Jean-Luc found me in the lobby of Las Américas Airport.

“Thanks so much for hosting me,” I said, and we embraced like old friends, even though we’d never met in person.

“Of course!” he said with a strong island brogue.

We had a burger and fries in one of the airport restaurants, then took an Uber car to the zona colonial where Jean-Luc lived down a slightly dodgy backstreet. He fumbled for his keys in the light of a streetlamp, unlatched the outside security door, and led me into the dark stairwell.

“You have a shower?” I said, desperate to get clean after a long day of flights and layovers.

Jean-Luc pointed to a bucket with a tin can bobbing around inside.

Roughing it, I thought.

Come morning, we were out early. After a café breakfast we took a walk through Santo Domingo’s colonial quarter, and Jean-Luc filled me in on the history of his adopted city. Like many Haitians, he’d come to the Dominican Republic seeking work. From the way he described it, the DR wasn’t exactly paradise for Haitians. He said they faced a lot of prejudice and were often victims of discrimination, even violence. I knew he wasn’t lying when we encountered a group of young men standing outside a bodega, and Jean-Luc asked one of them, a light-skinned Dominican, to move out of the way so we could pass. The guy mumbled something.

“What did he say?”

“He said, ‘Would you like for me to cut your fucking throat?’”

Rough trade.

In the afternoon we took the bus to Boca Chica and spent the day swimming and drinking piña coladas on the sugar-white beach.

“Do you miss Haiti?”

“Every day,” he said. “Do you want to go?”

“Could we? From here?”

“Yes! We go by bus. Six hours.”

“How long would we stay?”

“Maybe just the weekend. We could leave tomorrow early.”

I thought about it for a minute. All I knew of Haiti was what I’d read in Graham Greene’s The Comedians, whose stark portrayal of life under brutal dictator Papa Doc painted a less-than-flattering portrait of life there, later made into a no-less-unflattering film starring Elizabeth Taylor and Richard Burton.

But that was a long time ago. Maybe things had changed. Plus, as an incurable explorer-wanderer, I’m not one to turn down a new adventure.

“Let’s do it,” I said, and soon we were back downtown buying tickets.

The bus to Port-au-Prince was packed, mostly with Haitian émigrés and their relatives heading back home. I noted that as they boarded, they tended to greet each other with religious mantras — “Praise the Lord,” “Jesus loves you,” and the like, not “good morning” or “hello.” Jean-Luc had already told me about the deep religiosity of Haitians, and, sure enough, as soon as we took off, a man near the front of the bus stood up with a big black Bible in his hand and began to preach.

We arrived at the border around noon. Everybody had to line up under an outdoor shed and open their bags for inspection.

“Be careful,” Jean-Luc told me as we waited. “This crossing has a lot of bad things happen.”

“Like what.”

“They put a bullet in your bag. And you have to pay money to get out.”

I kept my eyes on my bag, and we passed through without a hitch. Then on to the Haitian side, which was a scene right out of Battleship Potemkin. Hordes of people crowded around teller-style windows, pushing, shoving, yelling, haggling. Jean-Luc, being a Haitian citizen, had only to hand over his passport for quick inspection. I had to go to a different window, but without proper signage it wasn’t clear which one. While Jean-Luc tried to find out, I stood aside with my hands firmly down my pockets and my backpack turned around front.

“Your passport,” said an older guy in plainclothes.

I looked at Jean-Luc.

“It’s okay, he works here,” Jean-Luc said.

I gave the man my passport, and he passed it to an agent behind a window, where it was stamped.

I followed Jean-Luc out to a gravel parking lot where a gaggle of men sat in the shade amid a fleet of taxis and motorbikes. Several of them made a beeline for us, talking loudly and gesturing, offering rides. I let Jean-Luc do the talking. As he was negotiating, one of the men, who’d been relaxing beneath a tree, left his perch and came over to me.

“Passport,” he said.

Jean-Luc gave me the OK. The man thumbed through the pages and said something in Creole to Jean-Luc, whose deadpan look told me I was about to lose money.

“He says you did not purchase a tourist card. You have to go back and buy it.”

We went back into the complex, paid the $10 fee, and got the all-important card. Back outside again, Jean-Luc negotiated till he got an offer he liked. He hopped on the back of one bike, I on another, and off we went down a bumpy dirt road.

Perhaps five minutes in, Jean-Luc’s driver pulled over.

“What’s he doing?” I said to my driver as we pulled over as well.

I watched as Jean-Luc’s driver turned off the bike and began to engage him in conversation. I thought at first they might be discussing the route or how to get to wherever we were going. Jean-Luc got off his bike and started walking back toward me wearing the look I’d come to equate with—

“He wants more money.”

“Didn’t you agree on a price back at the border?”

“Yes, but they want more.”

“What price did you agree to at the border?”

“Ten dollars. Each bike.”

“Then that’s what he’s getting.”

Jean-Luc went away and continued to negotiate. I could tell the driver didn’t like what he was hearing. As the chatting grew louder, and the gesturing more intense, people started coming out of their homes to watch, which made me feel distinctly uncomfortable. I wondered why everything was so difficult in this country.

My driver dismounted. I got off, too, wondering if we were about to be robbed. The driver walked up to Jean-Luc and joined the negotiations. Deciding I’d had enough, and having lost faith in my companion’s negotiating skills, I picked up my bag and began to walk away.

“Erik, where are you going!” Jean-Luc called out.

“Back to the border,” I yelled over my shoulder. “I can’t deal with this.”

