The first thing my cousin David said to me was, “This isn’t going to be like Rio, so don’t expect Brazil.” Well, gee, that’s my frame of reference, and so I couldn’t help but compare.

The flight from L.A. was uneventful, landing in Philadelphia at the ungodly hour of 3:15 a.m. L.A. time. I did not get much sleep on the flight--first class on that particular United Airlines plane was not nearly as comfortable as flying Business Class down to Rio. At least I can sleep on that flight. Also, the effect of the Jody Maroni hot sausage sandwich I had for dinner at the airport on my stomach was not conducive to sleep.

I was not able to get any sleep in the terminal either. Even at 6:30 a.m. in Philadelphia they were making a lot of announcements about flights leaving. And there was almost a four hour lay over until David arrived.

David arrived about 45 minutes before our U.S. Airways flight left. We chatted for a while and eventually they started boarding the full flight. They were still boarding at the scheduled take off time. David and I managed to get seats next to each other in coach. Somehow my upgrade did not apply to the U.S. Airways portion of the flight, even though they are a Star Alliance partner with United. We had the escape door seat so it was not too uncomfortable. Then we waited 45 minutes on the runway.

So we landed in Santo Domingo about 45 minutes behind schedule. David’s friend, Pedro, met us at the airport. He put our suitcases in the trunk and took off into the city.

It looked like a typical Caribbean tropical island. On one side was the beautiful ocean. On the other side were half destroyed cinder block houses, crumbling buildings and poor looking people. Actually, it was pretty picturesque, what with all the palm trees.

We got to the hotel El Embajador, apparently the best hotel in town. Pedro worked there in sales, and had been able to wrangle rooms for us at a reduced price even though the hotel was full (the new president was to be inaugurated the following weekend, and everybody was staying at this hotel). He had already checked us in, so we just went up to our rooms.

Well, the key card did not unlock the door. A bellboy came along a minute later and let me in. Not a bad room at all—quite large for a hotel room, with a king size bed and even a walk-in closet. A balcony the width of the room overlooked the Caribbean in the distance. There was a well stocked mini-bar and a good size chest along with a small TV and a video game controller. A safe in the walk-in closet had a hole for a lock, and I went down to the front desk to get a lock and key for the safe, and get a key card for my room that worked.

David was pretty upset with Pedro because Pedro was supposed to have brought a couple of girls to the airport to greet us. Apparently, Pedro had misunderstood and arranged for the girls to come at 8:00. David had him get on the phone and call to get them over to the hotel to meet us, but apparently they were at work. Pedro suggested that we might want to cancel those girls for tonight and just go out to a club, or he could get us a couple of girls right now. Beautiful girls he said, Venezuelan, but he they would be two or three hundred dollars. We said no. I was tired anyway and wanted to take a nap.

After unpacking, David and I went to a Chinese restaurant down the street from the hotel. It was quite good as well as inexpensive. All told, about 800 pesos, but that included a 10 percent gratuity and a 12 percent tax added in. [Prices in this report are quoted mostly in pesos, unless otherwise noted. The exchange rate was about 43 pesos to the dollar.]

On the way back from the restaurant I stopped at an ATM to withdraw some pesos. I got 10,000 pesos in nice crisp 500 peso bills. Boy, I felt rich. This was a lot of money, not like those stupid Brazilian Reals--at most only three of them to a dollar. All those Dominican pesos made me feel wealthy. And boy, I can’t wait to get to Columbia.

I went up and took a nap for a couple of hours. Waking up about 7:30, I went in to take a shower. Ah, hot water. Good pressure. Much better than Rio. I leisurely shampooed and lathered.

As I was putting shaving cream on my face the lights suddenly went out. Total darkness. I kind of expected something like that to happen from what Pedro had said, that there was inadequate power in the Dominican Republic, and that the hotel spent a lot of money on fuel for its backup generators. But still, it was unnerving and a little scary. I continued spreading the shaving cream around my face, and about 30 seconds later, the lights came back on. THAT had never happened in Rio. I had forgotten that, in the Caribbean, you can’t take things like electricity and running water for granted (I used to live in Grenada).

I finished showering and shaving uneventfully and as I was toweling off there was a knock at the door. The maid wanted to come in and turn down my bed. She took the used towel and turned down the bed covers, leaving a chocolate on the sheets. A nice touch I didn’t get in Rio, staying in apartments.

