Markets Dominican Republic

Every Friday, the Haitian market ties up an artery just outside the city for the entire day. You can find all kinds of clothes, shoes and other very cheap products whose origin is not always known, but which you can easily suppose to come from international organizations or to be escaped products from the free trade zones... Some good deals to be done here (don't hesitate to bargain, Haitians understand your French), while enjoying the pleasant and somewhat frenetic popular atmosphere.

These are the most popular shopping streets of the colonial city: a real Ali Baba's cave! Hundreds of intertwined electric wires hang along the gigantic multicolored signs. And as the Dominicans do not know how to live without music, the incessant din of the merengue mixes with the noise of the engines and the horns. You can find everything: clothes, shoes, textiles, beauty products, sports articles, food products, telephones... at very competitive prices. La Duarte marks the beginning of Chinatown.

It is the main handicraft market of the capital! It was inaugurated on October 24, 1942, date of the birthday of Trujillo, who ordered its construction. The architecture, very modern for the time, benefited from a system of natural lighting provided by the openings of the roof. Until 1963, only meat and agricultural products were sold there. Today, many craft shops have been set up on the first level, while agricultural products have been relegated to the immediate surroundings of the market.

Horns blaring, scooters whirring, mules braying and merengue chords, raw colors under the hot sun, fried food smells, tropical fruit scents, this is the Caribbean coast in all its splendor, shimmering and turbulent. In addition to the fruits and vegetables that pile up on the ground (come and fill up on bananas!), you will find a whole bunch of sometimes unusual objects along its lively and dusty alleys: kitchen utensils, second-hand clothes, brightly coloured plastic basins..

Tropical fruits, local specialties(dulce and rum), handicrafts, clothes... So many products that you will find in the Mercato Modelo of Santiago. Shops also propose, and especially, jewels of amber and larimar. However, it is very far from the animation and the choice of the Mercado Modelo of Santo Domingo. The one in Santiago has unfortunately decreased in quality for a few years. A visit where to go in spite of everything to impregnate you a little bit of a mercado to the old one and leave the modern shopping centers.

Effervescence and products of all kinds, such is the image of the Mercado Modelo of San Cristobal. You will find on the stalls and in the shops vegetables, tropical fruits, clothes of more or less good quality, various accessories, CDs to remember the years when these musical objects were in vogue but also to find, who knows, songs and melodies unknown (or too little) in France. To soak up the atmosphere of a Dominican covered market. Stop by, even if this Mercado is less important than the one in the capital.