06/2013 - Can Sosua ever be changed into a Cabarete??

[deezl]

Sure, why not? It's got beaches, restuarants, hotels, AI's, Ocean World, 27 Falls, dune buggys, horseback riding, cruise line, etc etc etc.
All it takes is good planning & managment. I could do it with half my brain tied behind my back.

No windsurfing, so what?

all that stuff is in (or a lot closer to) puerto plata - which already has all the AI infrastructure built - and they can't even get people to go there.

[greydread]

II have not been to Pattaya, but didn't that city develop as a city from a small town and also have prostitution??? I think if prostitution is managed or moved down the street, then that would be a good compromise... But, leave it to the Dominicans to fuck things up...sooner or later...

Pattaya developed not from a small town but from a USAF base which was very heavily used during the Vietnam era. When I got my orders there it was U-Tapau AFB and the town (not unlike other towns in the PI, Panama, South Korea and Japan to name a few) sprung up ISO the base and the GI's stationed there.

The hookers came because the GI's were horny and had money and rather than end the party when the base dried up, they continued to cater to civilian sex travelers and a whole lot of expat ex-military and retirees who had no further use for the American way of life.

[rahsta]

I think the subsequent posters are correct overall. But let me also add...due to ISOC and etc. I have made lots of friends that live, visit and hang out in Sosua. In Sosua I can belch, fart, drink into a stupor, watch hot chicas shaking their asses, yell at the top of my lungs, listen to jokes and stories that would be inappropriate somewhere else and other things...

Regarding the future of Sosua... Well, unless a few new large resorts take over a good portion of the beach area and the town does not try to fix up the sidewalks, lighting and garbage removal...then the town would go down hill if a substantial amount of prostitution is eliminated.
.
Gringo tourists on vacation do not spend that much more than guys coming for girls on vacation and many times less. In addition, gringo vacation tourists only come a few months of the year while sex tourists come year round. If we are talking AI resorts, then the gringo vacationers seldom venture out of the resort, except maybe once or twice...not really helping the surrounding community except for the jobs it creates which are typically only low level cleaning maids and groundskeepers. Most management positions go to foreign workers or more educated workers from Santo Domingo...

If the community had a large foriegn investor committed to developing Sosua, and could get their project off the ground right away, then there might be limited suffering and a chance to save Sosua, but if prostitution is curtailed and the city is left to linger for years hoping for a savior, then the town is likely to deteriorate more...aka Detroit.... Would a place like Sosua attract a large investor if the town further deteriorated, restaurants closed, many small businesses and hotels closed and was filled with desperate people trying to survive and turning to crime???

I have not been to Pattaya, but didn't that city develop as a city from a small town and also have prostitution??? I think if prostitution is managed or moved down the street, then that would be a good compromise... But, leave it to the Dominicans to fuck things up...sooner or later...

Sosua is definitely a place were you Dont have to watch what you say in front of someone.

[WickedWillie]

If the community had a large foriegn investor committed to developing Sosua, and could get their project off the ground right away, then there might be limited suffering and a chance to save Sosua, but if prostitution is curtailed and the city is left to linger for years hoping for a savior, then the town is likely to deteriorate more...aka Detroit.... Would a place like Sosua attract a large investor if the town further deteriorated, restaurants closed, many small businesses and hotels closed and was filled with desperate people trying to survive and turning to crime???

I have not been to Pattaya, but didn't that city develop as a city from a small town and also have prostitution??? I think if prostitution is managed or moved down the street, then that would be a good compromise... But, leave it to the Dominicans to fuck things up...sooner or later...

Ah finally someone's getting warm.

[jose1234]

Ah finally someone's getting warm.

The only rumor I have heard about that goes back years as a wealthy family owns the land from the hills down to Sosua beach and was asking something like $40 million for it. The rumors go on that several wealthy people were considering developing it, including Donald Trump, but backed away because the owners would not go down in price or something to that effect...

If there are changes to Sosua due to a major development going in, then I am sure the area will continue to be great for expats regarding chicas because the culture will take a couple generations to change if it were to change...

