 | Santo Domingo Transportation | Tips 1 - 10 of 55 |  |
Popular Transportation | Miscellaneous Transportation Tips | All Tips (55)
a city as chaotic and as mad as santo domingo is gonna cause grief for the tourist that doesnt speak spanish, and that was the case for me. (and a few germans i met!). the public transport system in SD is crazy. no set times, no order, no direction. traffic everywhere, chaotic mess. i would see locals pile into little minivans, 10 crammed into a car, knowing where they were going. i didnt want to risk that! buses crammed with people as well, old old buses that were about to fall apart. by the end of it all, i became a taxi hopper. or a walker. the great thing is the colonial zone is easy to walk around. that isnt the problem. but to get out to see the sights like the faro colon, or the botanic gardens, you will be best to take a taxi. around US$10 for both of those options. taxis can be found lining up at parque colon, or near plaza de la hispanidad. just look for the men standing around smoking and chatting all day. lol. at first i was a bit weary, being a young single girl, with these men driving, but they were all very professional and extremely kind. be warned though, they do not know english, so have where you want to go written down, or learn some basic spanish. i ended up using the services of a very nice guy called eugenio. i organised my next day's pickup, and i decided to use him because he was kind, and was a bit of a negotiator (although once again my concience came into play and i would always pay him extra!) . he spoke a bit of english, italian and german. he can be contacted on his cell, 809-395-0500, and he is a registered tourist guide of santo domingo, although he really just drives a taxi. haha Leave a Comment Theme: Car/Motor Home
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getting to santo domingo is the easy part. delta flies from atlanta to the aeropuerto internacional las americas, and it only takes about 2 hours. so enjoy that trip, because the next one is not so pleasant! when you walk outside of the airport it is CHAOS! there are no shuttle buses or cheap vans to take you into town, so you have taxi drivers trying to get your business. it is hot, the humidity hits you like a blanket, and here you are with your luggage having a bunch of spanish speaking men trying to take you to their car. a bit disconcerting for a young fool like me! anyway followed a guy, and it costs US$40 to get into the colonial zone, a half hour ride away. im like, erm, let me negotiate, and i tell him $30. there was NO room for negotiation. as he said, the fuel prices, the fuel prices. he gave it to me for $35 at the end, because i said i would walk. lol. by the journeys end, i felt so sad for him, and his life, that i paid him $40. sometimes you just feel like a cow if you screw people down too much. he had 5 mouths to feed dammit! anyway after talking to others, local and tourists, it is definitely at least $40 for a taxi (i feared i had been ripped off, but all taxi drivers have a price listing on file). so yeh, moral of the story. taxi is an only option from the airport, which is pretty crap, but thats the way it goes. have a good amount of US dollars on you for this purpose. Leave a Comment Theme: Airplane
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Finally all the busses were there. All the people going to Puerto Plata had to stand one side and the ones to Punta Cana on the other side....When all the people to Puerto Plata were gone it was time for the Punta Cana people....but there was enough space in just 2 busses. About 12 people needed to sitt in the middle of the bus. Frans and I were 2 of this 12 people and refused to do this....and i am glad more people refused..so an other bus was opened and we could go with this bus (with just the 12 of us). To make sure our suitecases would be in this bus, we placed them ourselves in this bus. And there we went...4 long hours of driving through the Dominican night. I think the driver we had was ready for Formula 1 driving..we sat in the front of the bus..and i couldnt look out straight away, cause we sat really hight...but i could see the strange manouvers he made....hell what a driver this was! But we came to Punta Cana in one piece...only 1 bus was missing! We never found out what happend to this bus..maybe the people in it had to celebrate their holiday in Puerto Plata instead of Punta Cana! Leave a Comment Theme: Bus
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In Santo Domingo we have 2 kinds of buses: OMSA buses: the government buses with scheduled stops, they come in 3 kinds: the ones without air conditioning and the cheapest ones, the ones with air conditioning and the express ones that make less stops. If you want to get off you simply pull the cord. Union buses: property of the various transport unions, the route they drive is usually indicated by a piece of cardboard with the number of the route on the main windshield, visible so that we can stop the bus by stretching and arm and moving the index finger up and down (weird I know). On these buses there's a man hanging on the door called "cobrador" who will collect the fare and shout the route while on the road. Those buses are usually called "voladoras" because they drive like maniacs and at high speeds, and have no scheduled stops so if you want to get out you either shout "déjame" (let me off) or you tell the cobrador who then will signal the driver to stop by knocking on the carrocery of the bus. Theme: Bus
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on January 28, 2004
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