Looking for Columbus

On the working principle that the first price quoted is at least double the going rate, I sneered and strode past the macho young motoconcho (motorbike taxi) driver reclining outside the corner bar in Luperon, an otherwise unspoiled fishing village on the Dominican Republic’s spectacular northwest coast.

“Fifty pesos! It was only 50 pesos for the bus from Santo Domingo to Santiago,” I scoffed in my best high-school Spanish. (The cities are 110 miles apart; pesos are 16 to the dollar.)

The locals, you see, have long since been spoiled by the gullible and free-spending tourists who venture out from their all-inclusive resorts.

A four-day veteran of the squeeze-the-tourist skirmish, I bargained another Pedro Fonda wannabe down to 40 pesos, and off we set on a positively exhilarating 10-mile ride through sun-drenched hillsides and bright pastel villages. Our destination: Parque Nacional La Isabela, the site of Christopher Columbus’ first home in the New World.

Like many Dominican Republic visitors, I had come primarily for the sun, on a heavily discounted, one-week air fare-hotel package last October. My wife was content to sunbathe and take naps with our 9-month-old twin daughters at a modest beach resort on the south (Caribbean) coast about an hour’s drive east of Santo Domingo. I had a different agenda.

I had chosen the D.R., as it is commonly known, because it had a lot to explore beyond the beach: an extensive and well-preserved 15th and 16th century colonial Spanish heritage.

I spent the first two days wandering the streets of the walled Zona Colonial, the oldest European city in the New World and the suitably regal first capital of Spain’s overseas empire. After that, I was ready to venture to the north (Atlantic) coast. I wanted to see La Isabela, where the greatest of all explorers, the “Admiral of the Ocean Sea,” lived after his second voyage to the island that he christened Espanola (“Little Spain”). (“Espanola” became Hispaniola, the name for the island 700 miles southeast of Florida, which the D.R. shares with Haiti to its west.)

The park turned out to be closed, an eventuality that came as no surprise to my driver, who shrugged his shoulders when I asked for change from my 50-peso note and sped off.

“When will it reopen?” I asked the T-shirted “captain” of the four-person contingent of gate guards.

“Perhaps tomorrow . . . perhaps not,” he said with a shrug.

My Spanish was not up to the explanation that followed, but I caught enough to know there was a disputa among higher-ups, with the result that the park would be cerrado until who-knows-when.

I proceeded to protest, not vehemently, but enough to bring a superior out of his office. I sensed he was open to conciliation. I was right.

For a small consideration of 100 pesos “for his time,” he arranged for a groundskeeper to show me around, with strict instructions that I was to return in 10 minutes.

Fortunately, it doesn’t take long to see what’s left of La Isabela, the 1,200-man outpost that Columbus founded on Jan. 1, 1494, and named in honor of Spain’s queen and his benefactress. Only sketchy foundations of a few structures remain, perched atop a 10-foot cliff overlooking a sparkling aquamarine sea. In the appropriately blood-red earth under a canopy of blooming royal poincianas, 56 white stone crosses and the unearthed bones of one Spanish soldier, his arms folded resignedly across his chest, delineate the environs of the church, site of the first Mass said indoors in the New World.

No one seemed to be counting the minutes, so I ducked inside the Museo La Isabela, two open-air cabanas with exhibits of life in Columbus’ day and various artifacts recovered from the settlement. While my escort stayed discreetly behind me, feigning to share my interest in the displays, I contemplated just how confused the great discoverer had been. Till his dying day, Columbus remained convinced that he had discovered not a new world, but the back door of the Far East, hence his insistence upon calling the indigenous Tainos indios, a misnomer perpetuated to this day. In addition, the site of La Isabela had been chosen primarily because Columbus confused Cibao, the Tainos name for the place where a bit of gold had been found, with Cipangu, the name by which Japan was known among Europeans.

When my time was up, another motoconcho whisked me back to Luperon for 35 pesos. From there, a series of guaguas (stop-on-demand and loaded-to-the-rafters private minivans) delivered me 25 miles down the coast to Puerto Plata.

The Spanish built a fortified outpost there in 1540, but Puerto Plata’s day in the sun wouldn’t come until the late 19th century, when it was the commercial outlet for the island’s rich tobacco trade. Rows of bright pastel gingerbread mansions, the former homes of German tobacco traders, still line the narrow streets of the Old City, offering shelter and sustenance to down-at-the-heels travelers.

That evening, I joined the locals in their nightly ritual, strolling the oceanfront promenade and patronizing the many food and alcoholic beverage carts. That night, the Red Sox were hosting the Yankees back home, and behind every open door on the side streets, a chorus of cheers and a telltale blue glow showed that the collective attention of beisbol-crazy Dominican manhood was focused about 1,500 miles to the north.

The next morning it was back through bustling Santiago, the D.R.’s second city and tobacco capital, then 15 miles south to the agricultural center of La Vega. With the assistance of anothermotoconcho, I was soon a few miles out of town on Santo Cerro (Holy Hill), a delightful prospect overlooking the fertile valley of Cibao.

