Shmoobliher š©
@shmoobliher
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My new friend had just arrived in the country. He was a freelancer and, unlike me, he didnāt know the country very well and didnāt know how to get free tours. So he talked me into going on a trip with him. I wasnāt against it, although I was nervous about such a long ride on a motorcycle with a passenger. But in the end, I agreed.
We grabbed a couple of cameras, a drone and hit the road. Luckily, the roads in the Dominican Republic are great and there are almost no cars outside the big cities ā perfect conditions for a biker like me, hahaha.
But we almost had an accident right at the exit from the parking lot of our house. A car was driving towards us on a narrow street. To let it pass, I had to ride on the very edge of the asphalt. Right behind it was a ditch and a fence ā it was easy to fall into it. It seemed that everything could be overcome, until the car suddenly swerved sharply in our direction ā obviously on purpose. I've seen it many times: when I was riding a bike, drivers often tried to push me off the road or brake abruptly in front of me (I still don't understand why some drivers hate cyclists so much - I wish every such driver seven years of non-stop diarrhea, hahaha!). But I kept calm, didn't jerk the wheel - and we safely passed this idiot.
The rest of the ride was smooth and calm - almost straight. We visited the beaches of Macau and Uvero Alto and stopped for lunch in small villages. The only problem was that on turns my bike leaned heavily towards the turn, and I had to make an effort to keep it on the line. It turned out that my passenger leaned towards the turn, thinking it was easier. Well, yes, but it was not. š At one point I almost drove into a ditch because of this, but fortunately everything worked out.
Overall, the road was picturesque, easy and almost empty - it was a pleasure to drive along it! 0 reply
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Despite having quite a bit of experience riding a scooter by that time (I even wrote about my trip from BĆ”varo to Puerto Plata ā almost across the whole Dominican Republic!) and a background in extreme cycling, I didnāt handle motorcycles very well. In fact, I was even a bit scared of them, haha. I mean, I liked it, but it was definitely more challenging than a scooter ā and way more powerful. Plus, the roads are full of reckless drivers, and you never know what to expect from them.
I fell off the motorcycle three times ā all due to slippery roads. Though one time it definitely wasnāt my fault: some idiots were repairing a truck right on the road and had removed the oil pan. All the oil spilled onto the pavement ā right before a speed bump. In the evening, it just looked like a puddle... When I rode over the speed bump, the rear wheel slipped to the side and I fell ā with a passenger on the back. The carelessness of Dominican drivers is just insane. Of course, not everyone is like that, but unfortunately, the majority are!
And yet, despite all that, I still tried to travel on my motorcycle. At first, it was just short rides to Macao Beach ā only 25 km from BĆ”varo. Then I started going to HigĆ¼ey from time to time ā the biggest city in our province. By the way, it has one of the most interesting Catholic cathedrals Iāve ever seen!
Eventually, a new friend of mine suggested we take a trip to MontaƱa Redonda ā it was more than 100 km away. I kept making excuses, remembering all my crashes, but he convinced me to go anyway. So off we wentā¦ 0 reply
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Getting your scooter back from the impound lot is a real adventure. You have to get to the very end of Bavaro. Bavaro is not a very big city, but still, when your only means of transportation has been taken away, and there is only one bus in the city with a chaotic schedule and an unclear route, you have to find someone who will take you and stay with you until you return the scooter.
Why āuntil you return the scooterā? Because first you have to go to the impound lot, which is located at one end of the city, and get a receipt for the fine. Then you have to go to a special bank located on the opposite side. There you stand in a huge line that barely moves. After paying the fine, you go back to the impound lot - hoping that no one has taken your good scooter and left you with a broken one of the same model, hahaha.
In the line at the bank, there are several shortcuts. For 250 pesos the guard let me skip the line. He offered it himself - I guess it's his part-time job. I guess he picks people who look solvent and "take initiative". Even with such an easy way, I remember spending a lot of time there - banks in the Dominican Republic are pain and suffering, and time stands still there. I arrived at the impound lot just before closing and had to persuade them (with a bribe of 100 pesos) to give me my scooter that same day. The scooters in the impound lot are just piled up in a heap, as if they were unloaded from a dump truck. Mine was on top - I was lucky. But even though it was on top, one side was badly scratched š But at least I got it back. 0 reply
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One time my scooter was also towed to the impound lot. I didn't know about the monthly police raids then, and I hadn't developed the habit of wearing a helmet yet... Although, when I was riding a bike downhill, I never rode without a helmet - and it saved me once - for some reason I just didn't want to wear a helmet when riding a scooter, hahaha. That's how I got into the trap I wrote about yesterday: I was riding without a helmet, trying to go around a truck parked near a speed bump, and a policeman suddenly jumped out from behind it.
