I Can't Believe I'm in Santiago!

It's 1 AM and for some reason I'm still awake.

Okay, I know the reason. I had an extended day. Did way too much.

After getting into SD yesterday, the rental car spot pulled some absolute BS. Alright, so I'm going to tell you this so you can at least avoid being surprised by the nonsense. Look, when you make a reservation with the rental agencies, you're kind of wasting money because when you get to the counter, they're going to give you a completely different price. I booked a SUV for 1 week with a drop off in another city. Expedia had me pay $77 down, essentially the collision damage waiver, to hold the car. Okay, fine. However, these guys at Hertz were like "that's great that you bought Expedia insurance. Has nothing to do with us, though. You need to buy our insurance, otherwise we put a $1500 hold on the car". Oh, by the way, after buying the damn insurance twice, these guys still put a $1500 hold on my credit card. I was so mad I almost hit something coming out the lot on purpose just to get my money's worth.

Anyway, I'm dropping this crappy SUV off tomorrow and getting the Ford Explorer on the expat hookup. But yeah, basically any rental car company in DR is going to scam you out of money. So just be prepared. And if for some reason you don't believe me, at least read the reviews. Some of them are actually quite entertaining. If not for this pandemic, I would definitely Uber everywhere like I did before.

Driving in DR... okay, I survived Santo Domingo at rush hour. But let me tell you, driving out here is not for the weenies. I grew up driving all up and down the west coast, including in Arizona where running red lights is as popular as open carry, and not even the braindeads in Oregon compared to these fearless Dominicans. I saw a little bit of every kind of third world backwardness on that road today: aimless pedestrians, speeding swervers, a coca cola truck that went through a concrete median, about two dozen broke down cars and motorcycles, folks driving with Presidente in hand... the good lord protected me because I was on highway 1 north after dark and there are practically no street lights. You should have seen me freaking out every time my GPS froze! The signage out this way is minimalist (good luck finding a street sign or a house number). Without Google and Verizon being available at least 85% of the time, I think I would have ended up in Haiti.

But I finally made it to Santiago and found my AirBnB. It's a cool little spot too. I expertly divided and stashed my money and credit cards, then I set off on yet another adventure to go meet up with a new lady friend of mine.

Nicki (not her actual name) is a nice woman, maybe a couple years older than I am, with an incredible physique, from a strong Dominican genepool. You won't see too many of her type in the US, at least not in their late 30s. Anywho, we eventually found something to eat at this fancy Argentinian themed restaurant, hung out and talked, and then she went home. Pretty good little meet and greet. With this pandemic going, it's good to keep the circle small, so we're planning to link up again tomorrow. Speaking of which, my Spanish wasn't too bad. Definitely could have been worse!

Alright, I'm going to get some sleep, then drive up to Puerto Plata to swap cars tomorrow. And get a SIM card for my phone.

Peace and chicken grease.