Already in Santiago de los Caballeros, the second largest city in the Dominican Republic, they warn you of the cold that you are going to experience entering the Central mountain range. It is the other side of the Dominican tropical cliché, a succession of mountains between the northern Cibao chain and the southern island with a Caribbean climate.
Constance It will be our first destination, a town that registers the lowest temperatures on the island. It is not uncommon for them to be around zero degrees and their pungent and famous morning frosts do not usually fail. The town stands at 1,250 meters above sea level, which does not seem excessive considering that Duarte Peak rises 43 kilometers away. Rising to 3,120 meters, this is not only the highest mountain on this island, but in the entire Caribbean. Checking this involves a serious climb, which in some sections can be alleviated by renting mules in the town of Los Corralitos.
Also in the surroundings of Constanza there are lightly trodden sites, such as humid forests at about 2,000 meters above sea level. This is the case of Pueblo Nuevo and Green Ebony, declared natural reserves for their rich biodiversity. Constanza is a hundred kilometers from the city of Santiago de los Caballeros, along a paved road, but full of curves and unevenness. The best welcome when you arrive in Constanza is for the sun to shine. You don’t need the anorak.
The valley where the town is located is almost Irish green, a lively green based on continuous crops that, apart from being healthy, seem opulent. Far from guavas and other tropical fruits, here is the overwhelming triumph of vegetables.
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Mr. Valdés, of Spanish origin, tall, with a gray mustache and dressed today for the holiday in a long-sleeved pink shirt, walks with a certain pride next to his celery field. He was one of the Spanish emigrants who came to colonize Constanza in the mid-20th century. The Spanish, like the other two groups that arrived here, the Japanese and the Hungarians, were people accustomed to harsh lands and climates. And they put all their effort into a Dominican region like Constanza where what is acclimatized is precisely what is not tropical. This is how strawberries and roses, onions and cabbages come out proudly. Or Mr. Valdés’ celery, shiny green in a tight and perfect alignment. Valdés later wants to show a neighboring plot planted with potatoes. They emerge almost above the ground, and if you remove the dust a little, they look absolutely round, and with a velvety skin. They look like fruits. “There are people from the capital who come here and take photos as if they had never seen a potato,” he says.
In the Japanese colony there are solid chalets, like that of Mr. Toru Kami, 86 years old. He is accompanied by his daughter and his grandson. Toru furrows his eyelids without losing his smile. “I came from Kagoshima, an island in the south of Japan, but it can snow there in winter. Constanza did not scare us.” The results are that Constanza strawberries represent a dream come true in the Dominican Republic. And to that we add that, between fruits and vegetables, Constanza contributes around 4% of the Dominican GDP.
Jarabacoa
Fifty kilometers separate the horticultural Constanza from Jarabacoa and its profusion of natural attractions. His Baiguate jump, with its pool of cold and invigorating water, cushions the residual longing for the waves of the Caribbean. This is already a world apart, where large rivers, such as the largest on the island, the Yaque del Norte, and small ones, such as the Guaraguao, offer everything from serious rapids to kayak lovers to calm turquoise waters. To stay in Jarabacoa there are plenty of log cabins. Pine trees take the imagination to places in northern Europe. In restaurants in the city center it is not unusual to find a hamburger either. Although what never fails is a sancochoa good Dominican stew.
In Jarabacoa, a Taíno name, it is important to practice calm as the best sport. Listen to the trees that make the pine nuts fat. While in the houses of some resistant peasants their patios surprise. They set up vines there that produce confusing fruits. If they were grapes they would have to be those from the mythical country of Jauja. Closer you can see that what they are hanging are a type of giant pears called tayotas. They are actually vegetables, like thick pear-shaped zucchini that are usually baked in the oven with a meat filling.
Old Santiago
Santiago de los Caballeros is a good point to visit various destinations in the Central mountain range. But if there is one thing that is surprising, it is because of its modernity. They are building a suspended train, which will link the center with the Cienfuegos neighborhood and will leave every ninety seconds. And 20,000 passengers per hour are expected.
It was Nicolás de Ovando, governor of the island of Hispaniola (today shared by the Dominican Republic and Haiti), who in 1515 ordered the city named Santiago de los Caballeros to be located here. And that is due to the participation of 30 knights of the Order of Santiago el Mayor. That initial Santiago was located in the current neighborhood of Jacagua, in the last confines of the city. There are the ruins of Santiago Viejo, what remains after the earthquake that devastated it in December 1562.
The question is finding the site in a sector like Jacagua where the agricultural farms extend almost to the foothills of the mountains. Looking closely, on a small road where cars hardly pass, there is a farm on the left side with a metal gate and a small sign that says “Santiago Viejo”. Without a bell in sight, you can give a voice until someone appears.
