We've survived 3 months in the DR!!

I think I’ve mentioned before that Bamboo is the neighborhood watch dog. He barks at anyone who he thinks shouldn’t be here whether they are on foot, motorcycle or in a car. Saturday night we were sitting in our office and heard Bamboo barking like crazy. I knew Tony and Linda were out and there wasn’t anyone next door either, so I went out to see what he was fussing about. He was barking at something in the area of Pablo’s house (the one under construction). Steve was close behind me with a flashlight.

When he shined it in the direction in which Bamboo was barking, we could see a man sitting on the front porch of Pablo’s house. “¿Por que usted aqui? (Why are you here?)” I asked. “No es su casa! (This is not your house!)” He had a flashlight and gestured to the materials in front of the house and back at the house while speaking very quickly in Spanish…none of which I understood! “Securidad? (Security?)” I asked. “Si”, he answered. “¿Para qien? (for who)”, I asked. He rattled off a name – but it wasn’t Pablo or Century 21, so we wondered if it was the contractor he named. “Llamo Pablo y pregunde (I will call Pablo and ask)”, I said. He said ok and seemed unconcerned that we were giving him the 1st degree, so we thought perhaps he was legit. (Now no one needs to go check to see if my Spanish is ACCURATE…I’m sure it was pretty sketchy…but at least I got the message across - I think?)

What he didn’t know is that I don’t have Pablo’s number (!), but I did call Al & Glenda…no answer. Next I called Tony & Linda to let them know he was sitting out there – so they wouldn’t be surprised when they arrived home. Tony apparently does have Pablo’s number, but didn’t have his phone with him. In the meantime, Steve took Bamboo, the watch dog, home and told Charles as well. So the neighborhood watch team was in full force!




We had a busy day Sunday. I vacuumed the house while Steve fixed breakfast, then we each headed off to tackle our to-do lists. I painted the propane casita (inside and out) and gave the wall it’s on and the one adjacent a fresh coat of paint as well. Check out the "before" and "after" pictures!!



Then I came inside to paint the area on the kitchen wall where there used to be an A/C unit (we sold it to Pam and Dennis since we didn’t need 5 units in a house this size!). Steve got our solar motion detector light installed on the casita and worked on some of the windows in the house that weren’t closing properly.

Next…doggie haircuts! Both Dusty and Sierra got a trim (Sierra refused to pose for a picture – but don’t worry, she doesn’t look bad!). Dusty, however, was happy to show off his new doo! Then after washing the dog hair off of us, we jumped in the pool for a while – dogs included. We let them run around for a while, then captured them to give them each a shampoo/conditioner and a rinse (gotta keep that chlorine off as we now know). After that they were racing around the yard, chasing each other, then rolling in the grass and having a good time.

Finally, after showers, we decided to try our hand at making flour tortillas. We were so spoiled back home – having access to fresh tortillas. The kind we can get here are really not very good, so we figured anything we made had to be better! And they were. Not nearly as good as what we used to get at Carlos’ store, but definitely an improvement over the store-bought version here. With a little practice, we’ll be set.

Monday morning I woke up with a scratchy throat, so decided I’d just go back to bed for another, oh, 30 minutes or so. An hour and a half later, I woke up! My throat was better but my right eye was teary and burning. I took out my contacts and started putting warm compresses on it – in hopes that I could nip whatever it was in the bud. Well, it was a good thought, but my eye just got worse and worse as the day went on, so we finally decided that it would be best to go to the clinic to have it checked out…and test out our DR health insurance!

There’s a very nice, 1-year old clinic/hospital about ½ a mile from our house. We weren’t sure what to expect – or even where to go when we got there. Since it wasn’t technically an “emergency”, we didn’t go through that door, but rather, went through the main entrance to the hospital. The receptionist was on the phone & while we waited for her to finish, a very nice lady walked out and offered to help us. I showed her my eye and she quickly took us back to talk to a doctor – in his office!

Fortunately he spoke very good English. Interestingly, one of the first questions he asked was not “do you have insurance”, but rather “do you live here?” – very different than in the States!! He took us back to the emergency area. After getting us settled and talking to the nurse briefly, he left. She looked at my eye, got a little information from me, then disappeared for a few minutes. When she returned, she told us to come with her for a consultation with another doctor.