[Westy]

I think the subsequent posters are correct overall. But let me also add...due to ISOC and etc. I have made lots of friends that live, visit and hang out in Sosua. In Sosua I can belch, fart, drink into a stupor, watch hot chicas shaking their asses, yell at the top of my lungs, listen to jokes and stories that would be inappropriate somewhere else and other things...

Regarding the future of Sosua... Well, unless a few new large resorts take over a good portion of the beach area and the town does not try to fix up the sidewalks, lighting and garbage removal...then the town would go down hill if a substantial amount of prostitution is eliminated.
.
Gringo tourists on vacation do not spend that much more than guys coming for girls on vacation and many times less. In addition, gringo vacation tourists only come a few months of the year while sex tourists come year round. If we are talking AI resorts, then the gringo vacationers seldom venture out of the resort, except maybe once or twice...not really helping the surrounding community except for the jobs it creates which are typically only low level cleaning maids and groundskeepers. Most management positions go to foreign workers or more educated workers from Santo Domingo...

If the community had a large foriegn investor committed to developing Sosua, and could get their project off the ground right away, then there might be limited suffering and a chance to save Sosua, but if prostitution is curtailed and the city is left to linger for years hoping for a savior, then the town is likely to deteriorate more...aka Detroit.... Would a place like Sosua attract a large investor if the town further deteriorated, restaurants closed, many small businesses and hotels closed and was filled with desperate people trying to survive and turning to crime???

I have not been to Pattaya, but didn't that city develop as a city from a small town and also have prostitution??? I think if prostitution is managed or moved down the street, then that would be a good compromise... But, leave it to the Dominicans to fuck things up...sooner or later...

Ohmmmm ... I was teasing. And subsequent posters let me know I'd stepped into it - up to my hip.

Please accept my apologies. All of you.

[The Sage]

The educational system is at least a decade from improving. My guess is there's easily 30 years or more, barring aliens arriving to make all humanities current issues disappear, of the current chica mindset. That's more than enough to get me through.

The only rumor I have heard about that goes back years as a wealthy family owns the land from the hills down to Sosua beach and was asking something like $40 million for it. The rumors go on that several wealthy people were considering developing it, including Donald Trump, but backed away because the owners would not go down in price or something to that effect...

If there are changes to Sosua due to a major development going in, then I am sure the area will continue to be great for expats regarding chicas because the culture will take a couple generations to change if it were to change...

[harkangel0]

Well from what I have read here and other sites Sosua has locked in a deal with a cruise line to start docking there and are in talks with other lines to do the same but they believe that they will not get theses' deals until they clean up their act. already they are feeling the hurt of these crack downs with five hotels filing bankruptcy and even some of the old mayors telling them to back off.

[Jimmydr]

Well from what I have read here and other sites Sosua has locked in a deal with a cruise line to start docking there and are in talks with other lines to do the same but they believe that they will not get theses' deals until they clean up their act. already they are feeling the hurt of these crack downs with five hotels filing bankruptcy and even some of the old mayors telling them to back off.

But they come off the boats for 5 or 6 hours.

[greydread]

But they come off the boats for 5 or 6 hours.

True, and in that short time those cruise ship tourists are a captive audience. They will sell them shit from vendors who pay the government for the license and sales tax and pay the company who won the concession rights (and kicked plenty back to El Jefe) who will in turn control the business and if that means move the whore houses away from the downtown and into the boonies (ala Sint Maarten & Aruba and Curacao and the rest of the cruise ship stops) then so be it.

Have you ever seen the people who come pouring off those ships and go pouring right back on again? These are the kind of people who take four Caribbean vacations in their entire adult lifetime while we take four a year. We spend more money but they buy more shit and pay more taxes.

Until Ho's start charging ITBIS it's going to stay that way.

[Westy]

Well from what I have read here and other sites Sosua has locked in a deal with a cruise line to start docking there and are in talks with other lines to do the same but they believe that they will not get theses' deals until they clean up their act. already they are feeling the hurt of these crack downs with five hotels filing bankruptcy and even some of the old mayors telling them to back off.

