I wanted a town rather than a resort strip of all inclusive resort hotels. I had, by Third World standards, a healthy secure retirement income of around $3000 a month which allowed me a large range of choices in Latin America but increasingly fewer options in the West Indies. The blockade of Cuba put it out of the running for a while. I had already lived with the residual racism in the British territories and found it distasteful. Plus, I really wanted to live in “foreign” – i.e., non- English speaking environment. It would take me perhaps years to understand what they were saying. I was unlikely to be bored.

My decision was made when I discovered a French community as my French, after years of study, rivals my English and far exceeds my Spanish. The French, I knew, would have made the place picturesque and would have seen to a good supply of food.

The food in the DR is astonishing by any standards. In the high mountain valley to the west, near Pico Duarte, the tallest mountain in the Caribbean, farmers produce a sumptuous array of produce, citrus and tropical fruits, caulifower, lettuce, green beans and fresh tarragon along with the local assortment of strange and to me, still mysterious root vegetables. The prices for the imports are high. Peanut butter runs around $8 a jar. But the local fishermen ply the beachfront with buckets full of large fresh caught shrimp, mussels, and Dorado. Rice and beans, in a variety of different sauces, along with a small portion of chicken and a salad, the plate known as “The Dominican Flag”, is available for lunch at around $4.00 at the local restuarants. One cannot, however, drink the local tap water and the “touristas’ are not an uncommon ailment, although it does seem that Taino Indians are a little less vengeful than Montezuma.

Here in Las Terrenas, the French have added their bakery, producing baguettes, croissants, and napoleans. The butcher has his own farm, raising the beef, lamb, and chickens sold in his pristine white-tiled shop or the deluxe import-filled supermarket. Camembert and peanut butter, a full variety of imported wines and local beer, line the shelves along with the yougurt, butter and liverwurst that comes to us from Sosua, down the coast to the West.

Many of the “foreigner” are quite young, in their thirties and forties. There is a healthy population both of European and mixed European-Dominican children. It is quite common here to see an older “white” man with his beautiful Dominican girlfriend or wife, usually 20 years or more his junior, often with a full new family of multi-lingual children. Ads in the paper regularly ask for hotel staff who can speak four languages. Unless they own the place, foreigners are unlikely to make more than Dominican salaries, around $100 a week which is hard to live on. Many, however, have savings in dollar based certificates of deposits which yield an astonishing 25%.

Currently there are only 6 "United Staters" living here. The bulk of the English speaking ex-pats have settled to the west, near Puerto Plata. Yet the Samana Penisula is the most spectacularly beautiful area of the DR. Las Terrenas offers a touch of a continental lifestyle along with a frontier edge. So I am certain that more of you will arrive. Won't you?

Elizabeth Roebling is a native of New York City who recently moved to the Dominican Republic after 14 years in Asheville, NC. She can be reached at roeblingelizabeth@msn.com