Hispaniola - Day 0 - Another Year of Travel

“Hispaniola”

1/13/17, “Another Year of Travel”

John F. Kennedy International Airport, New York (JFK)

And so begins another year of travel, the last year of this Travelogue, in fact.  That is not to say that I will stop travelling (or even stop writing), but this blog’s mission is clearly defined in its URL.  5 Years, 17 Goals.  After I have finished my five-year mission and accomplished all 17 Goals, I will have new goals for myself and undertake new trips in the years to come, but whatever adventures may follow, those exploits will not be recorded in this blog.

I am right on target to accomplish all 17 Goals by the time my five-year mission comes to a close later this year, but doing so requires utilizing every holiday weekend.  The way the calendar has been falling the past couple of years, MLK weekend has been coming earlier and earlier.  I only have one weekend in New York to recover from my epic New Year’s trip before I take off again.  Last year it was Mexico, the year before Belize, and this year Hispaniola.

This trip will begin what I am calling the “Year of the Islands”, and it promises to be an epic year to the remaining islands I need to visit to finish my quest.  In the next 6 months (to the day, in fact), my mission will take me to Socorro Island (Mexico), the US Virgin Islands, Puerto Rico, the Queen Charlotte Islands (Canada), Iceland, Greenland, and Newfoundland before I embark on the final trip of this quest to a large number of islands in the South Pacific.  I will also have a few domestic trips to the continental US to finish off some National Park Sites, but every international trip I take this year will be to an island, starting with this one to the island of Hispaniola, the last island I need to visit in the West Indies.

Will I be visiting the beach when I travel to these islands?  Of course not!  Have you not been reading along for the past four years?  This trip will represent the last two countries I need to visit in the West Indies, and, by the end of this trip, I will have visited 16 of the 17 national legislative buildings in North America.  What will be missing?  The one in Iceland.

I know I will catch some flak for declaring that Iceland is in North America, but I invite my readers to look at his or her map.  Look at the narrow distance between Canada and Greenland and the narrow distance between Greenland and Iceland.  Both of those distances are much narrower than the distance between Iceland and Britain.  Geologically, the North American and European continental plates meet in Iceland, at the site of their old parliament.  However, the modern parliament in Reykjavik is clearly on the North American side.

It is interesting to note, by a similar understanding, that Hawaii is actually in Oceania, not North America.  Therefore, when I say, “North America Complete”, it will be in Newfoundland (or Labrador), not in Hawaii, and I will reconfirm that statement when I revisit the Capitol Building in DC a couple of weeks later.  These types of considerations are the things I must constantly considering in planning and arranging my trips so that I don’t wind up planning three different trips to the Caribbean in the same month or some such inelegance.

There has been an elegance to the way I have arranged all of my trips, and combining the Dominican Republic and Haiti into one trip was one such elegance.  It would have been very easy to do these as two separate trips, but covering all of Hispaniola in one trip was far more elegant, and far more difficult.  A similar elegance occurred three years ago when I took what I called my “WWI” trip, which took me to Yugoslavia, Austria, Hungary, and Turkey.  I will leave it to my reader’s imagination to figure out why I called that my “WWI” trip.  Okay, enough about this.  I have a Day 0 to record.

I have been making it my tradition to actually begin these Day 0 entries with the recording of my Night -1.  I went to see Silence, the movie that, in my opinion, should win Best Picture (and Director and Screenplay and Cinematography and Costuming and Production Design and Sound Mixing).  However, due to the current “mood” of Hollywood, they are choosing “escapism” over “realism” this year.  That means that a deeply intense religious movie has no place in this year’s Oscar’s race.  Instead of this movie winning 7 Oscars, those Oscars will go to a feel-good musical.  The movie I saw last night was one of the best things Martin Scorsese has have brought to the screen, and that’s saying a lot, since he’s my favorite director.

That movie was called “Silence.”  It was about Jesuit missionaries in 17^th Century Japan, who must choose what torture and torment they will sooner endure than abandon their faith.  Everything about it was just entirely intense and authentic and perfectly done.  After the movie, I went home, with my popcorn refill, and packed.  In the morning, when I was finishing packing, I realized that I didn’t have enough to fill a suitcase, so I just put my clothes in a thick plastic bag, and used that.  I also brought the popcorn to the office, which caused a bit of a commotion.

My friend Connor was in town this weekend, and I hadn’t seen him in months, but we would only be able to meet for lunch, though we will be seeing each other in New Mexico at the end of the month.  We went to Hop Won, and I got my pre-departure lunch of an egg roll and spare ribs.  I then lit up a Cohiba, and we stood outside in front of the spot of the old cigar store.  I couldn’t finish my cigar in time, so I left it in the planters across from Grand Central before going back to the office.