Sosua? No. Maimon ... which is twenty miles west "as the crow flies" from Sosua, certainly more than a half-hour away on Ruta 5. It's west of Puerto Plata and POP airport - Sosua is east of the airport.

Greydread has already said most of what I have to say about "shore excursions" from a cruise ship, but I'll amplify ... The "excursion director" opens the gangway no less than an hour after the vessel gets tied in to the dock. I'm not sure, but AFAIK they'll use it as a port for Triumph-class ships - that means about 2500 passengers total, and maybe 2000 will actually leave the vessel. The passengers will be able to choose (and pay tourist prices for) a goodly number of excursions, which will range from mild (how about the Amber Museum and the fort in Puerto Plata? Or the dolphin show and the casino at Ocean World?) to the drunken-wild (I'll bet some enterprising entrepreneur will set up "Pirate Cruises," IOW booze-cruises with a Pirate theme, right there in Maimon Bay), to PERHAPS the properly adventurous (Damajagua Falls? Maybe the teleferico to Pico Isabel de Torres? Maybe a horseback tour like the one I did my first time at Blackbeard's?)

The earliest, the most adventurous, MIGHT leave the ship at 9 AM. EVERY ONE of them have to be aboard by 1530, because the "Leviathan" is going to cast off and head for their next destination at 1600.

And what's Sosua really worth, in that sort of calculation? Far, far less than Her Majesty The Mayor is inclined to believe.

I've been on eleven cruise-ship cruises, from 1995 to 2003. Ten of those were with my Dear Departed Momma; one was the winter after she "went West." I went scuba-diving as much as I could manage, from each of them - in fact, I cued in the Captain of the SS Enchanted Isle as to some good scuba-diving on that vessel's final cruise - and I'm willing to assert "from authority" that the planned-and-prepaid excursions on a cruise-ship are meant to give even the least-athletic, the least-adventurous, the least-likely customers (for they are customers) the "idea" that they'd "done something adventurous and out-of-the-ordinary" when they were in Cozumel, or Grand Cayman, or Mo'bay, or Key West, or wherever.

SO ... this is the kind of clientele that Princesa Ilana wants to bring to the Su. Guess what, Ilana? Everything you think you could offer on Playa de Sosua - ESPECIALLY on the sanitized "Plaza de Vendedores" that was discussed here in Sep/Oct/Nov/Dec 2013 - is very damn likely to be on-tap right there in Port Amber, three prices more expensive, but walking-distance for a Yankee land-whale, from the cruise-ship.

But ... I think I've said that before, on another thread.

I come back to the notion that the most reliable tourist-dollar Sosua is likely to see, is the monger-dollar. And I'm not talking about the RD$1500 that I slip to my "lady of the (short-time) evening." I'm talking about my hotel room, and my breakfast, and my lunch, and my dinner, and the Presidentes I hammer back in Rumba or d'Latin or Rancho Tipico or Ruby's on the beach or ...

We "gentlemen mongers" on ISOC understand perfectly. We're in Sosua year-round, because the horn-dog hotness in our loins operates year-round, and the sweet chicas understand that better than the politicians. The "tropical vacation" season, for Norteamericanos as well as Europeanos, runs from New Year's Day through March or so. The "monger's vacation" season for the same demographic may exclude Christmas Week and Semana Santa (Palm Sunday to Easter), but it's running full-bore the other fifty weeks a year.

I did six dives in December. I did six dives in September. I'll probably do eight or ten dives in March. But if it weren't for the "horndog-friendly" side of Sosua, I could do those same six, or eight, or ten dives in the Florida Keys, and drive down there in my Prius.

[justin082176]

Most are familiar with Playa Dorada, they go there once because it is cheap and never go back.

After staying in 2 different resorts in Playa Dorada , visiting 2 others I agree that the places were cheap and I will never go back ever. If Grand Paradise had better quality food, I think it would be almost perfect. Almost all of resorts have their food prepared in 1 big kitchen and the food will make you ILL. I am sure many ISOC members have been there and done that. I have learned my lesson. I think I will try Cabarete I cannot do any worse.


