About FirstTimeDR
I wasn’t looking for an adventure when I started planning a trip to the Dominican Republic. I started planning because I married a woman from there, and when she’s finally able to travel again, we’re going, partly because her father already promised to take me catfishing.
My wife hasn’t seen her family in over three years. I’ve never left the country. I got my passport because I fell in love, and now I’m learning everything I can so that when we land, I’m not the guy standing in the terminal looking lost.
Every time I find something that confused me, or something that turned out to be simpler than I expected, I write it down and put it here. That’s what this site is.
I’m not a travel blogger. I’m a massage therapist who’s been helping people figure things out since 2007, and that part of me didn’t go anywhere just because I switched gears. Helping people is the only thing I’ve ever been consistently good at. This is just a different version of that.
The person I’m writing for isn’t heading to an all-inclusive where everything is handled and everyone speaks English. I’m writing for people visiting family, people traveling for work, people who are going to spend real time in the country and need to know how things actually work. If you’re that person and you’re ready for your father-in-law to take you catfishing, you’re in the right place.
My Spanish is slow. I rely on Google Translate more than I’d like to admit. We’re figuring this out together.
If you want to understand what you’re walking into before you arrive — not the logistics, but the feeling — start with this: When You Visit Family in the DR, You’re Visiting the Neighborhood Too. It’s the piece that explains why this site exists.