I must say that this policeman was definitely not the smartest person I've ever seen - he jumped out right in front of the scooter, spreading his arms wide, which just scared me, and instead of braking, I accidentally hit the gas, hahaha. And he jumped out not behind the speed bump, where they usually brake, but about 10 meters before it, when my speed was still quite high. As a result, I crashed into this idiot at a speed of about 30 km / h.
I used to do extreme sports, so I know how to fall - or even jump - from a two-wheeled vehicle without getting injured. And that's what happened: I managed to jump off carefully, and I just fell by inertia, without any injuries. The scooter crashed into this idiot cop. Luckily for him, he only hit him with the steering wheel - because when I jumped off, the steering wheel deflected to the side, and this saved him, but it was pure luck ...
While I was standing there, trying to comprehend what had happened - and wondering how to explain it all, not knowing the language - he got up and started loading my scooter into the car ... 0 reply
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My scooter ended up in the impound twice. Despite the corruption that allows you to pay for almost any violation on the spot (and they usually either say it outright or hint at it), there is one day a month when you canāt negotiate. This is when the traffic police āfill their quotaā, hahaha. So 29 days a month, if you donāt wear a helmet (which is basically the only thing they fine motorcyclists for), they will outright offer to pay you on the spot. But on this day, the traffic police actually do their job.
Itās a bit funny. They set up traps on the road, usually right in front of speed bumps. They park a tow truck or some other large vehicle and then jump out from behind it. They donāt stop the cars, because the tow truck can only carry one car or twenty scooters/motorcycles. And on this day, itās impossible to negotiate at all.
One time my scooter ended up in an impound lot because I gave it to a friend for 5 minutes and he rode it without a helmet. He forgot something at home and I let him take the scooter - it was less than a kilometer - but he walked back, haha. However, he took my scooter from the impound lot himself... funny system, right? A random person can take someone else's scooter, and all the documents are in the name of a third party. This is the Dominican Republic))) 0 reply
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Honestly, I don't remember what I've written about and what I haven't š
. I remember touching on the topic of transportation and how people like me get scammed in the Dominican Republic when it comes to repairing and selling scooters. I actually learned how to fix my scooter pretty quickly, even though I've never owned a motorized vehicle before.
I used to be a cyclist ā I did downhill and cross-country (which resulted in a bunch of injuries)), then BMX (which resulted in chronic leg pain)), then I rode a fixie (got hit by a car twice) ā and that's it. Since 2012, I've maybe ridden a bike once or twice.
But scooter repairs were much more expensive. Parts were expensive, and many (like me) rode really old scooters, so we had to order parts from overseas ā also expensive. Plus, removing the plastic from the scooter took a long time.
So at some point I bought a motorcycle, even though I had no idea how to ride it š ā I think I wrote about this too... I have many memories associated with this motorcycle ā some good, some not so good. The local motoconchos (motorbike taxi drivers), most of whom I knew by sight and even personally, were constantly laughing at me because I couldnāt figure out how to change gears correctly for months š
š¤£... but I didnāt even know what they were laughing at until one day my friend asked me to give him a ride to pick up his motorcycle from an impound lot.
This friend weighed 120 kg, and at the time I was very nervous about riding with passengers, especially in areas with heavy traffic. Due to the extra āloadā, the back of the bike was constantly wagging and I constantly thought I was going to fall. But during the ride he noticed me changing gears and explained how to do it correctly. That was the only motorcycle riding lesson I ever got.
The thing is, when you change gears, you have to stop pressing the gas, and I didn't know that. For three months no one told me š
, even though most of my friends rode motorcycles... 0 reply
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I once helped deliver all this āhumanitarian aidā to the prison. I didnāt go inside ā honestly, I didnāt really want to, haha āāā but I was told how this prison was set up, and probably how all prisons in the Dominican Republic are set up. And hereās why itās not a very nice place:
As far as I understood, this prison was guarded only along the perimeter. It looked like a small medieval fortress, but not that strong, and visually quite ugly. It was a fence with towers at the corners. There were guards around and inside this fence, and there was some kind of building, but inside everything was run by the prisoners themselves ā even the store.
