!
The picture was taken while enroute to Santiago with Roberto. What a trip. We went in Roberto's Toyota pickup that had 196,500 miles on it. The only thing that functioned was the engine. Roberto gains my respect each day that I spend with him and am very grateful I have been connected with him. He's funny, passionate, skilled and most importantly he is honest. He shows when says he will which is very counter to the usual.
It is tough to come to grips with the poverty here. I am no doubt a very wealthy gringo to these people. Most have no income at all and just work the land to feed themselves. Anyway, driving in the city of Santiago was about as stressful as it gets. Horns horns and more horns. Motoscooters spewing smoke with no mufflers and 4 people aboard. However, the city has everything one would need. We went into a modern store named "8A" and it would give home depot a run. In fact I think it has more than Home Depot. Commercial power lines, generators to power entire towns. So..
In short Roberto skillfully negociated us to a machine shop and the piece we needed was fabricated. We also went to another automotive type shop and was able to get the replacement seal for the transmission. Something I have learned about the Dominicans is they can't manufacture anything. But they can repair everything. The economy is based largely in the argriculture business. So machine shops to repair all the associated heavy equipment abound.
I have to say from the cruisers angle you gain a little more faith in humanity. My fate is totally in these people's hands. All day yesterday, a full 9 hours I had no idea if we were getting the parts we needed. I seemed to be getting an idea of what it was like to be deaf.
I need to roll as I believe today, if no rain develops Roberto will be Christa repaired. I can then re-start obessing about the weather again. More later.
Capt Chris