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Two Weeks in the Dominican Republic
Barvaro Beach Resort
We're back! From two weeks in a three-resort combination called Barcelo Barvaro Village in the Dominican Republic. For our cut rate special it was better than we expected. Great accommodation, three beautiful pools and four restaurants to choose from and the best beach we have ever experienced for swimming and walking. We thoroughly enjoyed ourselves, but we got a jolting experience of what it's like to be in a minority.
The worldwide Barcelo chain is Spanish owned and caters to the European trade, primarily German and French. In Canada, only Air Transat appears to have dibs on this particular Dominican resort, and as AT is a Quebec owned company, it caters largely to Canadians from PQ, mostly French. Our fellow tourists were not unfriendly but they naturally grouped together, so with the language barrier, the English-speaking people felt somewhat isolated and eagerly pounced on people from Ontario and BC. Nobody from the US or England at this resort at all!
The local people we managed to talk to had no idea about Canada. They believed most of us speak French and that it is always very cold here. Even mentioning we lived on the Pacific Ocean got blank looks. Dominicans don't speak pure Spanish, they speak a patois, so they didn't always understand even our bit of Spanish we use in Mexico.
The plentiful food was quite good but not exciting. The buffet breakfast menu was obviously for the Europeans, some of whom make breakfast an unbelievably huge main meal. There was fruit, fried rice, beans, steamed fish, fried fish and mussels, calamari and squid, German sausages, chicken, potatoes, fried bananas, pastas, stewed meats, (sometimes goat meat), as well as cereal and yogurt, eggs and pancakes and waffles. Lunch was the same selection, but with a chef carving a roast of pork, chicken or a turkey. (But without the eggs, waffles or toast, which us non-breakfast eaters would have preferred). For every meal there was a section where they would mix your own choice of pastas, with sauces and tomatoes and cheese. The Dinner Buffet was a smaller leftover version of Lunch. Rich tortes and pastries for dessert.
The first day at lunch, we found platters of kept barely warm hamburgers that were almost raw inside. With my BC fear of E-coli, I reported this with horror to our young Air Transat tour host, who came from Montreal. She looked at me much amused and put me down with, "But that's the way you're supposed to cook hamburgers, red inside, people like them that way. That's the only way we like them in Montreal. But if you don't like them, just give one to the cook and ask him to fry it well-done for you." E-coli? She has never heard of it.
Continental Europeans don't drink coffee with their meals, (coffee comes later) they drink either wine or beer, which was overflowing, and others drank soft drinks, so coffee service wasn't a priority. Spanish café-con-leche was served in small cups, half very strong coffee and half hot milk. Most waiters spoke almost no English so it was impossible to ask for cold milk and diluted coffee. Tea was a cup of warm water with a tea bag to dunk in it and a puzzled look if you asked for cold milk, whereupon they obliged by pouring the hot milk over the warm water and the teabag. I thought I was being helpful by describing to a Bavaro Customer Service girl how we brewed tea in a pot and drank it with optional sugar and milk. She had never heard about the way the English brew tea. It seemed like an unusual and complicated custom to her, not worth bothering the management about.
We gave up trying to make the staff understand us. They have a smattering of German and French and some have a little of English. With their limited free education, we could hardly expect them to study English after their 12-hour shifts, especially when most of their customers speak German or French. What was frustrating was trying to explain to the market sellers why we weren't interested in buying at the exorbitant prices they called their bottom price. Little Souvenirs similar to our own Dollar Store two-buck items were quoted "$10.00US, but for you, lady, only $3.50 US". And they would turn their backs in a huff as though we were insulting them when we said no.
And so we spent our lazy mornings by the pool watching a cute little German child who reminded us of our great-granddaughter. We joked with new friends from Montreal. (Laughter is bi-lingual!) and exchanged Email addresses with new friends from Ontario.
We spent afternoons on the beach watching the parasailers over our heads, the kids on the banana boats and the little hobies (catamarans with brightly colored sails), bouncing out to explore the reef. We stood in the water, waist deep, watching the little fish that gathered at our feet, attracted by our shadows. We walked up and down the beach, walking in to explore the other resorts along our way and stopping at the little market to watch the other tourists bargain with the souvenir sellers and barter for rum.
We spent much of our time on our beach lounges shamelessly ogling. I am adamant for women's right to go as topless as men and many women were bralessly sunbathing, especially the Europeans. However, the parade of topless girls with only a Spandex fig leaf frontal patch, held in place by a narrow thong, who were power walking or prancing back and forth along the beach, were obviously already pre-tanned at the spa before they came. Tanning and exercise wasn't their motive being regarded as a sex object was -- so forget Women's Lib.
We often argued whether we were ogling a flat-chested girl or a well-breasted man. Or did the skinny one bouncing along the beach with disproportionate boobs have breast implants? (Strangely enough, Earl was a better ogler than me at figuring this out.) From my elderly viewpoint, I also amused myself trying to fathom the inflated self-images motivating many pot-bellied thirty-something male tourists. They strode around with their scrotums concealed in fluorescent "look at me!" patterned pouches suspended from shoelace thick thongs, and some had so many tattoos they looked like they had either come from the Planet of the Lizard People or had varicose veins. It was beyond my (admittedly ancient) comprehension how this enhanced their sex appeal or that a shoelace-wide thong up your posterior could be comfortable. Even the girls keep yanking and tugging and repositioning.
My own opinion was that optional complete nudity would make so much more sense, but then I tried to imagine how it would be if everyone on the beach looked alike without a personal fashion statement to identify them. What would I have said to Earl during one of my ogles instead of "See that patriotic American over there? The muscle boy with the rings in his pecs. He's with the topless girl in the gold sparkle bikini, with the nipple rings and the rhinestones in her navel. He has an American flag tattooed on his back and his balls are covered with red, white and blue stars and stripes."
On our last day we gave the used suitable clothing, shoes, school supplies, maps showing Canada, small stuffed toys and new toothbrushes (we always take to poorer-than-us countries), to the room maids and the market kids. And on the last day by the pool while Earl was getting us pina coladas, I gave away his beach shoes to a sad looking girl from the cleaning staff, so he had to walk back to our room in his bare feet.
We enjoyed out trip, we never got bored and we brought most of our reading material back home with us. All we declared at customs was two bottles of rum for $15 dollars, a ceramic wind chime and a painted wooden parrot. We named the parrot Lazarus after that parrot joke you must have all heard. He will hang out on our patio looking into the living room as though he is saying, "Jesus is watching you!" And that way, we will remember our trip to the Dominican Republic.
~~ Daphne Wilson
Here is the parrot joke:
A burglar broke into a house and heard a voice saying "Jesus is watching you!" He was alarmed until he saw it was only a parrot. He went about his business while the parrot kept chanting, "Jesus is watching you" He yelled "Shut up! You're nothing but a stupid parrot. What's your name? The parrot replied, "Lazarus." The burglar laughed and said, "What kind of idiot would name a parrot Lazarus?" And the parrot replied "the same kind of idiot that named the Pit Bull over there, Jesus!"
