A Dominican roller coaster, and not the type you imagine

Did you ever have a roller coaster of a day? Planned to perfection, and each part of the day just jumps around from better to worse? Here is our day to remember

We were on a vacation on the island, 4 of us in total. We had rented a car and actually had a nice one. We were driving around for a few days already.

The plan

The plan for the day was quite chill. We wanted to do a tour in Los Haitises (you should do that if you are in the area), and after that to drive off to a glamping nearby and spend a day there with the owner and his friends, having a bonfire barbecue or something. That's it. The whole plan. We planned to start around 9am, and be in the glamping around 3pm. The things did not exactly go as planned.

Los Haitises

We met our guide and drove to the entrance to the national park. The first order of business was a two hour canoe tour on the river. We locked all our things in the car, and left only one phone out to take pictures and of course the car keys. I put the phone in a waterproof holder and hung the car key on it as well, and I put the holder around my neck. We got into the canoes and started moving on the water. About 30 seconds in the water, Lucy wants to start taking pictures. I'm passing her the holder with the phone, she takes it, and that is the moment the roller coaster started.

Going down

I see the car key slipping out of the phone holder flying exactly to the middle of the river and landing in the water. Fuck. We immediately stop and tell our guide, he looks at us with a look that says 'do not get your hopes up'. The water there are not clear, and we dropped the key in the deepest part of the river so to get it you actually have to dive in the water. Our guide called one of the boat captains to come with what he called 'diving equipment', in the mean time we are trying to figure out what to do if we don't get the key back. Everything is in the car - money, phones, clothes. The phone that is left outside does not have any of the emergency numbers, not of the car rental, not of our local friends, nothing.

Going back up

After a few minutes a boat shows up and the captain just jumps into the water and starts free diving to the bottom time after time to look for it. After about 20 minutes of him going up and down in the water he tells us that the low tide will come in an hour and then it will be easier to find then. So it is better for us to continue our tour and just try to find it when we come back. We agree. At that moment he dives one last time, and as we turn our canoe around he comes up with the key in his hands. A roar of happiness is sounded. The guide takes the key and puts it in his waterproof bag, and we continue the tour.

And going back down again

We ended up having a great tour, and the key was working normally, we finished up and started driving to our next stop - the glamping. It was about an hour and a half drive, the time was around 1pm.

If you read my rant about the quality of the roads in Dominican Republic, you'd know that most of the roads are very bad. This was one of the exceptions, as the road is frequently visited by tourists, it is well maintained and had no holes in it.

Or so I thought.

After driving for about 30 minutes on a perfect road, all of sudden I notice something weird, I start slowing down and I realize that there is a HUGE hole in the road and by the time I realize that it is too late to completely avoid it as it is covering all of my lane. I steer the car out of it and go through it only with the right side of the car.

We hear a wheel pop.

We get out of the car to see that the two right tires are done.

(Just for the full picture, I ended up driving this road for it's full length, this that was the only hole in it)

Good people in the middle of the road

We are standing in the middle of nowhere, exactly in the middle between two villages. Nothing nearby.

The first person we see stop his motorcycle and tries to help us, he says that he is a mechanic! We decide to change one of the wheels for the spare one and maybe try to get the next village to look for a mechanic.

The jack doesn't fit under the car! Damn rental. As we try to engineer a way to lift our car another car stops, the guy gets his jack out and it magically fits, he also gives us his spare and and accompanies us to the mechanic in the village.

The tires, on the other hand, are not so good

We wait for about half an hour for the mechanic to finish whatever he was doing, in the mean time another car arrived with a blown tire from the same hole. The locals have told us that the hole is there since they built the new road and nobody is fixing it, the locals just know it's there and always go around.

The mechanic came out and looked at the car, and said that he might have one tire, but definitely not 2. We remember that we are in a small village and lucky to have found a mechanic at all. We tell him to find the one tire so we can give the other guy his spare back. We wait for about another hour until he finds a tire. The tire looks like it was lying around for a few years, but that's all we have, he changes it and we keep going. For about one kilometer. Then the car shows that there is air missing in the new tire.

We see that the tire looks whole, so we just needed to fill it with air. We slowly advance to the closest gas station and try to fill the wheel with air, for like 5 minutes, but nothing happens. We have a hole in the new tire we just bought.

The people keep bringing us up

One of the guys in the gas station says he knows a good mechanic in the closest town - Miches. At this point we are about 15 minutes drive from the town. They were nice enough to take 2 of us with them so our car will be lighter, and we slowly managed to get to Miches in about 30 minutes. The mechanic was not there, but someone told us that he just went somewhere and did not close for the day yet (it was already around 5pm, closing time for many places).

So we waited.

The mechanic showed up after about 40 minutes. He said that he doesn't have the tires we need but he can go buy them, we agreed. He went away and came back after around 20 minutes with 2 brand new tires.

He takes down the new wheel, the tire is torn from the inner side, the one we have just bought. We take down the spare and he replaces our 2 wheels fast and professionally. He also takes down the other 2 wheels to check if there is any damage to them. We see that everything is fine and part ways.

This is our saviour. He is, of course, not on Google Maps, but his spot is just on the entrance to Miches, right next to Parada Turistica Miches Seibo.

We solved our problem, it should be fine now right?

We kept going, this time it seemed that the wheels are finally fine. We arrived to the glamping at 9pm (we were supposed to be there 6 hours earlier). I did try to contact the owner throughout the day since the moment we had our car trouble, but nobody answered. When we arrived the gate was closed, and everything was dark. We stopped the car on the side of the road and one of us climbed over the fence to see if there is someone inside.

There was nobody.

There was a family house neighboring the glamping, I went to ask them if they know anything about the owner. Luckily they did, they called the owner and he told them that someone will come by to open for us in a few minutes. We waited for close to 40 minutes outside the closed gate, until someone showed up to let us in and show us our place. That is when we contacted the owner through the phone of the guy. He said that he also tried to contact me but had a wrong number, so he just left.

Ending the day with a bit of hope

We quickly organized ourselves and were ready to go to eat. The planned bonfire barbecue couldn't be more forgotten. We got in the car and started driving around to try to find a food place that is still open, we are in the middle of nowhere after all.

We did stumble upon El Patio de Homeboy Food Truck, which turned out to be a hidden gem and got a feature in one of my hidden gems posts. We were amazed by the food and the atmosphere (and that they were open that late). We ate there and went back to sleep, a hopeful ending to the roller coaster we were riding the whole day

Final thoughts

This day was full of ups and downs. Were we extremely lucky? Extremely unlucky? It is debatable. The important thing is that everybody were ok, and everything turned out for the better.

What did you think about our Dominican roller coaster? Do you want to read about more of those? Check out the others.