We followed her down the hall. The first doctor who helped us saw us and asked the nurse where she was taking us. She told him where she was taking us and he said “oh, no, no, no – that will be much more expensive. I’ll tell you what you need to do.” So we turned around and went back to the emergency area. He told her to wash my eye out, give me some drops & a hydrocortisone shot for the inflammation. He told me to come back in 3 days to have it checked and if it got worse, come back sooner.

I asked him his name (Roberto something – I missed the last name). Turns out he’s a brain surgeon and the director of the hospital! He was incredibly nice, very down-to-earth. Although I hope neither of us ever needs his “true” services, we both felt like we would be in good hands if we did!

The nurse then proceeded to treat my eye, and while she did some paperwork, another one gave me my hydrocortisone. The first nurse asked Steve my age – and when he told her, she said “Really?! I would have guessed she was younger!” That really made my day – especially since I wasn’t feeling (or looking) so great!!

As is typical of emergency rooms, this one also had some interesting things going on in the other areas. I couldn’t see them (literally), but Steve had a good vantage point and was relating telling me what was happening.

First an English speaking man (I’d guess American) walked in, approached the desk. He said he’d been in a head-on collision – the day before – and his head still hurt and he was wondering if he should get it checked out…and what that would cost. Our brain surgeon friend told him that the first thing he should do is see a trauma doctor, who happened to be in the area, and that a decision would be made on next steps – CAT scan, etc. The guy asked how much the CAT scan would be and Steve thought he heard the doctor say $100. The guy said “ok, I’ll think about it” and left! Steve said he didn’t look real good and wasn’t walking real well…probably should have stayed and gotten checked out!!

Another guy was laying on a gurney – with a big bandage on his head and another on his leg. We have a sneaking suspicion that he may have fallen off a truck. Given how they ride around on the backs of the trucks here, that’s probably not a stretch!

They finished up with me and we went to the desk to get my insurance card and settle up. I signed a paper and got out my wallet…and they told me we didn’t owe anything! So when I can actually read better, I’m going to have to pull out our policy and see how that all works!

We headed to the farmacia to see if they had eye wash. If they didn’t, the nurse told us to get baby shampoo & to use a few drops in water to rinse my eye before putting in the drops. Well, no eye wash at the farmacia…so I had to trust that the “no tears” advertised was really true! I can tell you now – it’s not – or at least it’s not when you are pouring the soapy water directly into an already irritated eye!! YIKES! But I survived and put in the drops, which also burned, and hoped I would be lots better in the morning.

Unfortunately things got worse...overnight was horrible. At one point if felt like someone was poking hot needles into my eye, then at some point that changed to another sensation. Now it felt as if all the little bacteria had little sledgehammers and they were pounding a chorus in my head! When I got up, my eye was very swollen and now I couldn't even open it. It was warm and feverish all around my eye - from my forehead clear down into my cheek - even my teeth hurt! And light - holy cow did that hurt my head!! So we loaded up and headed back to the clinic.

This time we went in through the emergency door (figured we’d end up there anyway). The nurse put me in a room. We told her we’d been in the day before and showed her the instructions we’d been given. Shortly after, Dr. Roberto popped his head in. He looked at my eye and shook his head. After telling the nurse what she needed to do this time, he told us to be careful as it was contagious and could spread to the other eye. He also told Steve he should only kiss my left cheek until I was better – with a laugh, of course!

This time they gave me IV antibiotics, and another hydrocortisone shot and the Dr. prescribed oral antibiotics, an antibiotic eye drop, and some ointment. Off we went to the farmacia…again! This time they had what we needed (the whole thing cost under $30!) and we headed home. I decided to double-check everything before putting it to use. Good thing I did because they had given us the wrong thing for the antibiotic drops. Instead of eye drops, they gave us oral drops for ninos (babies)! Poor Steve headed back to the farmacia…only to find out they didn’t have the right thing. But she told him she would order it – and it arrived in about 10 minutes!

I started my treatment regimen and within hours I was doing much better - the sledgehammer was gone, the swelling was down (although my eye was still hard to open for more than a few seconds) and I was even able to sleep for a few hours. By late in the afternoon, I was feeling much better and could even open my eye for several minutes at a time. So I was definitely on the right track now – and hopefully in a few days, I’ll be good as new – and back in contacts! I HATE wearing glasses!!!

As is now typical, Bamboo stops by a few times a day – to join our dogs in getting their daily peanut butter (that’s how we give Sierra her omega-3 pills for her skin) or just to play with them and/or their toys. Since Bamboo is getting peanut butter as well, I figured he should learn some tricks. We’ve been working on sit – and he’s done quite well with that. A few more days and I may have to take him home to show his mom and dad!

