The reason, inversely, for her sense of loyalty to him was that he had paid for the best medical care money could buy to try to save the life of her teenage daughter who had been struck by a rare and life threatening disease. He was not her biological father but nevertheless assumed that kind of responsibility. The real local father had of course disappeared long before the baby was even born and left her to care for herself and the newborn as best she could. In other words, there was a sense of conflict in her relationship with this elderly gentleman. On the one hand she still felt she owed him gratitude for what he had done for her. On the other she didn’t really want to spend the rest of his days together with him. As he was not in the country right now she felt free to accept my invitations.
We went out a couple of times to have drinks and/or dinner and it was on one of these occasions I made the observation that there were at least two or three guys apart from me among the thirty or so girls to be seen in our bar, in the main street and its adjacent joints. ‘Oh those’, Olga said, ‘those are just the chulos (pimps) of some of the girls, so as a matter of fact you’re pretty much the only potential client around right now.’
As can be expected there are quite a lot of male gringos and Europeans spending boreal winter months in this nicely temperate location, where, apart from some more typical American style resorts, there are many budget hotels where the coming and going of the girls is unimpeded by police, gate security, receptionists and corporate policies. Most of the girls actually seem to prefer to stick around a specific guy for as long as he stays there, and sometimes even moves in with him. This arrangement doesn’t normally prevent the same men from occasionally taking another chica for the night, or just for some afternoon fun. On the whole, the easy acceptance of male sexuality being geared towards variation is quite remarkable, and whatever feminist moralists say to denigrate men dealing in prostitution, the white blokes from America or Europe are certainly not any worse than the local males who won’t even pay for getting laid and in all other respects as well treat their women like dirt.
It might be unfortunate that women in this part of the world, or elsewhere, feel tempted to sell their bodies, but it’s sometimes in our enlightened press made to sound a good deal uglier than it really is, the entire Latin world being full of social insecurity and poverty, making the predicament of single women left with perhaps several children to raise and take care of extremely precarious. To find a white man also willing to pay for the needs of the latter is quite a bargain. Although I can very well can understand that Olga felt reluctant to accept an invitation to marry a man twice her age just to be relieved from cleaning laundry in a hotel, there are a lot of other cases where the difference in age is not that great, and where there can even be a question of mutual attraction, physical as well as emotional.
By standard western, feminist, definition it’s still prostitution for sure. To which I would reply that there are many women in our northern societies who are really nothing but putas, only they don’t come across as such since they don’t charge you an explicit fee every time you have sex with them. However, when they do cash in, they’re not just happy to take your entire wallet, but also your house, your car, your boat, and everything else they could possibly come to think of and lay their hands on. Thus prostitution is just as common on northern latitudes, only it’s incomparably more expensive for the buyer. For this reason I can understand the men who don’t want to be stripped of everything they own a second time, and to this end have opted for an easier, financially viable and more convenient solution.
Galéras
There is a popular saying among the expats of Galéras: ‘This is not the ass of the world, but you can see it from here’. The same expats — whether from Holland, Britain, Germany, Belgium, France, Canada or the United States — have one well maintained conviction in common: the place — meaning the combined effects of landscape, sea and the characteristics of its human population — is impossible to adequately describe to an outsider. For an ambitious writer and, precisely, an outsider, there can thus be nothing more challenging or tempting than to try to do so all the same.
It’s almost like a sunset. I don’t mean a sunset per se, but the equivalent of a sunset. I mean, there is a very good reason why distinguished artists throughout history have cautiously avoided to painting sunsets. Monet did a few, but if you look closely you’ll see that he preferred to pick misty days in rainy London where the declining sun becomes a single spot of light surrounded by haze. That’s a luminous effect, not a sunset. Perhaps the only really first rate artist I know of who saw nothing objectionable in turning a canvas into a pandemonium of colours, reminiscent of the sea and the atmosphere lit up by a setting sun, is J.M.W. Turner. He did it, and although it’s all an inch away from pure kitsch, it never oversteps that fine line; that, I believe, is the essence of his genius. There is a profound and altogether sincere feeling invested in his artistic rendering of these oblique rays spreading their peacock feathers across the sky. I also believe it was the sincerity in his awe for perhaps the greatest of all natural wonders that saved him from falling into the abyss of aborted Western art. He was also lucky enough to live at a time in European history where the word pathetic still conveyed an altogether positive meaning. Other distinguished artists know, more or less instinctively, that to try to rival nature in a sunset would end up in disaster: it would be like trying to outdo the Himalayas by raising a tower or a pyramid from out of one of its valleys. Ludicrous: the tower or the pyramid are only impressive in the flat lands.
Turner was blessed with the natural eccentricity, naiveté and innocence of a child (this is also why he sometimes loved to indulge in erotic art too!) while his technique from early on was that of a fully-fledged mature artist at the height of his powers. For this reason he could do what nobody else was even dreaming of attempting. I find it significant that his last words are quoted as: ‘The sun is God’, and that he had stipulated in his will the setting up of a fund for ‘decayed artists’ — a request of course ignored by the greedy handler of his estate.
