File:Simple pleasures....jpg

Note: this photo was published in an undated (Jan 2010) blog titled "<a href="http://targetvacations.ca/destinations/punta-cana" rel="nofollow">Destination Guides: Punta Cana</a>."

For the past several years, my family has spent a week, in early January, at the Club Med village in Punta Cana, on the southwestern shore of the Dominican Republic. (Our first visit to Club Med was back in 1985, and some photos of last year's trip can be seen <a href="https://www.flickr.com/photos/yourdon/sets/72157612575098738/">here</a>.)

This year's visit coincided with the awful earthquake that struck Port-au-Prince, Haiti -- about 260 miles away, on the eastern coast of the island of Hispaniola. From what I understand, the fault line went straight west, in our direction, but then cut south at approximately the border between Haiti and the Dominican Republic. In any case, none of the vacationers at Club Med felt even the slightest tremor; we got all of our news of the ensuing events just like everyone else, by watching CNN. But because we expected the capital city of Santo Domingo to be chaotic and congested with relief efforts, I decided to skip a daylong trip that I had tentatively planned to photograph the churches and markets of what turns out to be the oldest city in the Western hemisphere (settled in 1497 by Christopher Columbus' brother).