But it was a private one added Ramon

“But it was a private one,” added Ramon.The Maria Montez airport opened in 1996 and cost millions of dollars to build Since then it has received, literally, a handful of flights Occasionally one comes in from Haiti Otherwise it’s just a few private planes. “One day, we’ll be busy with charters, just like in Santo Domingo and Puerto Plata,” says Ramon without too much conviction. “The tourists will come and save Barahona.”On first impressions, the unprepossessing city of Barahona is in need of saving. It was once a sugar-refining centre, but its mill has been idle for many months while the government tries to sell it off. As a result, there is little work and considerable poverty, especially among the seasonal cane-cutters from Haiti who live in squalid shanty towns around the city. To make matters worse, a demented town planner decided to situate a large salt and gypsum loading facility right in the middle of the seaside boulevard or malecon, making for a less than idyllic vista.

Most of the time, everybody under the age of 40 rides around town on souped-up Honda 50s, deftly avoiding the potholes and one another. I asked Roberto Dominici, vice-president of the local environmental group, where all the manic motoconcho riders were going “I’ve often wondered myself,” he said. “I suppose it’s something to do.”But Barahona, with its handful of seedy hotels and sailors’ drinking dens, is not the reason why the ill-fated airport was built. Instead, officials and speculators had a vision of opening up the stretch of coast from Barahona down to Pedernales on the Haitian border to tourism development. They also thought that the spectacular mountain scenery inland, together with a unique salt-water lake ecosystem, might attract planeloads of nature-loving foreigners.Tourism is, of course, big business in the Dominican Republic, bringing in nearly $2bn a year.

But little of it could be described as environmentally oriented, with the emphasis on low-price all-inclusive packages at beach resorts on the north and east coasts. The south-west coast, on the other hand, has none of the traditional sun and sand attractions. The beaches are mostly pebbly and steep and the tide extremely lively. The Footprint guide to the Dominican Republic accurately observes that the public beach at Barahona is filthy and frequented by stinging jellyfish.The one all-inclusive hotel at Barahona, the Riviera Beach, has tried to overcome the beach problem by dumping tons of sand on what was once a mangrove swamp.