The most obvious trait of the village of Galéras, on the other hand, is that it coincides with both a land’s and a road’s end. The road from the town of Samaná, located on the southern shores of the eponymous peninsula, literally leads straight into the ocean. Galéras is only 26 kilometres away from Samaná, close to the north-eastern tip of the peninsula. Yet it’s a world unto itself. It is perhaps the lushest part of the entire island of Hispaniola: always deeply green, even at times when other parts of the island experience seasonal drought. It is also one of the wildest and least exploited regions of the country, and has been so since time immemorial. The wide bay south, east and west of Samaná is home not only to the spectacular spawning of humpback whales, but also to an archipelago of intimate cayos (keys), among these the infamous Bacardi island, so-called because it was here in the 1970s that Bacardi shot a commercial which has since remained world famous.
The town of Samaná itself, in the vernacular of Baedeker’s, has ‘little of particular interest to offer the tourist’, but its surroundings were once highly praised for their natural beauty by no less a man than Columbus. Later Napoleon had far reaching plans of turning its natural harbour into a major Caribbean hub, capable of rivalling in commercial importance both Cuban Havana and Puerto Rican San Juan. Of this came nothing except a bridge between the keys closest to town and an eagle’s nest luxury hotel, a hint, no more, of what could, perhaps, have become a veritable Caribbean hotspot. Although this never happened there are still private yachts of some standing anchored off the beaches, and the big international cruise ships seldom fail to court the keys, especially during the whale season from January to April.
The town itself has critically failed to capitalise on its privileged location. Instead of moving hotels, cafes, bars and restaurants up to the waterfront and make its malecon one of the most spectacular boardwalks in the entire Caribbe
an, it has cut the town off from its waters by allowing the main road to run in between the sea and the few cafes dotting its perimetre. I don’t hesitate to blame the local population for this lack of opportunism. Notwithstanding that the Dominican government has shown itself notoriously uninterested in furthering regional development, the mixture of Spanish gypsies (imported in the 19th and early 20th century from the old motherland to settle these remote areas), international swashbucklers and ancient African slaves here has created an ethnic mix that arguable belongs to the most unruly and, without doubt, to the crudest and, above all, rudest populations in this part of the world. Educated people are rare and far in between, and we’re still talking about the townsfolk. Venturing into the hinterland can quickly turn into a traumatising modern day ‘Heart-of-Darkness’ experience, shattering conventional Western morality and prejudice like a machete splitting a coconut.
This is a country where a girl of 13 is being ‘broken in’ and thereby declared ready for pregnancy by her close male relatives. By the age of 18 she’s already the mother of three, none of whom has a father assuming any kind of responsibility. At the age of 25 she’s considered too old to be of sexual interest to any her kinsfolk and only good enough for the ‘tourist trade’. Rape, murder and theft belong to the order of the day, and people regularly disappear without a trace. The police — so badly paid that bribes and financial cuts provided by criminal elements are the only effective means of making a tolerable living — sometimes pretend to combat crime. It’s very doubtful in how far they actually succeed, or even want to succeed. Judging from the appalling number of unsolved cases the level of ambition can’t be very high in this regard.
Even though the majority of people, even in more remote villages, do show some common decency in their daily dealings, the lack of central judicial control in this province simultaneously makes for excellent possibilities of escape, as well as of disappearance, for any individual intent on breaking the law. Galéras, to the northeast on the peninsula, is the last outpost still marked by post-colonial and neo-expat influence. It is located in the middle of a wide horseshoe bay, protected from the ceaseless pounding of the Atlantic by a myriad of submarine reefs, turning most of the water into a boiling witches’ cauldron. It has a couple of sandy beaches, its primus inter pares being Playa Rincón in the deepest and most tranquil corner of the bay: three miles of pristine, palm lined white beach set against a backdrop of wilderness. The outer ends of the gulf are framed by two mighty petrified arms made from razor sharp volcanic rock jutting into the sea like prehistoric monsters. The vegetation at the centre of this picture is so densely green that it bestows upon the landscape a metallic sheen; the skies and their luminous hues forever shifting.
Beyond the western outskirts of Galéras there is not a single building to behold, only a gloomy ruin at a distance so hazed that it might just as well be a vision of Cerberus’ doghouse before the Gates of Hades. The slopes winding down to Cabo Cabrón, at the northern land’s end, apart from a few cultivated fields, are covered in an impenetrable thicket, whipped and kept close to the ground by tropical squalls. The Atlantic swell, mostly prompted by an easterly trade wind, splashes against huge distant rocks and deep caves in foamy cascades that occasionally stand fifty metres tall. The inner bay in contrast, opening and disappearing towards a more secluded west, is protected against the direct onslaught of the trade winds by the north-eastern promontory, the majestic twin-brother of the Cabo Cabrón. Beyond this point some of the most original and unspoiled beaches in the entire ‘civilised’ world can be visited by boat or on horseback. The zodiac, to round off the description of this eminently picturesque corner of the universe, runs diagonally across the bay, seldom or never presenting the spectacle of a sun either rising out of or setting directly into the sea. The Moon, the planets and all the stars of the galactic Orion arm visible to the naked eye follow suit, and turn the night sky into a magic cavern sprinkled with diamonds. The bay also has its own miniature key. Situated some 200 metres offshore in Galéras it puts the massive coastline in perspective, its few wind beaten palm trees conveying the image of prehistoric hieroglyphs scribbled on a mural of elemental wrath.
