Tuesday, October 30, 2007
Hurricane? Not a hurricane, merely a 'tropical storm'! Any difference? Not a lot really, just that nobody bothered to tell us this one was coming!
With the wonders of modern science we can of course track the satellite pictures of cloud formation and we could have been suspicious on Saturday afternoon when the merest fringes of what appeared to be a massive cloud formation hanging over the central Caribbean started to give us some extremely heavy squalls.
Perhaps we are not the most ardent followers of the Dominican media, but we definitely keep our ears close to the ground in the Boca Chica community and we never heard even a murmur about anything untoward on the way. On the contrary... the locals asked us, because of our satellite picture watch, and unassumingly we said, "Yes it looks like it could be quite wet for a while".
Saturday night was just a taster. Deluge would have been the very appropriate word. It sounded like somebody pouring buckets of water on the roof, but constantly!
Sunday morning it was still raining heavily and in general looking very dismal indeed. We made the extremely rare decision to close Playa Vista, or rather not open Playa Vista, and unlike nearly every other occasion when that almost unthinkable possibility has been considered, this special Sunday did not get any better as time went on... it actually got worse... a lot worse. The sea rose, and the beach disappeared beneath the waves strangely just like when a hurricane passes by! (please see photos of Hurricane Dean’s effects Aug 19th entry)
Then Sunday night when we got what was so reminiscent of a hurricane that it obviously was more than a coincidence, we began to suspect that something was up. Firstly the electricity supply was cut -always a sure sign of serious difficulties here in Boca Chica- and then the water supply that actually had already beaten a hasty retreat some 24 hours before that, totally failed. Then followed a second night of deluge, but this time accompanied by extremely high winds all night long.
The next morning we had phone calls literally from all around the world, joining the increasing local questioning as to "what happened?" Due to there being no electricity, it was very difficult to verify anything except, thankfully that Playa Vista had escaped with very minimal damage even if some of the in-coming telephone calls talked of the felling of numerous large trees in the neighborhood and major evacuations of people in parts of the Dominican Republic.
Well, now here on Tuesday morning with electricity back in supply we are able to know that it wasn’t a hurricane just a 'tropical storm called Noel' that travelled at the paltry speed of 6mph thereby prolonging the agony leaving at least 20 dead and considerably more missing due to swollen rivers and flooding around the country.
Not a hurricane we reiterate, with the voice of the authorities very quietly echoing in the background... just a tropical storm!
Posted by Playa Vista @ 11:54 AM CST
Tuesday, October 2, 2007
Immediately adjacent to Playa Vista on the west side there is a plot of land almost identical in size to our own. When we first arrived in town many years ago, the plot was occupied by at least three micro- businesses: a fishmonger, a hairdressers and a restaurant cum kitchen... not to mention whatever was happening on the beach immediately in front of the property. We can even remember being offered a parcel of this land, by one of the micro-businesses, for the sum of US$50,000!
However, a couple of years went by and then suddenly a mass clearance of these businesses was instigated by 'the genuine owner' who had suddenly decided to make his presence felt after many years absence and, by the way, had a hard time getting rid of all the long-time squatters, especially the ones doing whatever they were doing on the beach in front of the property. At this point the true history of genuine ownership of the land began to fall into place, and it became clear that it would have been a very sorry good-bye to $50,000 to anybody foolhardy enough to do a deal with the non-owners of any parts of the land.
The genuine owner turned out to be a certain well known banker-family that had suddenly decided they wanted to sell up and had ordered the property to be cleared and fenced off. This seemingly small maneuver took quite some time mainly because the relevant authorities here, for many different reasons, like wanting their "part of the action" and the usual accompanying bureaucratic crawl had to be negotiated before something as simple as even fencing got put up. A "Se Vende/For Sale" sign finally went up and then simply the vegetation, for better and for worse, just grew and grew around it.
We maintained contact with the banker-family, not through our initial contact, the patriarch of the family - because it seemed, shortly after our first encounter, he had "difficulties" regarding his involvement with the collapse of one of the major banks 'Banco Nacional de Credito' - but through his grandson who continually assured us that the family were definitely selling the land but that the principal obstacle to the sale were the many family members party to the ownership and getting a consensus decision on anything was very difficult indeed.
Finally, after several years of passing, we were alerted recently one morning to the latest, we presume, sea change regarding the land, when we heard rubble being tossed on to the land from what was the D'Nancy beach restaurant next door on the other side. At this point it would be relevant to mention another story within a story, namely that just a few weeks earlier the D'Nancy restaurant caught fire and was entirely gutted! Our own observation of this couldn’t help noticing that ‘strangely’ the same afternoon of the fire, certain ambulant sellers of cooked sea food such as conch and squid had been boiling up their fare on the adjacent vacant lot and the smoke and embers were, in the strong sea breeze, drifting in precisely the direction where the roof of the D'Nancy restaurant caught fire!
However, in order not to digress too far, for now let us return to the rubble tossing! After our experiences over the years in seeing this derelict site in question abused in so many unthinkable ways by whoever was passing, we immediately enquired of the rubble movers what they were doing... only to discover Nancy’s husband, the owner of the burned out D'Nancy restaurant, orchestrating this latest clearance.
Rumors go, and it would seem to be so, that he and his associates have purchased the infamous land and that they plan to build a hotel complex on the site, although they say there is no hurry and that initially they will be using the land for a parking lot. Observations so far would indicate that hurrying is not actually an option. To clear two trees and the very small concrete structure that existed, took about three weeks and countless man hours of labor, chiefly because chainsaws are not used in these parts where the manly good old fashioned axe approach still rules. After the clearing of the two large trees - as the owner prepared foundation holes for inserting poles and proper fencing - those good old authorities arrived again in the shape of the navy and the tourist police indicating that the alleged new owner did not have permission for such and must remove the protective work already done. The squatters still operating on the public beach in front of the property who 'of course' do not have any permission to put out tables, chairs and parasols or sell drinks and food to beach guests and, as if to add insult to injury, 'of course' do not pay the obligatory taxes have 'of course' never been asked for any of the required permissions at any stage in the proceedings either!
For the impatient reader here comes the conclusion... local squatters can, until at least some logic is introduced not to mention fairness, in spite of repeated governmental promises of a thorough 'cleanup', do almost whatever they want on other people’s unused property and on the public beach in front, but as soon as a legal owner pops up and reclaims his land he will have to spend a lot of time and money dealing with the squatters and the authorities who now suddenly, enticed by the sweet smell of easy money, show up in numbers with great expectations of handsome rewards for their 'services'! Unfair? Of course it is… but all part of daily life in this tropical paradise where there are always quite a few snakes around to keep us on our toes!
Posted by Playa Vista @ 09:41 AM CST