Legend has it that Columbus planted a cross here to encourage his men in a battle with the Tainos, who were resisting enslavement in their valley “where gold is born.” When an image of the Virgin Mary appeared on the cross, the soldiers rallied and the terrified Tainos fled.

These days Santo Cerro is crowned by the 19th century church of Our Lady of Mercies, for Dominican Catholics a site of pilgrimage every Sept. 24. A handful of stores lines the street leading up to the church, offering religious objects to the faithful and cold drinks to the more corporeally thirsty. In the eastern apse lay the Santa Hoya (Holy Hole). The plaque read: “In this very place according to a very old legend Christopher Columbus, on March 25, 1495, planted a tall cross made from medlar wood.” Back outside, a tree alleged to be a descendant of the one that furnished Columbus his divine rallying sign provided some much-appreciated shade.

A deceptively long three-quarter-mile walk back down the Santo Cerro eventually brought me to the gates of La Vega Vieja, the Spaniards’ gold-mining settlement. (The gold quickly ran out, and in 1562 an earthquake leveled the town.)

The access road to the park was barricaded, and I couldn’t get the reason from the gruff guard.

My poor Spanish wasn’t up to this challenge, so out came my wallet and a 50-peso note. It was only enough to allow me to look at the site from the parking lot. Adopting the Dominican fashion, I ignored the limitation and walked right in.

La Vega Vieja’s ruins are sparse, most of the settlement having been hauled off after the earthquake for other construction needs.

Columbus is believed to have had a residence here too, though it hasn’t been identified yet. Or so I gathered from the guide who emerged from his office-home to see what I was doing. The one impressive true ruin is the fort, El Fuerte de la Concepcion, with slits in the walls for artillery.

My return to the modern capital of 2 1/2 million people was considerably less stressful than the resettlement of Columbus’ disease-ravaged first outposts from the north coast to the south. Mine was a two-hour bus ride past cockfighting arenas, roadside food stands, the odd campo de beisbol (and the even odder Columbus Billiards Hall); to the west, forested hillsides angled upward toward Pico Duarte, the island’s highest peak (10,414), lost in a swirling afternoon storm.

Columbus and his brother and partner, Bartholomew, were not much liked in the new colony of Santo Domingo. They were Italian-born; why should good Spaniards be governed by foreigners? Unrest grew, a Spanish arbiter arrived, declared himself governor and sent El Almirante back in chains to Spain, where he died, impoverished, in 1506.

But he would not rest in peace, thanks to his son, Diego, who petitioned King Ferdinand to regain title to his father’s “discoverer’s rights” and was made governor in 1509. Across the Ozama River from the first settlement, the junior Columbus (Colon) built his own magnificent--and now magnificently restored--residence, the Alcazar de Colon. Here too were the first university, monastery and hospital in the Western Hemisphere.

In 1542, with Colon still in power, the remains of the explorer were exhumed from his crypt in Seville and shipped to Santo Domingo, where they were reinterred in the cathedral. In 1796, they supposedly were returned to Seville. Dominicans insist that Seville has the wrong bones, and in 1992 the remains in the cathedral were removed to a new mausoleum, an edifice worthy of the “Discoverer of America”: the colossal Faro a Colon (Lighthouse to Columbus--so called because it has laser lights on the roof) in the capital’s big eastside park.

A Baroque marble sarcophagus topped by bronze angels stands in inside the starkly modern monument. There, I paid my respects to the fearless sailor who is credited and faulted for much more than he ever did. Then I suffered another guagua ride back to my seaside hotel, where it seemed appropriate to toast the great man with a couple of rum-and-colas. For, failing at gold, the Spaniards turned to cultivation of sugar cane, which led to the invention of rum and the Americas’ loss of innocence.

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GUIDEBOOK

Goodbye, Columbus

Getting there: American Airlines, TWA and US Airways have connecting service (change of planes) from Los Angeles to Santo Domingo. Restricted round-trip fares begin at $883.

Travel agencies sell vacation packages that include air fare at a lower price. Budget travel guru Arthur Frommer recommends Travel Impressions, telephone (800) 284-0044, and InterIsland Tours, tel. (800) 245-3434. A well-regarded Internet site that books individual resorts and hotels is https://www.dominicanresorts.com.

Your base of operations will depend on whether you prefer to maximize beach time (Puerto Plata or Playa Dorada in the north) or culture and history (Santo Domingo) in the south.

Getting around: Public transportation (ask at your hotel) is fast, easy and cheap and the best way to go for most excursions, provided you speak a little Spanish and don’t mind riding cheek-to-cheek with your seatmates. Taxi rentals are relatively inexpensive; again, order through your hotel.

Reputable tour agencies with offices in the Dominican Republic include Cafemba Tours, tel. (809) 586-3550, and Prieto Tours, tel. (809) 685-0102.

For more information: Embassy of the Dominican Republic, 1715 22nd St. N.W., Washington, D.C., 20008; tel. (202) 332-6280, https://www.domrep.org. Also https://www.dominicana.com.do.