JSM

[Westy]

After staying in 2 different resorts in Playa Dorada , visiting 2 others I agree that the places were cheap and I will never go back ever. If Grand Paradise had better quality food, I think it would be perfect. Almost all of resorts have their food prepared in 1 big kitchen and the food will make you ILL. I am sure many ISOC members have been there and done that. I have learned my lesson. I think I will try Cabarete I cannot do any worse.

I think you could do a damn sight better in Cabarete, or in El Batey (Sosua), or even in Field Of Dreams. I thank my lucky stars that I've never stayed in or eaten at the family-friendly, couples-friendly, landwhale-friendly, bulk-loader-friendly buffets of the Playa Dorada resorts.

[justin082176]

Before my trip I read all the review websites Orbitz , Hotels.com and I could have saved myself from pure hell if I had just took them for their word. I will see what Cabarete has to offer and book My Feburary trip. I know I will get more bang for my buck anywhere but Playa Dorada.



JSM

[Westy]

Cabarete is a good choice for outdoor sports, especially beach sports - most notably surfing, windsurfing (sailboards) and kiteboarding. Its beach is wide open to the north and east. Playa Encuentro, on the west side of Cabarete (toward Sosua), appears to be where the surfing and boogie-boarding go on; it's open to the north and it gets the best surf-breaks. Kite Beach, which is more active for windsurfing and kiteboarding, is further to the east, and it faces more to the northeast. One of our active members, Ohmmmm, owns and runs Kite Beach Inn, with a kiteboarding school right next door. I haven't visited Cabarete yet - I'm into scuba-diving, not so much surfing - but I'm planning to give it at least a day-trip visit during my next trip, in March.

Sosua, or more properly the El Batey downtown area where we mongers go, is at the north end of a small bay (facing west) with a good beach. It's pretty-well sheltered from the prevailing winds and the ocean swells, and it's a popular Sunday destination for the locals throughout the surrounding area. It has quite a few good wall and patch reefs for scuba-diving, out offshore (what were you doing, Deezl, snorkeling from the beach?), and there are three scuba operators right in town that come straight to my mind - Aqua Adventures (SSI-affiliated,) Northern Coast Diving (PADI 5-Star), and Merlin (also PADI, and caters more toward the German/European visitors). There's another dive shop in Puerto Plata, Diwa Dominicana, that brings their divers to Sosua Bay. What's important about Sosua, though, for us, is the night life; it's Chica Central, Mongerville, Hooker Heaven. (As EastCoastAllStar reported in the hyperlink to Kite Beach Inn, there is still some available action in Cabarete; but Sosua is "Ground Zero.")

If I were visiting mostly for the wave-sports I'd go to Cabarete. For scuba-diving, and muff-diving at night, it's definitely Sosua. If I loved golfing I'd probably go to Playa Dorada, and I'd certainly go there if I were into bulk-loading at the AI buffets. If I had kids, I'd forget about the DR entirely and take 'em to Orlando and Disney World.

Hope that helps ...

[MrHappy]

Sosua? No. Maimon ... which is twenty miles west "as the crow flies" from Sosua, certainly more than a half-hour away on Ruta 5. It's west of Puerto Plata and POP airport - Sosua is east of the airport.
I did six dives in December. I did six dives in September. I'll probably do eight or ten dives in March. But if it weren't for the "horndog-friendly" side of Sosua, I could do those same six, or eight, or ten dives in the Florida Keys, and drive down there in my Prius.

Wait... you drive a Prius????

[greydread]

Wait... you drive a Prius????

Shit I drive a Kia Rio.

Money saved on gas is more money for ass.

[MrHappy]

Shit I drive a Kia Rio.

Money saved on gas is more money for ass.

I.... feel....... faint......

[Jimmydr]

Until Ho's start charging ITBIS it's going to stay that way.

They can have both, the cruise ships and the mongers all spending money.

[Westy]

Wait... you drive a Prius????

I.... feel....... faint......

I'm with Greydread on "less money for gas = more money for ass."

Did my share of gas-guzzling thrill-machines in the Eighties and Nineties:



I don't fly any more; now, I sail - and the wind may be free, but new sails sure-the-hell aren't!
(This is with the old sails ...)