By Yvette Aubusson-Foley Add From Dubbo Photo News

Don’t you hate it when your expectations of a place are surpassed beyond imagination on one hand yet buried alive on the other?

Travelling is never all rainbows and butterflies but the Caribbean definitely sells itself as something that in reality may no longer actually exist.

The Dominican Republic shares Hispaniola Island with Haiti and is part of the Greater Antilles archipelago in the Caribbean.

It’s probably not a top destination but I flew there recently via Miami, Florida over the Bahamas, left of Cuba (still a dirty word in the USA) and touched down onto Dominican soil, once the Saudi-oil-field-equivalent of the world’s supply of sugar.

Just the names, Bahamas, Cuba and Puerto Rico whose shores are washed by the Caribbean Sea’s warm currents (and slammed by the occasional hurricane) conjure picture postcard possibilities of palm fronds, blue lagoons, ribbons of reef and dark blue waters where Spanish armadas, desperate pirates and ruthless slave traders navigated their names into legend.

Haiti, unfortunately, fell off this map of tropical delights – ruined by 2010’s earthquake, deforested by a then needy government, leaving three million people in the capital, Port-au-Prince, without running water or sewerage, even today. Many flee to the slums of the Dominican Republic in search of a better life.

And there are plenty of slums to choose from around Santo Domingo, the republic’s capital.

Most people here are descendants of African slaves who were ferried to the region from the early 1500s until late 19th century (despite international law). The native people, called the Taino (pronounced Ta-hi-no), who had been living in paradise quite nicely thank you very much before anyone else arrived, were enslaved, worked and/or diseased into extinction paving the way for Africans.

Funded by the Spanish royal purse of the day, Hispaniola was discovered by Portuguese explorer Christopher Columbus (Cristobal Colon) in 1492, settled and exploited by the Spanish, who used Santo Domingo as their home base to conquer the Aztecs and Incans.

Probably a highlight to visiting Santo Domingo was going to the 600 foot-long cross shaped Faro a Colon (Columbus’s Lighthouse), a looming grey cement monument to the discovery of the Americas where Columbus’ remains are kept on display in an ornate treasure chest.

His son, Diego, was a governor of Santo Domingo whose palace home (Alcazar de Colon) still stands as a museum to renaissance life with significant and original tapestries and artifacts from the times he rubbed shoulders with Spain’s King (Mrs Columbus Jnr was the king’s niece); Hernan Cortes, conqueror of the Aztecs, Francisco Pizarro, conqueror of Peru, Diego Velasquez, conqueror of Cuba, and Alonso de Ojeda, who explored and named Venezuela and founded Santa Cruz.

Oh, the stories they could tell.

For me though, walking in the footsteps of Sir Francis Drake, who sacked Santo Domingo in the 1580s, was the cherry, historically speaking, on an awe-inspiring cake because Frank is the godfather of my childhood dream to travel.

There are many differences to his and my approach. I don’t favour puffy pants, ruffled neck collars or heels when exploring but after my visit to the Dominican I’m willing to get by, like Frank had to, without the help of Lonely Planet or Frommer’s travel guides.

Both would have you believe the nearest seaside resort outside Santo Domingo called Boca Chica is “one of the most beautiful beaches in the Caribbean”.

Done deal, let’s go. Balmy days and star filled nights, coco milk straight from the nut and tropical ocean breezes, here I come.

All that experience is definitely there for the taking if you’re staying at a location with policed private beaches, which Boca Chica does not have, with one exception if you’re willing to ignore that hotel’s reviews about terrible food, prostitutes in the foyer and no air conditioning.

Here is Boca Chica’s realidad (that’s reality, in Spanish). Boca Chica town? Think, old Soweto by day and sleazy Bangkok by night.

Beach when the tide goes out? 15 feet wide. Two to three star hotels and restaurants? Wall to wall, one inch from the sand, the entire beach length. Banana chairs? Think stock market. Negotiable for a fluctuating fee depending on the colour of your skin, just don’t bring your own refreshments or food because your sorry tourist behind will be ripped off in both senses of the word.

Western and local music, known as merengue (pronounced ma-ran-gay), blares from every restaurant but what shocked me the most was just how much I am not into listening ad infinitum to spoken Spanish.

I have no prejudice toward the speakers. I’m a closet linguist at heart but from sample observations I can report breathing and pausing are not features. Neither is it to be spoken softly, so after a couple of hours “relaxing” on my sliver of crowded beach, I secretly wished to be tasered.

If you read my Weekender pieces regularly, you’ll know the universe and I have an ongoing dialogue, so no surprises then that a hawker should pass by waving an object emitting that unmistakable violent crack, to advertise he has tasers for sale. I decided to hang in there with the Spanish.

Averaging two hawkers for every seaside guest forget about calling the police if you feel harassed because the cops are all in on it.

Remember the Soweto poverty analogy? I opted to sit on the sand to guard our stuff while the family swam and thus bill-boarded my white skin to offers of foot massages (tempting), bracelets (bought one), necklaces, sunglasses, baseball hats, DVDs, music CDs, coconuts, lollipops, blowup swim rings, condoms or large six by six feet paintings. My husband was offered drugs and Viagra.

These are desperately poor people but after the tenth time for each and every item in the space of an hour sensing my rose-coloured-glasses version of the Caribbean was dead in the water, I had to admit, this is paradise lost.

When the weekend crowds were gone we did indeed swan about in the blue waters without harassment and the next day lots of children arrived and I shared a delightful experience with a group of kids who spoke as much English as I do Spanish or Creole.

We laughed our way through mimed conservations, lolling about in the lagoon and taking photos of each other. Sadly the sea floor in the lagoon is completely dead except for a rock or two, which was home to a few little tiny fish, clinging to life.

We enjoyed freshly caught and cooked fish for lunch made in a little back street stall served with a local side, tostones, a type of fried banana and delicious!

To be fair, it is what it is. Here is a country passionately proud of its liberation from Spanish control but struggling to find its feet, as do many colonies whether abandoned or fought for.

Like those tiny little fish surviving on a remnant of what must have been a glorious coral wonderland, the best of this part of the Caribbean has slipped a long way from the glory days when kings and conquerors roamed its shores, or more likely, because of them.

Watching fellow beach goers leave their rubbish to be dealt with by the tide, or the two boys begging for left overs from our restaurant lunch table, who greedily ate them as if it were their first meal in a long time, makes whining over the sound of grating Spanish beach chatter, or the fact I couldn’t see the sea because of hawkers carrying 30 swim rings, seems petty compared to the oceans of change the Dominican Republic must cross if it is to ever escape the enslavement of poverty and the social vulnerabilities that brings.

IMAGE: In the heart of the Zona Colonial, Santo Domingo stands a statue to Christopher Columbus, at his feet looking up adoringly is the naked figure of a Taino native who were wiped out by the arrival of the Spanish. Photos: Yvette Aubusson-Foley

For more on this story go to: http://dubbophotonews.com.au/index.php/dpn/categories/opinion-analysis/item/3313-reality-bursts-the-dream-in-a-paradise-lost