Zona Colonial, St. Domingo
The COVID test result came negative. I filled out an online form required to enter Puerto Rico, uploaded the electronic test result and received a QR-code. My last day in Dominicana was spent again in Zona Colonial. There were plenty of streets in it which I had not seen.
As it says in the previous post, almost all museums were closed because of COVID. Santo Domingo has an excellent Amber World Museum that I was unable to visit. Instead of viewing the museum exhibits, I went into a few shops that sold amber. I never saw such huge chunks of amber before. Another popular item in jewelry shops was larimar, a semi-precious stone found only in the Dominican Republic.
On Saturday morning, I arrived at the airport in Santo Domingo two hours before the flight. The lines everywhere were long and slow moving. My papers were scrutinized several times by a number of agents before they decided that I could board the plane.
There was no direct flight between Dominicana and Puerto Rico. I had to change planes in Tortola, the British Virgin Islands. The route was rather zigzaggy but it consisted of 2 short legs.
The plane was a small turboprop, about half-full. We left Dominicana 40 minutes behind the schedule; my layover time in Tortola was 45 minutes and I began to seriously worry if I was going to make this connection. I asked the only flight attendant on board about that; he smiled knowingly and told me to relax.
When we landed in Tortola the flight attendant told me to stay on the plane. Apparently, it was the same plane flying to Puerto Rico and I did not need to change. That explained the sly smile that the flight attendant gave me.
Everyone disembarked, except me. I was taking a personal plane to Puerto Rico! What a pity that it was a 15-minute flight. Normally, there were 2 or 3 fully booked flights daily. Affected by the pandemic, the airline now hardly flies between these islands.
It got even weirder at Luis Muñoz Marín International Airport in Puerto Rico. The building was completely void of people. I walked through its empty halls and did not see a single person. It felt like I had been transferred into a disaster movie in which the entire Earth population died in a nuclear explosion or something and I was the only human being left.
At the passport control, I had to waive my arms to attract an officer’s attention so he would return to his post and let me into Puerto Rico.
The other side of the border was quite populous. My QR-code was scanned at the airport exit with no problem and I took a taxi to the San Jorge Hotel. I did not make a reservation but it was the hotel indicated in the online form that I filled out to enter Puerto Rico. The hotel had plenty of vacant rooms. I paid for 2 nights, had dinner at the corner café and called it a day.
The colours of the ocean and the sky are unbelievable! I think, the nature has regenerated during the lockdown and the air is as pure as it was decades before. However, with no people around, it is really a ghostly feeling. Spooky!
Mother Nature definitely feels better without us trampling around.