![\"La](\"http:\/\/cruisingdoneright.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/07\/La-Romana-Jose.jpg\")
<\/a>Dominican Republic. And when you leave, as we did on the <\/span>Carnival Freedom<\/a>, you leave behind some things you didn't expect to see…or do.<\/span><\/p>\nLike tasting rum — "our vitamin is rum" — at 10 o'clock in the morning.<\/p>\n
This was in the midst of a sugar cane field, somewhere in the south-eastern corner of what is the second-largest island in Latin America (behind Cuba). Rum isn't a staple in our house — in fact, it may not even exist in our house — but for whatever reason tour guides like Jose Turbi Guia think it goes well with raw sugar cane. So much for rum and coke.<\/p>\n
We thought we'd have been more likely standing in a baseball field than one of sugar cane, because ballplayers are the sweetest export this country has. <\/p>\n
Almost 10 per cent of today's major leaguers are from the Dominican, most of them from the area surrounding La Romana<\/a>, which is just down the road from San Pedro de Macoris<\/a>, known for turning out talents like Robinson Cano, Sammy Sosa and Tony Fernandez. San Pedro, in turn, is just down the road from Santo Domingo<\/a>, the capital and home town of David Ortiz, Albert Pujols and Jose Bautista, whose Toronto teammate Edwin Encarnacion is from La Romana.<\/p>\n So baseball is big in the Dominican Republic. As an aside, only one of the country's exports has made the Baseball Hall of Fame<\/a> (Juan Marichal) but that will soon be changing. In the meantime, this country that shares its island with Haiti will continue to Estimates are that such remittances total more than $3 billion per year, or twice the earnings from tourism.<\/p>\n So forget the name dropping…that's how important baseball is to the economy.<\/p>\n There is little of it going on right now, as the season starts in August, but there is plenty of tourism. The Dominican Republic is reportedly the most visited destination in the Caribbean, and 3,000-passenger cruise ships like the Freedom play a significant The Carnival<\/a> tour we took, in an open-air safari wagon, lasted about four hours. It was a sampler, of course, with stops at a nursery (the kind where they grow plants, not Along the way, being the good tour guide he is, Jose filled our heads with facts and even philosophies — "Don't give kids handouts…if you teach them to be beggars they • The colorful (they come in orange and yellow) flamboyant trees that are everywhere produce seeds that are used inside maracas<\/p>\n • There are 3,010 members of the pina (as in colada) family<\/p>\n • Education is free, right through university<\/span><\/p>\n • About a million Haitians who have come to work in the fields haven't bothered to go back<\/p>\n • A posh 10-square-mile complex called Casa de Campo has 2,000 villages, five designer golf courses and its own airport, plus accommodation for people named Clinton, Iglesias, Sinatra and John (Elton) behind the locked gates.<\/p>\n • Unemployment in La Romana runs 18 per cent, and isn't it too bad the government • Gas is $6 US per gallon<\/p>\n • The island is 98 per cent coral, which means anything grows because coral retains humidity.<\/p>\n The tour was called Countryside Experience<\/i>, because it delivered a taste of many things. Who knew that included rum at 10 a.m.?<\/p>\n Today at Phil Reimer's <\/span><\/a>portsandbows.co<\/span><\/a>m: New ships coming for Norwegian<\/strong><\/em><\/span><\/p>\n Norwegian Sky<\/a> LA ROMANA, Dominican Republic — When it's your first time in (fill in the country), you never really know what to expect, do you? That's precisely how we felt about the Dominican Republic. And when you leave, as we did on the Carnival Freedom, you leave behind some things you didn't expect to see…or… Continue reading Baseball the Heart of Dominican Republic<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":21241,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[32,25,31,36,15],"tags":[1666,137,154,965,912,72,35,1667,284,1668,1669,126,375,26,27],"class_list":["post-21207","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-deals","category-people","category-ports","category-reviews","category-stories","tag-baseball","tag-caribbean-cruises","tag-carnival","tag-carnival-freedom","tag-cruise-bargains","tag-cruise-deals","tag-cruises","tag-david-ortiz","tag-dominican-republic","tag-jose-bautista","tag-la-romana","tag-norwegian","tag-norwegian-sky","tag-phil-reimer","tag-ports-and-bows","entry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/vitaluna.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/21207","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/vitaluna.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/vitaluna.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vitaluna.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vitaluna.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=21207"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/vitaluna.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/21207\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vitaluna.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/vitaluna.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=21207"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vitaluna.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=21207"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vitaluna.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=21207"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}<\/a>breed players in ballparks big and small to produce major-leaguers, many of whom will send money home to their families. <\/p>\n<\/a>role. Like all countries in the Caribbean there is much to see and, for cruisers, little time in which to see it.<\/p>\n<\/a>babies), the sugar cane field, and a "typical" house where you could devour fresh fruit and buy cigars that you watch being rolled.<\/p>\n<\/a>don't go to school." Among the things we learned:<\/p>\n<\/a>doesn't put some of them to work cleaning up the garbage that scars so many of its roadways.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n
\n\t4 nights<\/span>
\n\tSeptember 29, 2014<\/span>
\n\tMiami<\/a> (return): <\/span>Grand Bahama<\/a>, <\/span>Nassau<\/a>, <\/span>Great Stirrup Cay<\/a>
\n\tInside: $189<\/span>
\n\tCost per day: $47<\/strong><\/span>
\n\twww.ncl.com<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"