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Picking Up The Pieces down in the Caribbean


Mr. Smooth

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Great report Mr. Smooth, kudos to you too for taking care of your Mom. Have never been to the DR, but have been to Belize in 1992. Nice looking gal, that Stones song comes to mind " Brown Sugar" 

Good to see you had a great time and getting out of " Cali" never hurts either. 

Any more pics, you know where we're at. 

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I went through the same thing with my own mother while I was still working - not a good situation but finally solved by getting her into a very good gov't run care home where she spent the next 6.5 years before blessedly passing away.

If I can't make it back to Thailand this winter, the DR is probably going to be my first alternate choice - I've been watching some of the YouTube videos and it looks like a nice ambience there; I wouldn't mind going to Costa Rica either but it seems to be very expensive there. A few of my friends want me to go and visit them in Mexico - Puerto Vallarta - but if I'm going to go anywhere there has to be women readily available and I don't think PV is a good place for this. 

Nice looking girl, she'd be right up my alley...more photos please!!

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Great report Smoothie. I can relate, big time.

I retired in 2010. Moved to NC to be near most of my family, particularly my Aunt (who I cared for as much as my mother, sadly my Mom died prior to my retirement).

I cared for my Aunt from then through until last July, 2020. In 2016 she went into a nursing home where fortunately she was well cared for, but I was still responsible for looking after her affairs and checking in on her weekly. 

As I knew she was being well cared for and my sister was on board with helping out I decided to take a long awaited trip to LOS, Nov. 2019. While I was there covid hit. Sadly, not long after covid hit my Aunt caught it and she passed in July, 2020. Even if I had been back in NC during that time I would not have been able to see her, due to visitation restrictions. It was gut wrenching.

I am now back in NC and am still dealing with the various responsibilities and related complications, which may take many more months to clear up. I do feel confident though that all will be reasonably settled within time.

 

*** No doubt, you hit the nail on the head -   "Life is something that happens, as you are planning something else"

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1 hour ago, maipenrai said:

I went through the same thing with my own mother while I was still working - not a good situation but finally solved by getting her into a very good gov't run care home where she spent the next 6.5 years before blessedly passing away.

If I can't make it back to Thailand this winter, the DR is probably going to be my first alternate choice - I've been watching some of the YouTube videos and it looks like a nice ambience there; I wouldn't mind going to Costa Rica either but it seems to be very expensive there. A few of my friends want me to go and visit them in Mexico - Puerto Vallarta - but if I'm going to go anywhere there has to be women readily available and I don't think PV is a good place for this. 

Nice looking girl, she'd be right up my alley...more photos please!!

I started out my international travelling in the mid-90's going to Costa Rica. My best friend from college had relocated there so it was an ideal place for me to visit (6 or 7 times). It was there I was bit by the travel bug and things have never been the same.

Costa Rica was great back then, but it has changed quite a bit. As you noted has become very expensive, and unless you really know what you are doing can be dangerous. 

I've done a lot of research over the years and have decided that if I do more travels in this hemisphere anytime in the next few years that Panama would be a far better place than Costa Rica. Although even that is unlikely as my primary focus has been and will be getting back to Thailand. The other places I have been to just don't hold a candle, IMO.

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One of the pleasures when hanging on the beach are the massage girls who are passing by, hopeful for a customer they can offer their services to as you sit and enjoy a cold beer while listening to the music or chatting with friends and fellow travelers.

As so happened, a nice Haitiana named Esther came by and asked if I was interested in a foot massage. Before answering, she even told me she would give me a 2 minute freebie to help me make up my mind. With a grande Presidente in front of me, a slight breeze off the water keeping things fairly comfortable in the afternoon heat, and I in a very relaxed state, I told her to do the impossible, which was to make my ugly doggies look and feel not quite so ugly. For a little while anyway.

She grabbed a chair at my table, set upon with both wet and dry rags to clean and dry my feet and place them one at a time in her lap and with an oil and cream mix, proceeded to do her thing.

For the next half hour, she worked the soles of my feet, the toes, heels, the achilles, calf muscle....all the way up to each knee. Her hands molded my feet and lower legs like a baker kneading dough, and when it was all over, she had earned her $1,000 pesos ( just under $18 USD) and also a number to get in touch if I wanted a house call to my room for a full body for an hour.

I would take her up on that at a later date, but for the present time, a young lady from Santiago, the second largest city in the DomRep behind Santo Domingo, was in my sights. On weekends, the Dominicans flock to the beaches and as Sosua was maybe a 90 minute drive from Santiago, it is common to meet chicas from the interior of the country, and get a phone number for future reference. They are nothing if hustlers and if there is a mutual attraction, then offering to pay transportation back home, in addition to services rendered, is easily agreed to.