The human population attending to this grandiose spectacle consists of indigenous elements mixed with a colony of westerners, primarily of European and French-Canadian extraction. Americans on the other hand are not overly represented. The token representative I ran across — a profuse white beard crowned by a Santa’s cap set on a heavy trunk of Irish complexion driving up and down the muddy streets of town on a beach bug — turned out to be a complacent weed-puffing ex-copper from Boston. The majority of these immigrants are of surprisingly long standing and able to recall times when there was still only a dirt road from Samaná and the town had no central supply of electricity. Internet and phone operators too only arrived some years ago, although cell phones now are as ubiquitous as everywhere else on the planet. During the day the main street, being the only road to Samaná, bustles with activity, not the least from hundreds of scooters and motorcycles. Like in any typical tourist town, the main stretch features bars, restaurants, food stores, local art and souvenir markets. And like everywhere in the Dominican Republic the locals are constantly eager to advice the tourist on what to spend his money. On the whole the co-existence of Dominicans, interspersed with Haitian guest workers, and Europeans works out smoothly. The Dominicans by themselves would not even know where to start to make their town attractive to tourists. The Europeans, on the other hand, know that very well but they in turn need the Dominicans to work for them, and so relations are both symbiotic and of mutual gain in what is today, at least superficially, a thriving, if also somewhat surreal, international community.
There is so far only one major all-inclusive resort in the area, and it’s located a couple of kilometres outside town. In the village centre there are only smaller, private hotels, mostly owned by foreigners. But although the beaches surrounding Galéras are quite fascinating to walk and to look at — by some enthusiasts they have even been described as the epitome of Caribbean beauty — they are not particularly inviting for swimmers, at least not in the fall and early winter when the water, agitated by the trade winds, and regurgitated by the reefs, is muddy and the sandy ocean floor more often than not covered in seaweed, interspersed with small rocks. For this reason there is hardly any risk that Galéras will ever see a major tourist boom. It can’t really change into anything else than what it already is: the adorned end of the coastal road from Samaná. Thus the tourist venturing this far away from international and heavily exploited resort areas such as Punta Cana and Puerto Plata has already opted for a different and more adventurous holiday experience. I, as it turned out, had done the same. Only of how adventurous it was going to be, I was still ignorant.
A priori there was nothing wrong in my planning. Not only had I frequented, some weeks earlier, the all-inclusive hotel complex on a weekend trip with some friends. After having finished the concerts in Santo Domingo for which I had been contracted I again returned to Galéras, this time to stay at the remote El Cabíto, a hotel and restaurant located literally on a rock in the sea at the very far end of the last of muddy roads. Driving there on a motorcycle was an adventure in itself, especially at night. I had rented a bike directly from the gang providing motorbike taxi service in the village. I got a good price but there was of course no insurance included and before I was able to return the bike for good, I was more or less forced to pay for the replacement of the blink lights which had sustained minor injury as a consequence of my losing control of the vehicle in the dead of night on a steep uphill at zero speed. It would have been a piece of cake to glue the flexible rubber extension together that was upholding the blink lights on both sides. But the gang insisted they had to be replaced with brand new pieces. Luckily these weren’t too expensive, and so I finally paid up in order to have my peace of mind.
The incident itself occurred as I was on my way h
ome after having spent an entire evening in Little Germany. The bar-hotel-restaurant is actually owned and run by a Dominican woman, but she’s currently married to Mark, a German who grew up in Argentina and never since felt quite at home in his native country. When I turned up there he was drinking beer with Wolfgang, another inveterate German expat living in Galéras for the last 17 years and eerily reminiscent, both physically and by virtue of his somewhat brusque and anarchic manners, of a Swedish friend of mine.
There is a central crossing in town where all the local motorbike taxi drivers hang out. This corner is also like a Europe in miniature where you can walk over from Germany to France and from there to Italy in a matter of seconds. Restaurant El Tainos on the opposite side of ‘Little Germany’ is a stronghold for the French enclave to Galéras. It goes without saying that their restaurant, headed by a female cordon-bleu chef from Paris’s 1st arrondissement, is the best in town.
The owner, who used to run a brothel in Spain before he left Europe for new horizons, is originally from Toulouse. Small wonder that this is where I ended up having my dinners while in the village. Diagonally across the street from them is ‘Little Italy’ located, an Italian owned espresso and sandwich bar crowded with local mafiosi. It would be no exaggeration to say that these three places, clustered around a single road crossing, with almost uncanny accuracy represent three major European nations and their idiosyncrasies. Even though they sometimes pretend to be on friendly terms with one another, mutual animosity can be stirred up by the slightest provocation. At the end of the day the reason they just barely get along with one another seems to be that buildings can’t move.
Incidents of Travel in Latin America Page 10
