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The Dominican Republic has much to offer if you venture off the beaten track, away from the all-inclusive resorts and major metropolitan area of upscale Santo Domingo.
TheRealDominican would like to report on a tour of the mountain area near Jarabacoa, which is dubbed the Alps of the Caribbean.
When journalist Greg McMillan lived in the DR for seven years, he spent one year there, where he ran a computer/English school for country folk, both young and old. He recently returned to Jarabacoa for business and pleasure.
See this video by TheRealDominican touring the centre of town.
See a Jarabacoa photo essay by Greg McMillan that goes along with it.
See also: our latest installment of The Street, which shows what goes on when it rains in our Santo Domingo barrio. The photos were taken by a Dominican working under the tutelage and art direction of Greg McMillan.
See About Us
See The Street
Catalogue of photos in a Santo Domingo barrio.
See Fathering a Child in the Dominican
Mr. McMillan's personal account of his experiences with the judical system in the Dominican Republic, in a custody case involving his daughter, a Canadian citizen born in the DR.
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Oct. 30, 2007Background
In the beginning
The year was 1999. Hurricane George had just swept through the Caribbean, devastating Hispaniola, an island that the Spanish-speaking Dominican Republic shares with Haiti. For Greg McMillan, a Canadian journalist looking for an exotic Third World location where he could research and write a reality-based book based on a different way of life, it seemed the perfect destination.
What was originally envisioned as a two-year project, however, turned into a 7-year living dream / living nightmare, that gave him much more than he originally bargained for. Talk about perspective. Talk about survival. His experience was no two-week vacation holiday to an all-inclusive resort É although that is the common reference point for foreigners when they think about the Dominican Republic.
No, he lived outside that world. He found positives, he found negatives, but he mostly found profound differences in every facet of daily life in the DR. The articles he will write on TheRealDominican.com will convey it all. They will be newsworthy, mostly undocumented elsewhere. At times, perhaps readers will be unnerved. At times amused. At times entertained. Always informed. Vignettes, stories and cautionary tales will follow no particular chronological pattern, but will be mainly theme-based and all will strive to paint a vivid picture of day-to-day existence.
The next step
The Dominican Republic has changed dramatically since journalist Greg McMillan lived there from 1999 to 2005. More development, more investment, more crime, more drugs, more notoriety. It remains a visual paradise, but you have to know your way around. You have to be much more careful today.
Mr. McMillan returned to the Dominican Republic in July 2007, after leaving nearly two years earlier with his daughter. He received a personal invitation from the Dominican government to attend the first international agricultural trade show in Santo Domingo, the capital city.
He made valuable business contacts and also travelled to the interior and met with cigar and coffee manufacturers. Investment possibilities have never been better, as Canada has entered into free trade negotiations with the Dominican Republic.
The cost of living in the impoverished country has skyrocketed. It is not an easy place to survive in, and the natives are becoming increasingly desperate.
Saying that, there are opportunities if you hook up with the right people. Exports and trade agreements are on the rise.
TheRealDominican.com is planning to find the nuggets and make them available to the outside world. It could be coffee, it could be cigars, it could be precious stones, it could be authentic, quality art.
But it won't be the tourist-trade trinkets or souvenirs.
And TheRealDominican.com will continue to try to help the downtrodden and underprivileged.
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