The Beaches

The Dominican Republic features some of the most beautiful beaches on this earth. Luckily, some of them are not quite easy to reach, so they are still pretty empty. There are still streches where you can walk the beach for hours without ever meeting a tourist (apart from yourself, of course). I don't want to change that, though I know I will not be able to keep it from changing, but at least, I won't tell you where those photos were taken. Just look at them and enjoy. We spend one hole day at this beach and there was noone else. Those that are brave enough to search will probably find the places, all those others, just wait for another five years and there will be a nice, clean, european resort just in front of this beach.

I still don't know what can be done to keep the beauty of an empty beach for the future. I know that in the moment, one of us puts his foot on that strech of sand, it's no longer emtpy, and there is nothing worse for me than to find another german tourist here, but it would be the same the other way round. Sometimes, I think it would be the best if we had "explorers" that visit the beaches, take photos and put up websites so everyone can participate on the beauty without the need to go there ;-)...

This palmtree is the marker for a nice snorkeling area. Right off the beach you step into a garden of coral. The coral blocks nearly reach the surface and leave open canals that allow you to swim right between the coral fish and other animals. If you do so, take care that you don't touch anything because a reef is very fragile and the effect of diving fins is immense.

We know that the dominican people is relatively poor and that they wish to participate from the money that the tourists bring to their country, but on the other hand side we also hope that the dominican government knows that they only have their environment to sell once.

Most of the resorts today are "all inclusive" this means that the tourists hardly get out. For the people around these resorts, this has two sides: one is, they are not contaminated by european and american habits and the other one is, they don't get the tourists money, if they're not working in the resorts for a ridiculus salary.
Money makes the world go round, here as well as anywhere else in the world and so it's no wonder that the people in the Dominican Republic want their share of the money that the tourists bring. If you take into account that a normal salary might be as low as five to ten percent of your salary, it's only natural that people try anything to make some money.

One of the beaches that we found untouched two years ago was now used as a driving area for tourists on quad cycles from the nearby "Bavaro Beach Resort" - well, nearby, I'd say it's more than one hour's walk. Obviously, enough tourists come here to support the "coconut mafia". A young boy sold us four coconuts and he wanted to have 20US$. That seemed to be a pretty high price for something that grows in masses on the palmtrees just 50m away. When we asked him why his coconuts were so expensive, he told us that he had to buy them from the older boys, or young men, at about 2US$ each.

Nearly everywhere, somebody will try to sell something to you. On one trip, I met two boys, maybe eight or ten years old, that tried to sell shells they picked up from the sand before my eyes. What do you tell them? You could pick the shells up yourself? Don't they have a right to participate on our wealth? I didn't buy any of their shells, but I remember that they seemed to be truely disappointed.

When the sun beats down on the beach at noon, it is good to have some shadow. We built this sunroof of wood that we found on the beach and dry palm leaves that we took from the nearby palms in the background.
We were lazing the whole afternoon under this roof and nobody came by. This is the emptiest beach I've ever been on.