Cabarete - Day 3 (recap) Santiago nightlife

After leaving Carolina's house (with a Styrofoam cup of Cuba Libre in hand) we made our way downtown.  Carolina brought a CD of famous tunes redone by local meringue and salsa bands.  In this video you can hear some of that music while Carolina gives me a Spanish lesson on how to pronounce the name of the CD compilation.

The city is quite beautiful at night.  So many neon signs, people everywhere....a city that is alive after dark.  I loved it immediately.

After passing by a few colorful casinos in the downtown area, we arrive to our first stop which is at a monument that sits on a hill in the middle of the city over looking all of Santiago.  Alex performs one of the worst parking jobs I have ever seen after which we all pile out for pictures.  We even leave his car (halfway in the middle of the road) and head on up the road to get a view of the city at night.

Here is some video of us at the car taking pictures.  you really get to see how busy it is at night here.  Also in the video towards the end you will see the guard standing there with his machine gun....at least we know we won't get mugged here!

After walking to the top of the hill near the base of the monument, we are greeted with an amazing view of the city at night.

(view of the bars we visit a bit later) click for larger view

We also get a few group pictures taken.

Alex, Becky,me, Carolina stand in front of the cityscape

group shot with monumento in back of us....Styrofoam cups still in hand (Thanks Indy)

After taking pictures, we decide to head back to our car, hop in for a quick trip to the main strip of neon encrusted bars, in order to save ourselves a drunken walk back to our current parking spot.  The drive only took us a few minutes, as we were going to hit up the bars in the previous picture which reside at the bottom of the hill below the monumento. 

With all the neon lights outlining all the bars, the night life is just great...almost magical when walking around at night.  Just don't forget your street smarts as we have heard tourist get mugged at night fairly often.  Good thing we have two locals with us....although Indy is walking around with a $2000 camera around his neck which does not make anyone of us feel too secure.

Santiago night lights

almost magical...... click for larger view

We finally settle on a little bar that has a local band playing with plenty of people dancing.  We spend some time to having drinks and getting pictures.  Indy gets a ton of shots....and man oh man are the women here beautiful.  Check out this picture of the band playing and tell me that the singer (chick) isn't bangin!

Of course Becky was looking mighty fine this evening as well..

yep...I married a hottie!!!

Needless to say there was much drinking by all.  We even run into a friend of Carolina's from college who just happens to be from New York.  Here is a video of us all at the club.

Here are some more pics of our night.

Around 1am we decide that we are tired, and since Alex has a 2 hr drive in front of us to get back to Cabarete (Carolina did offer for us to stay at her place, but we wanted to get back to our all-inclusive), so we took Carolina back home so she could get her car and head back out on the town. 

We drive back.  I would like to tell you that the whole countryside of D.R. is beautiful at night...and it very well may be, but both Becky and I slept most of the way back, so honestly I have no clue.  We arrive at the Viva around 4am.

Anyways, I fall asleep content with having seen the two largest cities in the D.R. and vowing to be kiteboarding in the morning.