I heard someone running after me. “My friend! My friend!”

My little performance must have worked. Seconds later, Jean-Luc was climbing onto his bike again and calling for me to come back.

We got to the taxi station with no further drama. There, Jean-Luc and I piled into a packed VW van for the two-hour ride west. By the time we arrived in hot, dusty Port-au-Prince, I was starving and exhausted. After we’d hopped into the back of a tap-tap (a pickup truck outfitted with long benches that Haitians use as a taxi), I asked Jean-Luc how many more taxis we’d need to get us to the hotel.

He counted up. “Three. And then we change to motorbike.”

Jean-Luc flagged down a driver and showed him the hotel address. The driver told us to climb on. We proceeded vertically up steep streets for a mile or two, me holding on for dear life so I didn’t fall off the back. When the driver began stopping to ask for help from pedestrians, I grew concerned.

“Did you ask him if he knows where the hotel is?”

“Yes! He said he knew!” Jean-Luc was irritable.

After several more streetside consultations with locals, we finally found the ill-named Hotel Paradise tucked down a dusty gravel road beset with wild goats, discarded trash, and knee-deep mud puddles. Despite its waste-laid surroundings, the hotel looked reasonably nice from the outside, with pretty pink-and-white stucco exteriors and a gated palm-lined driveway.

“He wants fifteen,” Jean-Luc said when we got off the bike.

“He agreed to ten,” I said, and peeled away 15.

Inside the hotel we were greeted by a tall sullen receptionist who looked not unlike the singer Rihanna. She said something to Jean-Luc, prompting him to turn to me.

“She wants more.”

“How much more.”

Rihanna tapped her calculator and turned it toward me. On the screen was the number “48.”

“She’s not getting forty-eight a night,” I said. “We booked for twenty-seven a night and that’s what she’s getting.”

I got out my phone, found the confirmation email, and showed it to Rihanna.

“Vingt-sept dollars,” I said, “pour chaque soir.”

A young male manager appeared and agreed that we would pay the promised rate. He dug up the room key, told us to come, and we followed him up a flight of outdoor stairs and through a shaded terrace. The place was still and silent. The restaurant and bar were shuttered. It appeared Jean-Luc and I were the only guests, which was fine with me. My delight fled when I saw that the big in-ground swimming pool, which had looked so enticing on the website, was empty of water and flanked by saws and equipment.

“When will the pool be ready?” I said.

“Tomorrow,” the manager said. “They are cleaning it now.”

Fair enough. At least we knew that when we finally could swim we wouldn’t catch cholera.

The room was small and dark, with two double beds set under a single window fitted with iron bars. There was a vanity and mirror, a breakfast table and chairs, and a box fan that the manager told us never to use when the overhead light was on, else the power would go out. On the wall hung a huge folk-art painting of Toussaint Louverture, the Haitian general who led his countrymen in a revolt against the French soon after George Washington led one against the British. We had an air-conditioner, but, alas, it was only for looks. Ditto the telephone, the alarm clock, and the light over the vanity.

Up some steps at the far end of the room, a crumbly concrete-block cubicle enclosed a shower and toilet. A full foot higher than the rest of the room, the sad-looking shower box offered little privacy. Its partially finished walls went only halfway to the ceiling, giving you a bird’s eye view of the room while you showered, and your roommate a bird’s eye view of you. The toilet didn’t work either. I touched the toilet handle and got a disheartening glonk. I told Jean-Luc, who went downstairs to tell the manager. He sent Rihanna to fix it.

The time was a quarter past 4. I took a cold shower and lay down on the bed. In a normal city I’d be heading out to do sightseeing right about now. But this was not a normal city, and after all we’d been through today, I wasn’t in the mood. I lay my hand over my eyes to block out the tropic sun and prayed for a better day tomorrow.

Next afternoon, we went up to an old colonial fort perched on an overlook where we were besieged by touts offering stuff for purchase and demanding to be our guide. Jean-Luc had told me not to talk to them because many were pickpockets and criminals. Still, I did my best to be nice, saying as little as possible as they followed us asking nosy questions and offering facts about the site. We walked around the ruins of the fortress for a few minutes till the touts began to bother us so that we decided to go and hitched a ride from a passing bike.

Back at the hotel, the pool was still empty. I lodged another inquiry with management.

“It will be done today,” the manager said. “We will have party tonight, so pool will be ready.”

As a person who dislikes noise as much as parties, I couldn’t say I was exultant at the news. I wondered if said party would mean a sleepless night for us non-partiers.

“Why are they having a party?” I asked Jean-Luc.

“Because they want to show you a good time.”

“So they’re giving the party for us?”

He nodded.

“Who will be at the party? We’re the only guests.”

“I don’t know. Maybe employees, friends.”

I lay down for a cat nap while Jean-Luc went off in search of lunch. He returned a few minutes later with a couple of sandwiches. We ate in famished silence.

That night I went to bed expecting music to start up in the wee hours. The music never came.

As we waited for a taxi the following morning, I asked Jean-Luc to explain.

“There was not going to be a party,” he said.

Seems the manager had been afraid of disappointing me, so he just lied the whole weekend.

“Unbelievable,” I said, the Ugly American, and shook my head, past the point of being surprised by anything in this impossible country.

Trump was right, I thought. It’s a shithole!

I got on the bus back to Santo Domingo thinking of Frida Kahlo’s deathbed confession: “I hope the exit is joyful, and I hope never to return.”

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