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CP Abroad: Holiday in Hispaniola
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CP Abroad: Holiday in Hispaniola
Good readers of the Clogosphere,
Little story about the best-laid plans and whatnot.
I'll be out of the office next week on a sorely needed respite from the snow and drudgery that's become this Philadelphia winter. The girlfriend and I had been hoping to skip the country for a long getaway for, oh, a year or so now. We'd thought about New Zealand … and Spain … and Peru. All of which were enticing but, to varying degrees, beyond our budgets. So, on January 9, 2010, booked a week-long trip to … The Dominican Republic. Of course, three days later, a massive earthquake struck the DR's Hispaniola neighbors Haiti, causing one of the great disasters of our time.
We were, of course, concerned about how to proceed. Would it be safe to go? Would we be able to help or volunteer? Should we cancel our plans?
What we found out was that life was continuing pretty much as usual in the largely un-affected DR and, despite our best efforts, no organization wanted volunteers of the "less-than-10-years-of-disaster-relief-experience" variety, let alone of the "no-disaster-relief-experience-at-all" variety.
So we're going on vacation. To the Dominican Republic. (We'll be sure to buckle our seatbelts.) At a time that could be conservatively considered "tenuous."
Not sure how much we'll be able to report from the trip (you can follow along on Twitter, provided my Android gets any data service), though you can expect a full account upon our return.
And if anyone's got any recommendations in the DR — we'll be splitting our time between Santo Domingo's Zona Colonial and the Samaná peninsula town of Las Terrenas — please post them here, or Tweet 'em to @beegee73.
And if you haven't yet given any money to Haiti relief, or if you haven't since the quake but were wondering if you should, please consider donating. I suggest Doctors Without Borders, but there are plenty of other worthwhile causes out there as well.
i pretty much did your trip this past july. we took a guagua back and forth which was both exciting and terrifying. at one point, i really thought we were going to have the push the bus up the mountain. getting to las terrenas was fine, but they charged us extra on the way back because we were two white girls. don't be afraid of the montoconchos in las terrenas, they're the only way to get around. and the el limon waterfall was pretty cool, plus santi's crew makes a good lunch: http://www.samana.net/santi-berca.html
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