Each day my eye has improved – thankfully! Wednesday was a little tough, trying to work with only one eye since my right eye was still blurry. I was hopeful that it would be better on Thursday since we were planning to go to Santiago – then on to Santo Domingo for our cedulas (residency IDs). We had initially planned to go to Santiago to do a shopping run. I had sent our immigration attorney an email to check the status on our residency application – and to see if we needed to come by her office for any reason since we’d be in town. She told us our temporary residency was approved and asked if we could go to Santo Domingo that day. It kind of threw a wrench in our plans, but we said that we’d make it work…hoping that we’d get back to Santiago in time to do our shopping.

In the last blog, I mentioned that we were thinking about buying a generator – just in case we have another power situation like before. So we had made arrangements to meet Jerry at his shop on Wednesday to look at what he had. By the time we left, we had picked a unit and he’s going to bring it to us on Monday. The casita will be a perfect place to keep it! And it has enough “guts” to not only run everything in the house but also our water pump and the pool pump (perhaps not all at once but being able to run them at all is HUGE!!). Now we just need to get a VERY long cord for Michael to fix up the connections for us.

Later that day, Dolly, our attorney, called and asked if we could push the Santo Domingo trip to the following week. Needless to say, we were glad to say yes. So our shopping trip in Santiago was back on for Thursday.

We got up early on Thursday and left the house around 7. It’s a great time to go – not too much traffic and it’s still cool (relatively speaking, of course). The picture at the beginning of this post was taken on the way to Santiago – some very pretty areas with flowering trees over the road. The picture here is the malecon which runs along the ocean in Puerto Plata - again a very pretty drive especially early when there is less traffic.

Since we had never driven to Dolly’s office by ourselves (Pam & Dennis had taken us), we decided we would first go there to make sure we knew how long it would take to get there – and that we didn’t do a repeat of Tony & Linda’s experience a couple weeks before.

We had lent our Santiago map to Tony and Linda– with Dolly’s office and all of the stores we tend to frequent marked. Well, somehow they missed the off-ramp and ended up getting lost. They did finally make it to her office – 20 minutes late. Fortunately, we drove right to it, so we’re confident that barring any unforeseen delays, we will be there on time next week!

The traffic in Santiago hadn’t gotten any better, nor had the street signs. I found it very challenging to navigate on this trip since I was wearing my glasses. I fortunately have a pair of prescription sunglasses – but they are a prescription (or 2?) ago, so although they are functional, it was even more tricky to read the faded signs! My regular glasses have a current prescription, but my eye was still sensitive to the light, so I wasn’t able to wear them for long when we were in the car.

But we got to all the places we needed to go and found about 90% of what we had hoped to get…not bad by DR standards! And of course, more interesting and unusual sights along the way:




Funny…I was taking this picture of the gringos who are on an excursion – riding 4 wheelers along the highway and who knows where else they take them. Did you notice the sign? That’s the developer of our neighborhood…HMMMM…it would have been good to know someone who knew what we were going to be up against – might have done some things differently?!


There are a number of, shall we say, interesting hotels along the autopista (highway) on the way into Santiago. It’s our understanding that many of them rent rooms not only by the day, but in hour increments as well, so you can figure out who the clientele is! I guess it’s kinda like east Colfax in Denver?? Here’s one of those establishments – yep, Las Vegas – seems rather appropriate!!





And of course, no trip would be complete without more moto pictures. Here we have another family – complete with a fuzzy bear backpack. I think there were 4 this time. It's hard to see, but there's also a very small child wedged in between the passengers (you may be able to make out the arm on the left of the picture. It's not unusual to see families with tiny babies on motos…no car seats here!

Then we have a guy with plastic crates stacked on the back of his moto.
Not sure what is in them.

Finally, we’re not even sure what this guy is hauling. The things that look like poles may be sugar cane. And who knows what’s in the bags!?



There’s quite a system of public transportation here. You see a lot of these vans around as well. Steve thought the curtains in the back with the fuzzy pompons added a nice touch to this one.

We spent Friday catching up on work – the paying kind as well as some things around the house, like laundry. Saturday morning was cleaning, more laundry, and catching up on things that didn’t get done during the week. It has been a beautiful day – sunny, but with a nice breeze. Gonna sign off for now and hit the pool!

Hasta la vista for now!