The room offered DSL internet service, and I went downstairs to get an ethernet cable to connect the wall jack, for 165 pesos. Plugged in the cable, plugged the other end into my computer and fired it up. Viola! “Welcome to high-speed Internet access” the screen said. Only 252 pesos per 24 hours. Not bad. Just then David called and said he was having trouble getting his connection to the Internet established and asked me to come down and help him, so I went.

It turned out that the problem was in his room. The jack did not work properly, so he changed rooms.

After he got settled, we went out to dinner at an excellent Italian restaurant called the Vesuvio on Avenue George Washington, No. 521, recommended by Gitano. The English menu had no prices printed on it, and so I had no idea how much the items cost. The Spanish menu had prices, but it did not really correspond to the English menu, so it was very confusing to try to figure out how much things cost—but I did see that the lobster was either 850 or 950 pesos per pond, depending on which kind of lobster you got. Well, it didn’t matter that much, it was clearly an elegant and expensive restaurant, and I wasn’t really worried about the cost of a good dinner to start off the evening.

I was delighted to see conch on the menu, it had been years ago since I had seen it on a menu, perhaps in Florida. Nobody knows what it is in California. So I had a conch appetizer, but it was kind of grainy and dry, not as good as I remembered it should be. Dave had some kind of a pasta dish and Pedro had a filet mignon, a huge hunk of meat that looked delectable. I had octopus, a whole baby octopus sautéed with garlic. Excellent (if you like that sort of thing). The total bill came out to about $100.00 U.S.

In the middle of dinner, suddenly the entire restaurant went dark except for one lit spot. Again, the power went off. A minute later, actually about 20 seconds, the power came on again.

After we left the restaurant, we went to Casa Teresa, Pedro’s favorite. Casa Teresa was an ordinary looking place on the outside, next to an open-air restaurant where a lot of people were milling around. The neighborhood did not look too great, but we went right in past the security guards.

Inside it was a small bar area with a couple of attached rooms. There were about 15 chicas sitting around the rooms and maybe two or three couples. We sat down at a table and ordered drinks. A minute later, the chicas had all formed a ring surrounding us. That was really strange for me. They were just staring at us and waiting, not moving around much. As I looked around somewhat uneasily, I would make eye contact with one, and she would break into a smile and her face would say, “Choose me!”

I had noted a cute blonde when I walked in, but she seemed to be standing behind me and I really could not see her. I was craning my neck looking around and finally she moved over to where I could see her. As I made eye contact with various ones, their facial expressions would change from vacant to smiling and interested. I found the whole thing very strange, but then again, this was not Rio.

Pedro was asking whether there was anyone I liked, and a few minutes later, when the blonde came around to where I could see her, I decided that she was one of the best of the lot. There were probably 5 or 6 girls out of the 15 that I could have done.

Her name was Crystal. She came over and sat down on the chair next to me and I discovered that she only spoke a few words of English. She asked if she could have a drink after a few minutes of hugging and touching each other. She ordered a beer and then she asked if we could move to another table where the air conditioning flow was better. We moved over there and sat down on the couch like lovers.

Meanwhile, Dave had picked a girl, so we were all sitting there and Crystal was making her moves on me, and suggesting we go up to the room. She seemed to be somewhat of a pro. So I looked at Dave and asked him what we wanted to do. Our original plan had been to go to one or two casas first and then go to Remington’s around 11:30 and pick a girl from there, but Dave had found a girl he seemed to like, and I was wondering what he wanted to do. Meanwhile, Crystal ordered a tequila and some chewing gum (a bad sign).

David said, “Go ahead, take her”. So, I went into the bar and gave them 2,000 pesos, and Crystal and I went upstairs. There appeared to be five or six rooms there. As we went down the hallway, an attendant gave us a couple of towels and rubbers. The room was pretty nice with a queen size bed, and a full bathroom—but no toilet seat. Xenono had warned me. (Of course, my hotel had a toilet seat, being the classy place it was.)

Crystal had a great, great body. Flat stomach, wide hips and a narrow waist with handful-plus size breasts. She had a seahorse tattoo next to her naval—a motif that I had not seen before. I wished I had brought my camera. Her nipples were very responsive, they perked up and out as soon as I started licking them. But she would not kiss—she had told me downstairs that if she did, everyone would want kisses. DUH! I couldn’t communicate with her well enough to discuss it, and she wasn’t changing her mind in the room, so I let her go down on me.