The bosses were respected criminals serving long sentences (over 20 years, which, as I heard, is the maximum sentence in the Dominican Republic). These ābossesā somehow managed the space and maintained order ā but not for free. To live in a decent cell, you had to pay them.
The bad cells were designed for 8 (sometimes more) people in a space designed for 4. They slept in hammocks, one above the other, like in pirate movies. These cells were on the upper levels and were always very hot. If you didn't want to live like that, you needed money or something to trade.
As far as I know, our friend lived somewhere in the middle - not in the worst conditions. That's why his friends collected this "humanitarian aid" for him.
Otherwise, the prison was reportedly peaceful, and violence was rare - at least that's what I was told by those who interacted with this guy regularly. 0 reply
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So, this guy ended up in a Dominican prison for two years because of a foolish mistake. I donāt know all the details, but his friends said he only had a couple of marijuana joints on himā¦ maybe thatās true, maybe he had more ā the point is, it was a stupid decision that cost him not just the two years he was sentenced to, but almost three in very unpleasant conditions. Why almost three? ā Iāll get to that later.
I actually found out about this story when a good friend of mine was gathering "humanitarian aid" for the guy. The thing is (I canāt say if this applies to all prisons there or just this one), the responsibility for supporting inmates falls on their relatives and/or friends. They feed them the bare minimum, and clothing or other essentials are either given only once or not at all (I didnāt fully understand that part).
So, a couple of times a month, his acquaintances would collect āhumanitarian aidā and bring it to him in prison. They brought clothes, food, hygiene products, bed linens, and money. Yes, apparently there was some kind of store inside the prison, so money was also necessary. 1 reply
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Continuing the topic of banned substances (drugs), I remembered another story. It didnāt happen to me, but I was slightly involvedājust a tiny bit. From my side, there was nothing criminal, hahaha. In the Dominican Republic, drugs are one of the most serious offenses under the law, and they come with long prison sentences. And Dominican prisons are the last place youād want to end up (actually, any prison is a bad place to beāunless maybe itās in Finland or Sweden))), Iāll explain more about that later. But one guy did manage to end up there. I didnāt know him well, but our social circles occasionally overlapped.
Considering the level of corruption thereāwhich is completely out in the open, and where police often straight-up offer you to pay a bribeāitās actually hard to end up in prison for something like that if you have at least some money. But this guy made a big mistake. Probably, being in that laid-back atmosphere for a long time, combined with frequent marijuana use, made him overly careless. The point is, he didnāt leave the illegal stuff at home when he was going somewhere, and they found it in his pockets right at the airport. Theoretically, he mightāve still been able to pay someone off even there, but it would have cost much moreāand as far as I know, he didnāt have any money at all... 0 reply
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The brownie was really good and there were no signs of trouble. Everyone was having fun, and so was I, for a while. But my fun had nothing to do with the drug cake. Then it turned out that my body reacts very badly to marijuana/hashish or whatever it's called. While everyone else was experiencing positive and pleasant effects, I suddenly felt terrible. I don't know exactly what happened, but it had something to do with my blood pressure - dropped or jumped, I'm not sure. My vision went black, I almost lost my peripheral vision, my head started to hurt like crazy, there was a strong pressure in my ears, and worst of all, my legs almost gave out. I leaned against the wall, but I couldn't get up, so I just slid to the floor.
Meanwhile, everyone else was getting what they wanted and finding what was happening to me funny. There was no point in hoping for their help. Maybe I would have called an ambulance, but I didn't know how, I didn't know where my phone was, and I might have gotten into trouble with the police (because the Dominican Republic has very harsh penalties for drug crimes). I crawled back to my room and lay down on my bed. I felt terrible - my pulse was pounding in my ears so loudly I could barely hear anything, my vision was almost gone, my body wasn't responding to me, and my head was killing me.
It seemed to last forever... but eventually it passed. Somehow I came to my senses - I think it only took a couple of hours. No one was home, the room was a mess, and everyone had gone somewhere, leaving the door open... 1 reply
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