Saturday, January 15, 2011

The New Commute


Our former apartment was conveniently located on the subway line (which is shockingly modern, clean, and functional - best subway I’ve ridden).  Thus, we spent little time taking Santo Domingo’s more common modes of public transportation:  the carro público (public cars) and the gua gua (public vans and buses).  
Our new apartment requires 2 public cars to the office and at least 1 to return home.  While they’re nothing to look at and the comfort factor is low, I am a fan of public transport here.  It’s incredibly easy and cheap.  Once you figure out the routes (discerned only by talking with the drivers or locals in-the-know), wow.  You wave your hand and voila, cars (or gua guas) stop to pick you up.  They likewise drop you off wherever requested.  All for 25 pesos (70 cents).
The downsides include no windows, doors that usually only open from the outside (thus having no windows is quite handy), and the fact that they stuff 7 people into an old Toyota Corolla:  4 in back and 2 in front plus the driver.    The picture above is the carro público line-up where we hop a car to get to work each morning.  A line-manager (note the guy holding the umbrella) loads car after car with 6 passengers and then off you go.  Cool!

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