I Came, I Saw, I Bolaed

Peace Corps tradition in the DR, as of 3 years ago, a bola race from point A (in this case Santiago) to point B (in this case Las Terranas, Samana Peninsula). That was the race this year. Now, what, you may wonder, is a bola? Well my friends, a bola is a free-ride. IE: we hitchhiked from Santiago to the beach. It was SO much easier, more fun and faster than I ever would have thought. (We made it there faster than we would have on public transportation by a matter of hours!) We, my team partner and I (a male, all teams are male-female groups of 2 for everyone’s protection,) took a public bus out of the city (it’s hard to get rich city-folk to take pity and offer a ride) with a large group of gringos. We parted ways with some and joined some others once out of the city and took something like 8 or 9 different bolas to get to the beach.
One of my favorite parts of the day was when my mom called me on my cell phone to talk and I was on the most dangerous ride I would catch that day. Half of the group was sitting in/on a pile of rubber tires towards the front of the bed of a pickup truck and the other half (including myself at the very back) were sitting on boxes that were stacked (as were the tires) incredibly high and not so securely. A friend of mine literally had my back though, so I wasn’t going anywhere. Still, I took the call and was very honest and up front about what it was I was up to. There was nothing to hide because bolas here are a part of life and are much safer than hitchhiking in the US. Everyone in my group of gringos with whom I was traveling agreed that we had no reservations about bolaing in the DR but would never hitchhike in the US.

My other favorite part of the day was when we got dropped off on a 2 lane highway (which does not indicate much about anything because almost all highways here are 2 lanes) with relatively little traffic. A friend of mine looked at the first vehicle to come our way and declared, “We’re getting on that.” I laughed hysterically because the vehicle to which she was referring was a Mack truck with no bed attached to the back. There was no way we were getting on the back and no way we’d all fit inside the cab. Well, with the exception of one person, we all got right into the cab when to my amazement the driver pulled over for our group of 6. The other member held on tight to the back and soon joined us up front on the bed in the cab when the ride got to be a bit bumpy. The driver was very quiet and very cool and took us pretty far in what was surely not only the best bola we caught that day, but that anyone racing caught that day.

There were 12 teams in total and my group of 3 teams tied for 3rd. We came in behind a team who got only 4 bolas (were very lucky to have had their first driver suggest they take them a much shorter route than the rest of us took and very lucky also to get so far with so few drivers) and another group who took our same route who passed us in a small town at one point as we were looking for our next ride. There was a bit of time between our group and the teams that came in after us and I was pretty proud considering it would be that much more difficult to get a ride for 6 than a ride for 2.

We played on the beach for the next day and a half and on the third day, I woke up at 5:45 to get back to my site 12 hours later. (Should have been 3 hours less, if my bus hadn’t gotten held up in Santiago.) But all in all it was a fantastic experience!