Aloha from Hispaniola!

Our Caribbean odyssey began quite unexpectedly completely out of the blue in June. Brian, an acquaintance from my days spent on the Trop Rock circuit contacted me with a proposal to manage and program an FM radio station in the north coast town of Sosúa on the Island of Hispañola in the Dominican Republic. Melinda and I had been planning to make a move to Arizona or San Marcos, Mexico where we intended to work on photojournalistic blogs, travelogues, and lifestyle articles. I also had musician friends in both places and figured I would occasionally join them for some gigs to supplement our income.

We were leaning toward Arizona because I had loved living there in the past and we love the state. Then again - the call of the sea and tropics was very strong - and the thought of living abroad had an extra appeal as America had become an unrecognizable madhouse brimming with highly divided quarrelsome bickering people and blatantly open racial tensions that recalled the pre-Civil Rights era.

It didn’t take us long to decide on making the move to the Dominican Republic. The Island’s Heart of the Caribbean near proximity to Cuba, Puerto Rico, and Jamaica made the choice that much easier.

We began the long arduous process of preparing for the move abroad, getting passports in order, storing our van and RV, making certain all our animals had their paperwork up to date, and sorting through mountainous stacks of clothes and bags full of electronics and other gear to choose less than 50 pounds of possessions with which to start a new life.

However, as our departure date drew near Brian’s schedule began to change and his plans became more erratic to the point where I decided we needed to make plans to be totally independent from him. I began to regard Brian merely as the catalyst that set us on our path to the D.R. rather than as a legitimate employment possibility. Good thing I did, too, because he ultimately bailed out and left us stranded - if one can call being stranded in paradise stranded?

In reality Brian’s abandonment of the masterplan was less a stranding than it was a financial inconvenience which simply required a readjustment of our budget as well as our plans.

The original plan was for us to share rent and expenses with Brian in a three-bedroom house. This would have brought our rent down to around $200 per month. The radio station was to be a source of additional income and would have made life in the D.R. much more affordable and feasible.

We had envisioned a successful and dynamic radio station that would have been the voice of the community and a gathering place for the expatriate community and locals alike which we would actively serve with weather reports, local news, restaurant deals announcements, and bar reports. I had planned to have a few special programs as well and feature some local Spanish-speaking DJs alongside English-speaking DJs for bilingual broadcasts. I had envisioned that as the only English broadcast we would become an important resource for all prospective international tourists through our Internet simulcast as well as all the expatriates living in the country by way of our FM broadcast carried nationally via the state’s radio relays. I also figured we could get some connections and tie-ins with the cruise ships.

Brian had also proposed that Melinda could help with and be part of his product line sales at Amazon. All such possibilities and opportunities were dashed and lost in his departure from the plan.

It was a pretty grand vision with lots of potential but that all fell through and we were instead set adrift with no plan other than to start over in the Dominican Republic.

When Brian abandoned the project it ended up adding an additional $300 - $500 per month to our overall expenses.

That’s $300 more than we had left in our budget which had been further decreased by our van needing four new tires, alignment, and an oil change for the thousand mile journey to the airport in Miami. There was also the hotel for one night and baggage charges. Our budget was well-tapped.

I’d made a 4-day booking at the Mary Rose condo hotel because Brian was supposed to arrive on Aug 15th. That soon changed to the 18th. We couldn’t afford to stay at a hotel and have money left over for a long-term rent for the rest of the month or the next month so I made arrangements with the manager of the Mary Rose to move to long-term lodging figuring we could move when or if Brian finally showed up.

In the meantime we were both writing and calling Brian to ask him what was going on. We could see on his Facebook page that he’d bought some lakeside property in Wisconsin and was building a cabin there.

Brian’s last message was that he’d be down around the 28th -- and that was the last we heard from him. We tried to find his Tiki Island Radio bar or Gordito’s restaurant and neither was anywhere to be found. There were just empty spaces where the bar and restaurant were supposed to be. Further investigation into the matter with newly-acquired local friends revealed that there was absolutely no connection between him Brian and Gordito’s either. It didn’t look like Brian was going to be coming down and we were on our own in an entirely new land, 2000 miles away from home with no budget and no prospects for income or any local support network as would have been the case with the bar, restaurant, and radio station that were proposed.

We would not be living the future we had been offered or were planning on -- though we had planned on being totally independent from Brian just in case. And now just in case had become the case.

