Caribbean Vacation Part 1 - Dominican Republic

Post written by AI. Photo captions are manual.

Story

Late November / early December 2024 we kicked off a Caribbean stretch in Santo Domingo. I'd been dreaming about the DR for a long time, and finally getting to see it in person was a big deal for me (Nick). Spoiler: it's a very loud country. We loved it anyway.

We stayed in the Zona Colonial and kept getting surprised by how old everything was - not in an infomercial way, more in a "wait, we never put two and two together that this is where the first settlers were, so of course the buildings are ancient" way. We saw the oldest continually operating church in the Americas and Columbus's church. The age of the place just hits differently when you're walking around with snack bags and tired toddlers.

We did a choo choo train tour around the city - entirely in Spanish. We were not prepared. Also hit Sambil mall, which delivered peak "people living their normal lives" energy: aquarium in the basement, and from one spot in the upstairs food court we could see five birthday parties happening at once. That alone was worth the trip.

Cave day started as aquarium day. We got there and it was closed. Mild panic. I used my Spanish to ask our Uber driver to take us to Los Tres Ojos instead, and that turned into one of the best pivots of the trip. On the way back we even passed Columbus's tomb / the big Faro a Colón complex - I didn't really know what I was looking at in the moment, then researched it later and realized we'd stumbled past something huge and cool.

Almost-chance of the trip: the week before, while I was in NYC for work, my Uber driver happened to be from the DR. I got his number, he introduced me to his sister in Santo Domingo, and she just happened to be a ticket scalper for Tigres del Licey games. We were going to go... then I had ear issues after the flight and felt awful, so we skipped it. Still a very cool almost.

Then we flew west to Puerto Rico.