Candida was another previous encounter I had and she didn't disappoint. She was aggressive, passionate, had a very nice head game and when it came time to get down to business, we wasted no time in finding a rhythm that led to a very satisfying conclusion. As she was a good sized woman, probably 5'9" and about 175 lbs, she was more than capable of supporting my being on top. Her hips grinded into me as if she was interviewing to be a back up dancer to Miley Cyrus and had I been more than just an afternoon tryst, I'd have given her the job!

I included a pic or two of her from our previous get together as there are times in the present when a woman either has got her mouth full of your cocksmanship, or laying on top of the bed naked and with that "come hither" look in her eye, that you aren't really focused on grabbing your camera and asking her to strike a pose. In that moment, you might as well have been asking me to go grab a toilet bowl plunger.

I was soon occupied with plunging of another sort.

 

 

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Edited by Mr. Smooth
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For it's relatively small size, Sosua has a number of very nice places to eat, and the kitchen staff is, quite often, supervised by a professional chef who previously had ran his own place in Europe or the States, or had experience in a hotel restaurant, and now was doing what they loved to do in a tropical paradise.

And as a tourist, I had a chance to enjoy a nice variety of dishes, be it seafood, pork or chicken with the usual sides that went along with the order.

A favorite of mine was going to a friends place, the Flip Flop Sports Bar, for the Wednesday wing special, $300 pesos, about $5.40 USD, which was 6 wings and a cold ass beer with whatever sauce you wanted, in my case a lip smacking tasty honey spice. Simply outstanding and a great deal. Perfect for an afternoon snack either before or after a day at the beach.

There was also a few Dominican restaurants that advertised their own specials in the form of the "plato de dia", the plate of the day, which consisted of fried chicken, a bowl each of beans and rice, along with a salad. An even better deal at a mere $250 pesos, or roughly $4.50. For a delicious stick to your ribs lunch, you couldn't beat it.

Of course at night, I tried to spread my business around to several different restaurants, and all were satisfactory for not a lot of money, but my favorite, was the Hotel Voramar, ran by a German chef who had recently "retired" from years at another hotel restaurant after it was sold to a new owner. Fortunately, the owners of the Voramar persuaded him to work at their restaurant and am I ever glad he said, "Si".

One night it was a delectable cordon bleu with potatoes served in little fried scoops and a slightly spicy red curry sauce on the side. It ran me the equivalent of $11 USD. Another evening I tried one of the specials, a fried sea bass topped with large prawns and a heaping serving of white rice and the most amazingly good dill sauce to go along with it. And again, the price was right about $11 USD. 

Just tremendous value I thought.

The chicas working behind the bar added to the ambiance and pleasing scenery. In the photo below of the two chicas facing each other, I got them to stop for just a moment as they went about their bartender duties. The one on the left gave me her number as I had high hopes of getting better acquainted on her night off, but alas, I sent her a couple of texts as well as a phone call, but she only responded once when I asked her how she was with the typical, "Soy bien y tu? (I am good, and you?), otherwise it proved to be a pursuit down a dead end road.

Many of the chicas working at decent jobs, at least for them, just like in Thailand, are the girlfriends of an expat or gringo who lives their seasonally, or even with the manager himself. What they all had in common however, is that they are all flirts of the first order, and a smile or getting them to laugh at some foolishness that came fumbling out of your mouth in broken Spanish they thought was funny, would often be followed by a beer for them, normally a grande sized bottle where they could all share with their individual plastic cups.

Their jovial manner only added to the enjoyment of the evening and that when added to a very satisfied appetite from a delicious dinner, made it that much harder to stomach the fact that my flight back to California was only getting closer and the trip was rapidly coming to an end.

I was just enjoying the groove I was feeling and didn't want the music to end.

But as we all know, it always does.

 

 

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Great report and great pics and narrative Mr. Smooth....well said and really a good read. I love to see guys venture out and report back what for many of us now is a "pipe dream" 

Sorry I never got to go to the DR....living through your report is as close as I will ever get. 

Well done to you.......

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10 hours ago, lazarus said:

Mr. Smooth:

What was the flight route? Travel time? 

I booked separate tickets going and coming.

I flew JetBlue from SFO to Ft Lauderdale then a connection to Santo Domingo. It was an overnight flight, departed SFO at 10:30 pm, arrived in Ft Laud just before 6 am, local time, then a 10 am departure to SDQ, arrived at 12:30 pm.

Return was trickier, but it was due to a lack of flight crews as airlines were cancelling or delaying flights all over the country in July and was informed of my flight change in an email in late May, so I had plenty of time to make arrangements for a room at the Mia terminal airport.

Puerta Plata departure at 3:45 pm, arrival at MIA at 5:45 pm.

Next morning departure MIA-DFW at 11:20, arrival at 1:10, then a 2:30 pm departure from DFW to SMF with a 5:45 pm arrival.

If I had returned to SFO, I would have been able to connect that previous night in MIA as they had a flight scheduled at 9:15, with an arrival about midnight. But I would have had no way to get home to Sac at that hour.

 

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