February 24, 2025

Today’s plan is to make a day trip to Sosúa, located to the east of Puerto Plata, and to get there, I can take the shared taxis that leave from the nearby hospital. The taxi drivers make their usual belated effort to corner a dedicated customer, but the stream of shared cars leaving when full continues unabated. According to the travel guide, the hospital is also the point of departure for gua guas to the Samaná peninsula much further to the east at the ungodly hour of 6 am, but now it turns out that they actually go to near Las Terrenas (to the north of the town of Samaná) at a much more civilized 1 pm. On the other hand, if I miss the vehicle at 1 pm …

Squeezed into the front of the car, the morbidly obese driver is a chatty lot, maintaining a breezy conversation with the older woman at the back of the car who disembarks in La Union, and who it turns out is a neighbor of his. He tells me that he had a stellar property with a great view of the sea that a foreigner who happened to be his former boss sold him at a heavily discounted price.

Years later, he was offered a much more substantial sum by another foreigner for the property that would have promised a considerable profit, except that his new neighbor decided to build a wall separating the properties that effectively blocked the view and caused the prospective buyer to become disinterested in the acquisition. More time passed, they continued negotiation, the driver finally sold at a lower price but still at a substantial gain, then built a far larger home on a less desirable property; less desirable to the foreigner, who valued the beach access and view, but more desirable to the driver, as it was private, close to services, and offered a quality living environment.

The first indication that the town of Sosúa is a haven for tourists is the Supermercado Playero that despite its modest scale – at least relative some of the hypermarkets in the area – offers relatively sophisticated food products that may not be offered in the retail environments that offer fare to more local customers, such as the scrumptious breads and pastries on display. Not that I intend on spending much time on scouring the aisles: I came here to visit the beach, and hence trudge past desultory shops and eateries along side roads to reach what I take to be the beach.

Unfortunately I am stopped short, as access to the small beach the town abuts on is guarded jealously by a few mid-range hotels that have seen better days, decades of mould and other wear making their mark on the buildings. The women calling to me from a succession of massage parlours also says a lot about the nature of the town and remind me of the realities of Thailand, a country defined by the presence of vast numbers of elderly Caucasian men chasing after the possibility of encounters of a hopefully lasting sort with far younger local women. Sosúa may be nowhere as bad, but you definitely see a similar demographic, mostly middle-aged or older men, mostly overweight, mostly Canadian, and of the Canadians, mostly French-Canadian.

There are two beaches in the town, Playa Alicia and Playa Sosúa, the former accessible by descending a staircase leading from a narrow road on which a few hotels are set, the array of tanning chairs laid out near the beach available to those who pay or are customers of the associated restaurants. No worries, the beach is public, I have a towel, and prefer lying on the sand.

The beach is small but deep, the sand clean, but the water tempestuous; due to a steep drop-off of the seabed close to the beach, large waves crash very close to the shore, so it isn’t really a great place to go for a swim. Many of the beach chairs are occupied by a mix of the middle class Dominicans and Caucasians, many of whom are Canadian.

Before too much of the afternoon wanes, a trip to Playa Sosúa is in order, which requires walking through a strip of town, somewhat colourful, somewhat anodyne, but notable for the visibly rougher social element, specifically locals that seem to have addiction and/or mental health issues as well as a few comparable-looking Caucasians, which points to the social trends the locale may have taken over the years – with the help of the foreign incursion.

The beach chairs on Playa Sosúa are lined up in deep rows along the much longer beach, many occupied by a similar mix, although with far more locals, and much closer to the edge of the water, any closer implying inevitably being doused by a wave crashing on the steep embankment of sand that the current tide breaches.

The beach has a more playful but also rougher feeling, possibly due to some of the dubious characters that linger around the periphery. The sand is of decent quality, although not as nice as that of Alicia, and the water much calmer. A dirt road runs under the shade of the tree canopy at the back of the beach, lined with eateries and souvenir shops, many of which flog paintings that appear particularly ghastly. Alcohol is plentiful, although here, as anywhere else I have seen in the country, the degree of consumption gives rise to a level of boisterousness, not degrading debauchery. I am content to lie on the sand, spending the time baking in the waning hours of tropical sunshine, given the heat of the coastal tropical climes.

Nearby, the Osteria Toscana is a sumptuous and expansive space, featuring a number of open terraces facing the road to the beach, with vines covering the wire fence separating the property from the outside world, with a lemon-yellow colour scheme, windows covered with wrought iron grills, pitched roofs, and a general architectural style that reflects a Latin American view of what Tuscan architecture would look like – but isn’t, as it’s more rectilinear, terser, very old, the contemporary design characteristics and appointments leaner and stricter in their elegance.

There are a few customers, the older German from Stuttgart behind me telling me that while the town does in fact have a few very good restaurants, it isn’t the kind of place he would want to live any more, and in fact lives some distance from the town. He loves it here, and it certainly is far more affordable than where he comes from: as much as prices have risen here, they have certainly risen considerably in Europe. And the pizza is incredibly good, as is apparently everything else on the menu. But the DOP 150 charge for paying by Visa? Seriously?

Walking briefly through the town at night reveals a very different sensibility than I saw on the beach, brightly-lit spaces with an imaginative presentation, flogging local and North American-style meals and snacks, all presumably relatively affordable (for foreigners) – and good quality, as is typically the case with food in the country.

I may as well return to the Supermercado Playero en route to picking up a shared taxi back to Puerto Plata; some juice, maybe some more coffee, maybe some good French bread, maybe other seductions as I am bound to find in such a well-stocked supermarket. It just seems too easy, buying groceries here, then heading over to the Texaco station for the shared taxi to Puerto Plata.

A young black woman looks at me from the back of the car: I tell her that often, being tall is a great thing, but not always, as she keeps looking at me with wide eyes and the men around her burst out laughing. The soft, sweet temperament of the Dominicans …

Our driver is female, unusual; she takes us along the coastal highway, past the innumerable gas stations, the urban flowering that doesn’t really benefit the character you’d expect of a tropical paradise that visitors want to subscribe to, but on the other hand, provides the general populace with an immense sense of convenience, certainly if they have the money to take in the delights of the endless restaurants, cafes, bars, and of course liquor stores. Perhaps it’s all a flight of fancy, considering the prevalence of lottery outlets …

Roberta Flack died today: in a world so troubled by political turbulence and lack of predictability, we are reminded of one of the greatest voices …