Ruins of a building in La Isabela. The boxes mark where columns would have been placed to hold the roof up.
In the 1950's, a group of German researchers wanted to visit the site of La Isabela to do some archaeological work and see what they could dig up (pun intended) about Columbus and the rest of its early settlers. This was during the time of Trujillo's rule, a dictator who ruled over the Dominican Republic from 1930 until his assassination in 1961. He told one of his generals that Germans were coming to visit La Isabela, and told the general to "clean up" the site. The general took this to mean bulldozing everything and anything in La Isabela into the ocean, which of course was not Trujillo's intention.
Trujillo probably bulldozed his general into the same ocean.
In 1992, in preparation for the 500th anniversary of Columbus's arrival in the Americas, the Dominican government decided to make the former site of La Isabela into a National Park , complete with a museum and gift shop. (It's not really a gift shop, just a little warehouse where people try to get you to buy their wood carvings.) They also sell freshly made juice there which is delicious (as it always is here).
So we walked around the ruins for a while, saw a graveyard where the 38 Spanish men who were left behind when Columbus sailed back to Spain (wasn't enough room on the Niña for them; it was the only ship left) were buried (well, not really, the bodies were taken back to Spain because the Spaniards didn't like the idea of burying one of their own in the "savages'" land) and saw Columbus's house:
There were walls when Columbus lived there.
After La Isabela we drove just down the road to a beach called Playa Castillo where we had fresh fish (I had chicken. Tried the fish and it was good, but it tasted like fish. And I don't like fish.), tostones, salad, and Presidente beer. I was stupid and took zero pictures, but Lynne has some on her iPhone which may find there way onto my computer at some point or another. But anyway, the beach was beautiful, swimming was like taking a bath, we got to go snorkeling and see some awesome fish in the coral reefs further off shore...all-in-all a very good day. Lynne had insisted earlier that this wasn't going to be a "beach trip" but that's basically exactly what it was. After Playa Castillo we headed down the road another fifteen minutes to Playa Grande. Playa Castillo is in a bay so there are relatively few waves and the water is incredibly warm. Playa Grande had significantly larger waves and a definite undertow, so there wasn't much swimming there. Especially after I bumped into a jellyfish - I didn't get stung! Just brushed up against the mushy top part, and apparently it was a jellyfish that doesn't sting, which I wasn't even aware existed.
Playa Grande was the last stop before heading back to Santiago, which would take a good two hours or so. On the way back one of the tires on Lynne's car went flat and we had to stop pretty much in the middle of nowhere (and in the Dominican Republic, "middle of nowhere" means middle of nowhere) but thankfully there was a little family of farmers that came out to help us out. And of course, in true Dominican fashion, the few motorists that came along stopped and offered their help. Spare tire successfully on we continued on our way back into the city without any further incidents.
Back in Santiago Cricket and I decided we wanted to go out (it was Saturday night after all, but Avy was a tired party-pooper) so we did just that. We actually ended up running into some of the Liberal Arts students here on a CIEE study abroad program through their various universities. They've been here for over a month now, compared to our two weeks, and we were very pleased to find out that they had made some English-speaking Dominican friends. Who had cars. We ended up going out with them to some little bar-hangout place for drinks and then to a surprisingly classy dance club inside of a casino. Classier than it sounds, trust me. So nice to be around people that knew where to go and what to do around town, definitely need to hang out with them more!
On a completely unrelated note, I saw a tarantula today! And yes, I screamed. Not as loud as Avy, but it was definitely audible. We were walking through the PUCMM campus, which is basically a giant park with some buildings and a road running through it, so there are obviously a lot of...things living in it. We were walking along the road when Cricket said "What is that?" And we ran. I went back to take a look when Cricket confirmed it was dead. Can't believe there are people that keep them as pets... Moral of the story: I hope I never see one again. And if there is ever one in my house I might have to come back home, not gonna lie. Overcoming arachnophobia is a long process.
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