Six hundred housing lots are being sold at the new Cocotal golf course. A shopping center soon will be built nearby. Those upscale homeowners will need grocery stores, department stores, video stores, doctors and more.
`Punta Cana is growing, it's still in diapers," said Santiago of the tourism ministry. Because it is spread out and high-rise hotels are not allowed, he said it will never become as congested as Cancun.
Poverty
The blatant disparity between the haves and the have-nots in the D.R. nagged at me throughout my visit. I was troubled by the sight of hotel employees, stooped in the hot sun, using manual hedge trimmers on the grass around trees and shrubs. It was grueling, back-breaking work. It looked uncomfortably like servitude.
Many visitors may ponder the same questions : Where do these people live? What do they eat? How much do they earn? Am I helping them or exploiting them by being here? Don't Dominicans resent these foreigners who fly into their country with suitcases that contain more clothing than they may own, stay at resorts they could never afford, eat practically any time they want to, then fly out again?
When Dominicans see wealthier people, rather than creating resentment `it gives them the incentive to do hard work," said Santiago of the Ministry of Tourism. `Our society is based on hard work and the church. It is a Catholic nation. There are poor people, but there is no misery."
The government and hotel operators see tourism as a way to improve the lives of residents.
`The government has opened the door to hotel investors to come into the D.R because it will create more employment, as well as better roads and infrastructure," said Santiago. `Tourism helps the country.
`If one member of a family is working here, that will help the whole family," explained Catillo of Paradisus. `You can see that in Higuey, how it has improved just in the last year. Before you found tin houses. Now they are building concrete houses."
Regardless of their economic status, most residents I met were very cordial. While horseback riding outside my resort, I passed a cluster of tin-roofed shacks. Smiling children stood in the open doorway of their home and called out `hola!" as I rode by.
Price of progress?
The morning I was leaving Punta Cana, Castillo told me the road to the airport temporarily had been closed. Squatters who were living on private property for 30 years had been ordered off by the property owners, he explained. Some of them responded by throwing rocks at passing cars. About 4,000 `special police" moved in to remove them.
Even though the road reopened by the time I was ready to leave, one taxi driver refused to take me to the airport. I don't know if he sympathized with the squatters or just didn't want to risk having his car damaged.
Another took me, but briefly stopped to somberly watch a handcuffed man being taken out of a van outside a police station.
Closer to the airport, we passed only about a half dozen men wearing military fatigues and carrying rifles.
We also passed clusters of civilians and piles of furniture, which had just been moved out of tiny houses. Then we passed a bulldozer, which already had reduced several homes to rubble.
Order apparently had been restored. And fewer signs of poverty will greet vacationers flying into Punta Cana.
Reasons to return
Whenever I travel, I face the same frustration -- I want to see and do everything.
This was my first visit to the Dominican Republic. I couldn't see all of the country in a month, much less in five nights. But I learned there are many reasons to return to the D.R., which claims to be on its way to becoming the number one travel destination in the Caribbean.
I'd like to check out its many other beach resorts and visit Santo Domingo, oldest city and first capital in the New World. With two million people, it also is the largest city in the Caribbean.
I'd also like to see 10,700-foot high Pico Duarte, tallest mountain in the Caribbean. And Lake Enriquillo, which is more than 100 feet below sea level, three times as salty as the ocean, home to crocodiles and largest lake in the Caribbean.
Contact Randy Kraft
610-820-6557
randy.kraft@mcall.com
