Shmoobliher 🎩
@shmoobliher
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Just getting out of that area wasn't the end of it. The guy who was the guest who convinced everyone to go on this adventure said something like, "Lightning doesn't strike the same place twice" (which is not scientifically true - lightning does strike the same place 2 or more times, both literally and figuratively). And then he was like, "Let's keep going, just not go as deep this time."
And you know what? Everyone was like, "Yeah, why not? Let's do it!" Hahaha.
So all the nighttime photos I'm posting in this story were actually taken after our so-called "heroic" escape. 😆
Yes, we stopped at the very beginning of the Haitian Pit, where it was relatively safe (although there was a shootout with the police in that same area a few months later).
There was some local celebration that day, and they built a huge grill in the parking lot and roasted pigs on it. Lots of people, great atmosphere, and honestly, we had a good time.
Here's a picture of the grill — 1 reply
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So, basically, there was a chase, but it was kind of lazy and not very serious. We were being chased by six guys on motorcycles... but maybe it was because of the whole Dominican relaxed atmosphere, or maybe their motorcycles wouldn't start (to be honest, those motorcycles looked terrible), or maybe they were chatting with the "model" for too long, or they just weren't that interested in robbing us, hahaha... Anyway, they only caught up with us when we were already entering the parking lot.
As we were running along the fence, I noticed the driver from our Company again, and we yelled at him to help us get inside faster, which he did. These guys stopped at the parking fence and started yelling something at us, but I have no idea what. The driver threw us into the bus, called us idiots (lol), and we just sat there for a while. Then, when he had to go back to work, he just took us out of that area. By that time, those guys had already left.
After that, I never took a camera to those parts again. 😂 0 reply
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Ha-ha-ha, I was keeping the suspense going again! But everyone already realized that nothing particularly terrible had happened, although at that moment it seemed that things were going downhill...
We quickly walked in the direction we came from, but, as I said, the entire Haitian pit is just a straight road - you can only turn into a field or someone's house, and the exit from this zone is still far away. So we decided to try to get to the tourist bus stop. It was guarded, and the guards there were always armed.
I had a service pass, with which they let me in without any problems. By the way, this pass allowed me to enter all sorts of restricted areas - I said that I was going on company business, to visit tourists or something like that. Then I just wandered around, swam in the pool and once even illegally played golf with a friend... in the end, the local security caught me for it, ha-ha-ha!
But that's history. And in this one we run to the parking lot, look around - so far no one is chasing us! 😆 2 replies
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We kept walking, and the “model” who wanted money for his photo was a bit ahead of us. Three of our friends were still up front, but they were already heading back toward us—it looked like we had reached the end of the neighborhood.
To our right, there was a big yard with a few rundown houses, and a group of about 8-10 guys hanging out, doing something. The "model" stopped near the yard and, probably assuming none of us understood Spanish, started shouting at those guys.
He literally yelled: “Hey, there are five white idiots here with cameras!”
Right at that moment, our three friends caught up with us. Alex immediately said we needed to get out of there—fast. I knew why, but our friends hadn’t figured it out yet, so Alex just grabbed one of them by the hand and quickly started walking back. I didn’t need any convincing.
Meanwhile, the "model" was already talking to those guys, pointing straight at us. 1 reply
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Three photographers went ahead, and Alex and I fell behind. We had already walked quite a distance, and the houses around us began to look more like abandoned construction sites, where people actually lived.
A local guy approached Alex. After a moment, Alex took a few photos, and they started talking. That's when I approached them and heard what they were saying. To my surprise, they spoke English, although Alex spoke pretty decent Spanish.
The whole conversation boiled down to the fact that the local guy wanted to get money for the photos (even though he approached Alex and asked to take his photo). He said: "You're shooting for a magazine! You're getting paid (oh, if only it were true! 😂), so I should get paid too - 100 bucks per photo."
Alex just calmly deleted the photos, showed that he had no more photos, and we moved on... 2 replies
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It all started pretty well—we left our scooters at the parking lot of Central Medical Punta Cana (where I was hospitalized with malaria… or maybe not malaria, I still don’t know) and started walking.
There were five of us, all with cameras, of course. By the way, Dominicans love posing for photos, even though they never ask how to get them later! We kept walking down this one street, passing by a kid’s birthday party happening right by the road—it was super lively and fun.
On the way, I ran into some mechanics I already knew—the ones who had fixed my moped before. Then we crossed a “line” I had never gone past before.
To our left, there was a big fenced parking lot full of tourist buses. A lot of them belonged to the company I worked for, and I even spotted a driver I knew. He walked up to the fence and, looking surprised, asked, - What the hell are you guys doing here?
But by that time, three people from our group had already walked way ahead, so Alex and I hurried to catch up with them 0 reply
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