We closed at 3:30 PM, which didn’t give me enough time to regain my appetite, so the popcorn stayed in the fridge, and I also figured that, since I had been upgraded to Business Class, I would get dinner at the SkyClub.  I would take the express bus to the airport, which gave me time to finish my cigar before the bus left at 4 PM.  We were at the airport a little after 5 PM.  My flight was not until 7:51 PM, so plenty of time.

I went through security and then headed to the SkyClub, but, to my disappointment, I was told I did not have complimentary access, since they did not consider the Caribbean to be an international flight.  Dafuq?!?  They consider Canada to be international, but not the Caribbean???  That made no sense!  I would be getting dinner on the plane, so I didn’t want to get food now, but I also knew that I could not wait 3 hours to eat.  I took the escalator back down and looked wistfully through the window at the lounge to which I was denied access.  I got a soda and bag of chips, which would keep me full until they served dinner and then headed to the gate, where I sat down and a proceeded to write this entry, which I will now close, as we will soon start boarding.

Santo Domingo, Dominican Republic

Well, here I am, in the famous, historic Colonial capital of the Dominican Republic, which I will be able to claim as my 70^th country after my Official meal tomorrow morning.  I am in Christopher Columbus Park, whom the locals know instead by the surname Colon (is that where the term Colonial comes from?), staring at a statue of him in front of the oldest cathedral in the Americas.  Apparently, Catholicism took root here far better than it did in Japan, if the movie I saw last night is any guide.  I am very much looking forward to that first cup of Dominican coffee tomorrow morning.

It is of significant note that I am now in the Dominican Republic, and, every time I open this Travelogue, I am met with a similar sounding dateline.  “Rosalie, Dominica” is where this Travelogue began.  Also known as the Commonwealth of Dominica, it is not to be confused with this country, the Dominican Republic, though coffee from either country would properly be considered “Dominican”.  I am approaching a million words in this Travelogue.  That is not an exaggeration.  The word count (excluding the lost Antwerp entry) now exceeds 987,000 words.  I might reach my millionth word by the end of this trip.

I certainly did not expect it become this expansive when I sat down and typed the words that I can recount from memory: “I woke up at 4:40 AM this morning to begin my southward journey.”  Okay, it’s actually, “I woke up this morning at 4:40 AM to start my southbound journey.”  Close enough.  I am approaching a million words, but those 13 words (16 including the dateline) started it all.  From Dominica to the Dominican Republic, I have been travelling the world, just as I planned to when I set out to see the world and with far more success than I dared even dream.  Four years ago, Dominica was my 10^th country.  The Dominican Republic will be my 70^th.  Okay, enough nostalgia, I have an entry to write.

After I closed, we soon boarded, and I settled in to my seat.  They served sparkling wine as soon as we sat down, and I opted to watch Captain Fantastic for the flight, which is on the bubble for Best Actor (Viggo Mortensen) and Original Screenplay Oscar Nominations.  The movie as a whole fell flat, but Viggo was the script, and the script was Viggo, so you can’t have one without the other.  I would be happy to see both nominations come through, since Viggo was excellent, as was the script.

They soon brought dinner, which was a nice piece of steak with rice.  There were also plenty of snacks, but I couldn’t stop thinking about that popcorn in the fridge.  I love cold popcorn, I really do.  The butter (or fake butter topping) really seeps in and saturates the kernels.  It’s glorious.  They then passed around the landing cards, and I tried to take a nap, but I couldn’t quite get comfortable.

I was the first one off the plane, but there was a bit an issue in getting a tourist card, as they were not prepared for the flight of Americans for some reason.  I was first on line, so I got my card as soon as they figured out the problem and then cleared border control with no issue.  I was at the taxi area within about fifteen minutes of us landing.  It was before our scheduled departure time.  I was supposed to have a driver arranged by the hotel waiting for me, but he wasn’t there, so they said to just take a regular taxi.  It was before 1:30 AM local time (an hour ahead of NYC time) when I got to the hotel, and I checked in and settled into my room.

I changed into some more casual clothes and went outside to the plaza, where I lit up a Partagas, sat down in view of the Cathedral, and proceeded to write this entry, which I will now close so that I can publish and get some sleep.  Tomorrow, I will be able to claim the Dominican Republic as my 70^th country and say, “Dominican Republic Complete”, over the span of less than hour.  In fact, all I have to do after I say “70” at breakfast is finish my breakfast and walk across the street to take my ceremonial picture in front of the Cathedral before I can say, “Dominican Republic Complete.”  That will give me the rest of the day to explore, which should make tomorrow a fun day.