de Chavon

A few weekends ago a group of 12 teachers all piled into one HUGE house in Casa de Campo, a Florida-ish resort in La Romana, which is 2 hours from the Capital. As usual I had no idea what to expect, except that many of my students have homes in this "little" resort. Apparently it is well known for it's golf courses of which there are three. You all know how I feel about golf courses, so I won't rant again, but we are so close to the ocean here and all that fertilizer and pesticide that is needed to make the manicured grass just runs off into the Rio Chavon and straight into the Caribbean...

Rio Chavon

Someone decided to build a small European fake city within the boundaries of the compound. Altos de Chavon, literally, above the Chavon river is a super cute, tiny, town built with lots of local limestone. I'm not sure the significance of the donkey, but I've actually seen this same image on postcards here...

Really, all that is here is a few shops, a church, and a couple of restaurants that turn into discotecas at night.. Needless to say I didn't venture to the disco, as they are the hangouts for my kids.

There was a little museum dedicated to the anthropological history of the island. It's quite interesting, actually. The native Tainos were basically completely wiped out by European settlers, but the museum did have some cool artifacts to look at. 

The little amphitheater in Alto de Chavon.

If you follow the Chavon river to its mouth you enter the Caribbean Sea...