There were one or two conversations with Brian that gave me pause. He’d blathered on nonsensically too much a time or two and when someone does that it usually means there is a degree of bullshittery about. After that call I began making plans to be completely independent from Brian and able to survive on our own. I’d run quick calculations and crunched some numbers and found that we could, conceivably, live a much better quality of life on the tropical island of Hispaniola for the same amount as we were paying to live in the flat wetlands and bayou country of Lake Charles.  

As a result, it's taken us two months even to begin to regain our financial footing somewhat and recover slowly but not quite so surely! Our recovery has also required an assiduously unwavering focus and drive to succeed here in the Dominican Republic where it is an entirely foreign third world - and a Spanish-speaking one at that!

But now in the late depths of October, we can finally begin to breathe it all in. Take stock of our situation and decipher the readings on the instrument panel of our lives. We can start actually to inhale the island, its culture, vibe, and essence - we can begin to experience it in the slower tempos of island time and the ambling laidback rhythms of Dominican culture. We can now take the proper time to drink it all in; one leisurely luscious sip at a time.

For the same amount that it used to cost us to live in a small 30 foot RV in a campground with few amenities other than a very spotty WiFi, running water, and electricity -- we now live in a fully-furnished second-floor apartment in a beautiful complex aptly named the Trade Winds. Each morning we awake to splendid views of lush tropical grounds, a surprisingly attractive swimming pool, laundry, Internet, cable TV, and weekly maid service. Women carrying freshly-picked sweet ripe bananas and Dominican avocados -- whose seeds are grander than the whole avocados we used to buy in Louisiana -- deliver these local treasures every morning at the cost of $1.50 for a bunch of bananas and two abnormally large avocados. They are so fresh and tasty that one has to experience them for oneself to fully appreciate the depth and richness of their pronounced flavors.

Surrounded by lush, verdant, tropical tree-crested hills, ridges, and emerald gullies we are immediately reminded that we are living in the Dominican Republic on the Island of Hispaniola in the Heart of the Caribbean. Various species of Palm Trees sway in the consistently cooling breezes. The prickly warm sun shines with a stark crystal clarity that lends a surreal, otherworldly quality to the air and uncannily bright, stunningly clear light.

To top it all off we have our very own tropical open-air version of the bar in Cheers where everybody knows our name. The quietly unassuming quintessential local treasure that is George’s Oasis Bar is located on the ground floor of the Casa Mañana apartment complex a very  drinking-friendly one hundred feet to the southeast up the hill and across the road from our flat. Sat in the midst of what looks like a micro version of a Costa Rican jungle replete with bananas, papayas, avocado, and guava trees, bright, open-air, casual, and warmly welcoming it’s the epitome and very essence of what a neighborhood bar in the Dominican Republic should be. And, as its sign so accurately declares; George’s Oasis Bar is most definitely “a place where the locals meet.” And because of owner George’s overt hospitality, acute local knowledge, and highly-developed social networks, we were able to make a number of good friends very quickly. George was Russian-born but was a resident of Brazil for most of his life traveling the world as an engineer designing, upgrading, and building breweries the world over.

When I grow up I would like to have a job like George had.

Another hundred feet up the hill past George’s is our local mini-mart which carries a surprisingly decent variety of basic staples, canned meats, rices, beans, assorted sundries, water, ice-cream, wines, beers, and the ever-essential and thankfully ubiquitous rum.

We had initially planned to get over to Puerto Rico on the ferry and check it all out. But now, as the whole world well knows; there is no Puerto Rico - only the shell of what it once was a mere month ago - before Irma and Maria laid it flat and bare and broken. Our island was more fortunate than most of the Caribbean by far. We were also planning to head over to our nearby neighbor island Cuba as well - and that is still possible. Cuba also escaped the main wrath of the hellish winds that wander these timeless corridors of warm glowing cerulean waters and their imposing emerald specks of terra firma in the months of June to November.

We have ridden out two historically devastating hurricanes here on this magical masterpiece of tropical geography and precipitous geological splendor. This craggy carving of wind and tide born upon warm azure seas.

Now I am ready to write about these enchanted, haunted isles and their peoples. These Caribbean regions are as exotic as can be imagined - and then some. They are as often filled with horror and depravity as they are with dreams and wonder. They are as unknowable and unknown as any place on or part of this Earth. And far more habitable and welcoming than most. There are vast, obscene riches and staggering, wretched poverties - though not of spirit. There is as much exquisite fetid ugliness as there is a boundless unbridled beauty to be found within the island's folds and atop the canopies of verdant golden treetops.

And for now, at least, these islands are home.