Boca Chica: instructions for use

How to manage to describe Boca Chica to someone who has never been there? It is a place hard to understand immediately and it becomes even more so if you set off with negative preconceptions, having perhaps read articles in the various forums that talk about it in a certain way. The opinion, one's own opinion must be formed exclusively by living the experiences first-hand. In how many different ways can the same person be described depending on who knows her under different aspects, in different situations, with different "purposes"? I can listen to the opinion of a man, for example, who has met a given girl and with her has had a simple and disinterested friendship. It can happen to me to hear talk of the same girl from another man who has tried to start with her a love relationship, being rejected.

Perhaps always by chance I can find the one who instead was reciprocated and is still in love with her. Do you think all of them will describe the same girl to me? Beyond how this woman really is and what character she may have, each of them will speak to me about her differently. The "rejected" one will describe her to me in the worst way and perhaps even disparagingly, the one who loved her will exalt her as a goddess, while the friend will speak about her from another angle and so it would be if I had discussed with a colleague of hers at work. All this to tell you that you must not believe everything that is written. Boca Chica is like a woman hard to understand immediately (oh well, often women are not understood even after years, so...).

The first days I spent there were almost traumatic, also (and perhaps above all) because of that cursed time zone that I couldn't shake off and that made me collapse on the bed no later than 7 pm (well, for me it would have been 2 am Italian time...) and because I couldn't understand what sort of place that was. It seemed strange to me, complicated but I didn't give up and thanks to the help of a truly special person (Nicoletta, the owner of the place where I stayed) I managed to enter into the spirit of the place. The third evening I am indeed "dragged" out by force and I discover what "the Duarte" is (or rather Calle Duarte) at night. During the day it is an ordinary street full of shops where tourists can buy souvenirs of all kinds, but at night...

At 7 pm every day the street is closed to traffic (it is split in two parts by a crossroads that however is poorly used by vehicles) and the various bars and restaurants take possession of it, flooding it with little tables and chairs. Music reigns and rhythms of bachata, merengue, salsa and the more "modern" (but in my way of understanding music also less pleasant) reggaeton give it colour. The sunset in the Caribbean is sharp, lasts a few moments and already at 19:30 it is total darkness, there are no middle ways. The population of the Duarte lives and changes in the same way. The families disappear and for those like me who goes to discover it for the first time, the shock is guaranteed. Women as far as the eye can see. Caribbean women as far as the eye can see.

Dominican and Haitian (emigrated to those places especially after the last terrible disaster that that eternally unlucky land has suffered not many months ago) in search of a "novio" (the local term to indicate the Italian word "fidanzato" - boyfriend) make the Duarte something incredibly beautiful. My shock was due to the fact that the proportion between women and men was about 8 (if not 10) to 1! If you then consider that the vast majority was made up of truly remarkable beauties... well, imagine with what difficulty I managed to keep my eyes inside their "proper" orbits. I have read about violence, about paedophilia, about drug dealing, about places dangerous for tourists... all nonsense, believe me. I remained very attentive to everything that surrounded me and in no place did I see girls prostituting themselves or being lured, drug dealers and various delinquents.

The Police in those parts then really works well, it is efficient and, think, that the local shopkeepers (a good part of them Italians) pay out of their own pocket the night overtime of the Municipal Police to guarantee further safety for tourists even after nightfall. Believe me, I felt a lesser sense of safety in Sharm El Sheikh and also in Italy... The Duarte... the shock of being "approached" (sure, it happens sometimes even in too explicit a way with "groping" like bolts from the blue) by beautiful and eternally smiling girls. Already the smile of the people of those places... they always give a smile to anyone, even if they have nothing and much less a reason to smile, but they do it all the same because they have the invincible dream that the future will be better and that being alive is already a valid reason to thank God.

To the women of the Duarte you can say no or perhaps linger with one of them, without for this "falling" into a trap for foolish tourists. Don't call them prostitutes, because they are not, absolutely not as we understand them here in Italy. When young they are usually made pregnant by fellow countrymen who, having the terror of taking on responsibilities, run away and leave them alone. The families help them as best they can but poverty (the REAL one, not that of those who cannot buy the latest model of iPhone or of those who perhaps struggle to make the money last to the fourth week of the month: there they don't even make it to the first!) is tremendous and sometimes it can happen that for simple "survival" a girl goes one evening to the Duarte to seek a small, miserable earning.

The tourist who gets to know one and understands the kind of human being she is, often keeps her with him for his whole holiday, sharing lunch and dinner with her and perhaps making her small gifts (small because for us 8 euros are nothing, while for the people of those places it is a great deal). At the end of the holiday he knows that at least for those seven days he made a good person feel well and he feels a little less of a jerk for having believed he was going to Boca Chica to revive the pomp of the very unlucky Italian stallion (for a fee). You don't go to Boca Chica for sex or rather you don't go back for that, since it is enough to go there once to understand that it was truly foolish to believe that that place was a brothel in the open air. Boca Chica is sea (very warm...

in the afternoon its temperature is usually 32°), it is beach (light sand that doesn't burn your feet when you walk on it), it is fruit (what feastings of mango and pineapple... in 2 weeks I lost 3.2Kg feeling great and not missing the fabulous breakfasts in the pastry bar of the Duarte), it is above all smiles (how will I ever forget those of Tania, that sweet little girl who in the morning passed along the beach selling at 5 pesos each the bananas she bought at 4 pesos: it is the first time that I would have wanted to adopt a creature). I had the great luck to meet Nicoletta (of the Playa Marina) and very many other people (many of whom work with her) and now I am "smitten" with Boca Chica. Of course, I also had another very great, enormous piece of luck: to have found a very beautiful Dominican girl with whom I fell madly in love.

That place has become a drug and the withdrawal crisis only 2 days after I set off back for Italy is crazy. I must go back there, I will do it and even if now life here seems absurd to me, the people cold and their behaviours and senseless "vices"... I will have to manage it as soon as possible because I have never felt at home