After a brief CBJ, Crystal climbed on top of me reverse cowboy and started moving rapidly, very arousing. After a few minutes, she changed to cowboy and continued her rapid motions. It was great. She was a beautiful sight, I could caress her lovely breasts, lick her nipples. We switched a couple more times, to doggie and missionary. She was incredible with her movements, one of the sexiest chicas I’ve had the pleasure with, I loved it. She was as erotic as any Brasileira (while it lasted). I had to stop her so that I didn’t cum too quickly. Of course, she was trying to get me off, like the pro she was, and she succeeded all too quickly. I came hard and long with this sexy vixen. Of course, then it was over. No seconds, no afterplay.

We got dressed and went back downstairs. David had decided to take his girl back to the hotel. I tried to pay the 1950 peso bill with my credit card. They asked for I.D. and I did not have any with me, so we had to pay in cash. It was the first time I had been asked for I.D. to use my credit card, but this was apparently not as tourist-oriented an establishment as the boites or termas in Rio. I didn’t really give any thought as to how expensive that bar tab was, I really had no idea how much my party had ordered.

We dropped David and his girl back at the hotel and Pedro said, “Where do you want to go now?” I said, “Your choice”. He said, “Let’s go to the Colonel’s place”.

So we went to Casa Modelos. Apparently the Colonel is the Chief of Police or the Chief of the Prostitution Squad and his place seems to be exempt from difficulties. There was a tiny bar inside and several rooms. Again, after walking in we were surrounded by girls. We ordered drinks while looking around, but I did not see anybody outstanding. Pedro said, “We can try another place.” I sat on the sofa, and a cutie with a skimpy dress who was cold cuddled up to me, but she didn’t turn me on enough to take her upstairs. And my inability to speak Spanish wasn’t helping. So after a few minutes we left.

The next stop was Remington’s. There seemed to be a number of couples hanging out there. There were only a few girls visible and not one of them struck me as attractive. So I said to Pedro, “Lets go” before we even ordered a drink, as the couple of girls were coming over. I thought, well, I’ll come back here with David another night since this is his favorite place.

Next stop was the Blue House (Casa Azul), which Pedro had to drive around for a little bit to find because he did not remember exactly where it was. We sat at the bar and the girls surrounded us in a semi-circle, our backs to the bar, staring at us with vacant looks that turned to smiles when we looked at them. It was still weird but I was getting used to it. There were about three girls that looked doable, and I started trying to decide between two who were petite and innocent looking. I chose Julie, and she went to change while I paid the bar fine of 2300 pesos to take her back to the hotel.

I had interviewed her somewhat with a little coaching from Pedro. She said she was willing to kiss with tongue and that she liked to suck. Her body language said she really like to suck. So I expected that I would have a good time.

We went back to the hotel and Pedro dropped us off. We went inside and she checked in with the front desk. The “guest fee” was an extra 675 pesos on top of the 3600 pesos (plus--I think--940 more pesos for taxes and fees) per day for the room.

Went to my room, we sat down at my computer and I loaded my translation utility. However, Julie was pretty much illiterate. She could not spell properly and she ran words together with no space between them. My poor translation utility did not know what to make of her Spanish and at best would ask if it was Spanish or English. Sometimes it just did not even translate and gave back the same gibberish that she had typed in.

Photo: Julie 01

The session was not a whole lot better. She actually did not like to kiss on the mouth very much, opening just for a second before closing her mouth and turning her head to nuzzle me. I kept trying, so she turned away and picked up a condom to put on me, and gave a brief CBJ before jumping on top of me. We went through several positions before I came, she provided decent if not inspired service. But this was definitely not like Brazil. And I was wishing I had gone back for Crystal.

After I came, she went back to the computer and tried to type something in. As best as I could understand, it seemed she thought the session was over and wanted a tip. I told her I wanted to go again. Its funny when how these chicas cannot communicate anything else, they can express that they want more money. Apparently she was saying I would have to pay the full price for a second time.

At this point I was getting kind of disgusted with this whole experience. I gave her 200 pesos. She sat at the computer and put down something about 1000 pesos for taxi. I just laughed at her—I didn’t think she would understand if I got mad. I said, “You think I’m just a stupid Gringo?” She may or may not have understood it but she certainly understood that I was telling her to get out. So, she did leave and I went to sleep at about a quarter of four.