Finally, Emanuel López Benoit comes to open the door surrounded by dogs that won’t stop barking. Following the recent death of his mother, he is the owner of this farm, which has been in the hands of his family for the last hundred years. His problem is that the authorities still do not have a plan to make the ruins of Santiago Viejo visitable. Emanuel, a spirited man now in his thirties, can do nothing alone. Except showing the ruins to whoever appears. Thus we walk among barks and under the canopies of large manzanillos, stepping on a black and spongy earth. Finally, about 10 minutes later, you see a wall about two meters high, and just over a dozen meters long. It is interpreted that this could have been the main church of Santiago Viejo. And then, everywhere on the grass, stones and pieces of old bricks. But there is no doubt that this was the so-called Solar de Jacagua and, therefore, the most accurate location of the first Santiago de los Caballeros. The one that did not last long, but with an air of opulence, not lacking temples, monasteries, carpentry shops… as the greatest urban promise between the north and south of Hispaniola.
According to Emanuel, if one day they were excavated here, a large number of archaeological remains would appear. But the earthquake spoke and in the end the one that prospered was Santo Domingo, the current Dominican capital founded by Bartholomew Columbus in 1498.
The Old Vega
About thirty kilometers from Santiago, the current Concepción de la Vega cannot be missed. In its own way it is today like the capital of the very fertile La Vega, Vega Real in Spanish times. It is the area that, with a larger area and milder climate than Constanza, concentrates the greatest agricultural wealth in the country. With its poker of green treasures: sugar cane, coffee, cocoa and tobacco.
The modern Concepción de la Vega is located on a hill, the Santo Cerro, with a viewpoint that is its greatest attraction. Below stretches the plain that upon seeing it made Christopher Columbus exclaim on his second voyage: “The most beautiful land that human eyes have ever seen.” More pointedly, Bartolomé de las Casas defined that beauty as “painted.” And he was right: it is like a green sea where any road that crosses it, any town or hamlet is diluted as in an immense fabric of green conjugations. Or the stubbornness of fertility, the crops that never fail except in the event of cyclones and earthquakes.
Next to the viewpoint they have put a large cement cross in order to remember the one that existed in the 16th century until an earthquake tore it down. The fact is that in Santo Cerro history still mixes with legend. In the adjacent modern church, in a chapel on the right hand side, is the Holy Hole. A hole in the ground about a couple of meters in diameter, now closed by a grate that allows you to see, but not touch, the earth below. The lay caretaker of the temple remembers it: “They had to put up that barred lid because people came to take handfuls of that land. To do witchcraft.” Apparently, there are those who believe that the land of the Holy Hole always rises and falls. And that’s because the cross that collapsed with the famous earthquake was placed there. Of course, fantasy is what fuels their strange responses.
At the foot of Concepción along small roads, almost twists and turns, you reach the place called Vega Vieja. It is the historical area of this visit. An enclosure in the countryside with ruins of the first Spanish site in the area. Part of a wall of the old fortress remains. With its loopholes to fire muskets or perhaps crossbows. And around, loose stones to be classified. There is also a small warehouse where other pieces that are found in the old Vega Real are accumulated.
Janicus
On the opposite side of La Vega, in a kind of triangle, whose vertex was Santiago, is Jánico, a town of white houses that cluster at the foot of the Santo Tomás hill. Coffee production is already triumphing here. But on the very outskirts of the town opens a splendid Botanic Park, 700 hectares. Its purpose is to promote the enjoyment of nature, and also to educate new generations with the conservation and knowledge of the abundant local flora. Without forgetting to give an account of the culture of the Taíno Indians who lived in this territory. A point still debated is where the Santo Tomás Fortress was located, the second built by the Spanish after Fort Navidad on the north coast of the island. Santo Tomás was, in any case, the first Spanish fort in the interior of Hispaniola and although its exact location is unknown, nor is there any evidence of findings in this regard, they have placed a monolith in a meadow that commemorates that early and strategic building.
Inside the botanical park there is a small museum with archaeological pieces of the Taíno people found in the area. Like two cemíes, or stone idols, about twenty centimeters high. And pottery fragments, and numerous axes petaliformes. It is the beautiful definition they have here for flint axes whose leaves resemble the petals of a flower.
Janico owes its name to a river that is also unique. It describes an almost closed curve, and its waters are not only fresh, mountainous, but its sands are considered gold-bearing. At least there are people who try to get gold with a pan as the Taínos are supposed to have done, and Columbus’s own Spaniards when they see the indigenous people busying themselves with it. The Janicus River, or the nearby Bao River, are places that, with all the changes in the world, would still allow you to see, with luck, a kingfisher, with lapis lazuli wings, flying along the current.
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