Casa de Campo.

Just chillin' with my burro, chillin' chillin' with my burro...

Oh. My. Goodness.

Today is Mother's Day, and so Christina, Alex, and I got to go to La Romana with our host moms (Olga and Ana, who are sisters) to visit their mom.  La Romana is about an hour east of Santo Domingo, and beautiful. However, as soon as we got to La Romana, Francisco, Olga's son, took us to Casa de Campo... and it deserves its own post, so we'll talk about La Romana and the family next :]


Casa de Campo is it's own city. Legally, that may not be true, but it's big enough and has everything you could possibly need inside.  It's a private club (if club is the right word), so we were so lucky that someone in the family lived in there/was a member (?) and put us on the list to go inside! It's somewhere between a resort and a country club, and then kicked up about fourteen notches. (It's kinda like Mira Vista, for you Fortworthians, except its Mira Vista's rich grandpa who owns half of the oil industry). Francisco was our tour guide and told us everything about it as we drove through it. He said the richest people in the country, and the world, live there. There are huge houses where people live, but visitors can come and rent villas or stay in the hotel too.

We passed the house of the guy who owns Presidente, una cerveza dominicana. (The house above is not his, but it is a pretty house just the same.) 

Part of Casa de Campo is called los Altos de Chavón, and it was constructed in the seventies by an American business man (Charles Bluhdorn, founder of Gulf+Western), and it is rumored that he gave the city-of-sorts to his daughter for her quinceñera. You know, just built her a whole city above a river, one that was constructed to resemble medieval Italy. No big.

El río de Chavón

So this little city of hers has a church, many restaurants, (I just spelled that as restaurantes as first because my brain is a bit stuck in Spanish mode... I called golf courses "golf fields" early because I couldn't remember the word in English... yikes, and it's only been a week!), lots of little shops, several golf courses, oh and its own art institute.  It also, however, has its own concert venue.  

Just sharing a stage with the greats.

Anfiteatro Notable.

El Anfiteatro Notable, which seats over 5,000 people, was another part of the poor girl's present... Frank Sinatra sang at her birthday party.  Since then there have been just a few other cool people to stand on the stage... like Shakira, Gloria Estefan, Santana, Sting, Heart, Duran Duran, and Juan Luis Guerra. Okay cool. 

I've just about convinced myself that I need a destination wedding... Dios mío...

We left los Altos de Chavón for the marina. Casa de Campo has three docks, with yachts from all over the world. There are houses all along the sea/marina in every direction. It has its own yacht club and sailing school, which is perfect for when I buy my yacht.  We walked all up and down the marina, some of the yachts are huuuuuge! And they have a bunch of fishing boats, where there is a raised platform up high for the captain to navigate from.  Also, some man had a replica of one of Colombus's ships made and it was sitting in the harbor.  Because I guess if you can afford to dock your yacht in Casa de Campo, you might as well have your own colonial ship.

Complete with un guacamayo, of course.

Francisco said that many rich and famous people buy houses here and use them as vacation homes to relax in when they're not doing whatever else they do. Shakira, for example, has a house near the marina. Francisco didn't know exactly which house was hers, but he knew which area it was in.  We saw a yacht in the marina with a Colombian flag on it ... It took a lot of convincing on his part that knocking on every door in the vicinity was a bad idea.  I'm still not convinced. If only I had been wearing my Shakira perfume...

So. Close. To where Shakira. Has Been.

Casa de Campo has its own private beach (that Francisco talked our way in to), with its own bar, restaurant, masseuses, and the like.  Although we thought it was gorgeous, Francisco said it's nothing compared to many other beaches in the DR. That only makes me even more excited for Samaná in two weeks!  We just stayed at the beach for a second... the sand is so soft! I can't wait for our weekend trips :] 

 

So all in all, Casa de Campo was insane. We were there for an hour or two, but Francisco said we didn't even see half of it. We had such a good time though! Maybe one day I'll be super rich and/or famous and will sail back here on my yacht... probably.

Con cariño,

Abby