Well, life has now certainly stabilized here in the caribean. It still feels kind of unreal to live without work and only focusing on what is fun, but it is certainly something you get used to... Week after week passes with the same speed as it did when we were working, and it is amazing how many tasks you have to do even when you have nothing to do... You kind of wonder how you managed all the small things at home while you were working...
So we are now living after some kind of routine with spanish classes three times a week, sometimes surfing in the morning, windsurfing as much as possible during the day, some homework (until Tarald falls asleep on top of the book), watching TV and reading books. Eating out and partying certainly occurs more rarely and it is amazing how the focus has changed from getting to know 2-week tourists to maintaining local friends. I don't know when it happened, but at some point the tourists became more invisible to us... I guess it is because you get tired of involving yourself with people who leave your life after 1 week... Secondly, with our 9 month budget, we cannot match the spendings of the charter tourists.
Just when we were getting settled we got two friends, Finnur and Thor, visiting from Norway for 3 weeks. It was really nice to see some familiar faces from back home. They certainly shook us out of everyday life level and boosted us with new energy.
As we picked them up from the Santo Domingo airport (only 5 hours delay...) it felt natural to explore the capital for a weekend. When we are travelling we try to find those special moments which we will remember for life, not necessarily the biggest grey buildings of the city.... Not all of them will be published on these pages (as the internet provider has certain restrictions on content), but some of these are certainly worthwile sharing and are highly recommendable if you ever visit the Dominican Republic.
COCKFIGHTING (Just to clarify: we are talking about
roosters... not...)
Cockfighting is the traditional spectator "sport" in the Dominican Republic. Its position is particularly strong on the countryside, but the "sport" has many fans in the cities as well. Every city and village in the DR has a gallera, Santo Domingo alone about 100. After recommendation from the Lonely Planet we went to the Coliseo Gallistico de Santo Domingo. It was the perfect choice... The actual saturday, there were scheduled about 24 fights... All the fights were listed with certain scores and numbers for the birds, we did not understand much of it, but thought some of it was the odds. We were wrong....
This arena turned out to be one of the more classy ones. The colliseum took around 500-800 people in two categories - the owners and the rest. The owners were located in two rows closet to the padded ring and the rest were located one floor higher up, all around the stage. All the birds were located behind the upperback row in cages with glass walls. One local welcomed us and introduced the birds...
All roosters were prepared with white (blanco) or blue (azul) ancklebands with small sharp knives on them. Very impressive roosters, but not easy to pick obvious winner candidates.... It was difficult to place the bets... We were very impressed about the technical installations in the ring. They actually had an elevator to lift the two roosters into the ring:
Well into the ring they teased the birds with a 3rd bird before teasing them with each other to make them agressive enough. As the game begun the roosters knew what to do... The crowd also knew the procedure, and the atmostphere totally changed from the first bell sounded. People were shouting bets all across the hall, looking around, shouting, desperately trying to get someone to bite their odds...500 on azul... We realized that our initial guess was wrong, the odds are set as the match start, and continously changes as the fight goes on. Check the man in the lower part of the next picture adressing someone to the right. If you turn up the volume of your PC to the max, and move the mouse over the picture you will hear how it actually sounds when the fight starts (loud buzz).. Listen to the energy of the betters trying to get more bets.
In this arena the cocks fight until one of them does not fight back for 60 seconds. This rule varies from place to place. Of the about 18 matches we watched, only 2 died (but many others were in pretty bad shape...). One game after the other followed. At first it felt a bit disgusting, quite shocking, but after a couple of games we (everyone but Katja) were ready to place some bets and after 5 matches we were also shouting for AZUL, AZUL, AZUL.....and HOY every time the blue one got in a hit on the other.... You could almost smell the testosteron in the room... The atmosphere was weird...
After some games they made a break, for people to release some bladder pressure (each area of the ring naturally has its vendor pushing beer and cuba libres) and for the hosts to clean the ring for feathers and red sticky objects... Then, suddenly the crowd went wild again... but without a game... we turned around, and found a movie from Discovery Channel on TV. It was 5 lions chasing a some kind of african bull (Gnu?). As the lions got in 'hits' the crowd cheered loudly - HOY! The more hits and blood the better. As one of the lions finally got in the ultimate bite in the throat, the bull went down and people went crazy... It felt actually worse than the cockfighting.... what kind of people are coming here every week? What do they do for a living? What about their time off from work? Hmmmm.....
Anyway, the show must go on, and for some ten more fights, we were enjoying it, ordering more beer, betting, losing and winning it back again. As the Coliseo was kind of small and closed the soundlevel reached an incredible level. Just interrupted by few minutes of BOOing at some rooster which felt more for a nap than to fight... The other one proudly went around the ring eating loose feathers from the ground. It was very funny for us, but obviously not to the others...
You can say what you want about cockfighting but it sure is entertaining - that is if you have some level of testosteron, drink beer and bet. Katja thought it was an interesting experience, but would not go EVERY saturday...
All in all it was not as bad as we thought it would be, and highly recommendable to sense the atmosphere and all the crazy elements outside the fight. However, you must remember to bet, without the gambling you will most probably leave after 4 fights...
An hour later the appetite was peaking and we headed to the hotel to refresh ourselves for dinner. We were happy to see that gallo or pollo (chicken) was not on the menu...