Caribbean Rainy Season

It is a rather bizarre time to visit the Dominican Republic, its rainy season - but here I am anyway.

You will be kept awake at night by the single stray mosquito that has managed to get inside your room, woken at various times by different cockerells who cant seem to agree on a time to crow and then the mid morning heat keeps you awake.

If you got out of your hotel you will find plenty of motorcycle taxis, some with as many as 4 passengers, but noone travelling more than 15 miles per hour.

Plenty of locals wearing jeans while you are still struggling to walk about in just a pair of shorts. But from about 1pm you understand why.

It starts with the finest droplets of misty rain. Then after about 20 minutes it gets a little heavier. Another 20 minutes later it starts getting heavy enough to hear on the corrugated roof and the occasional clash of distant thinder.

Then another hour and a half away it is still going and going, not getting any lighter or heavier, just persistent. Around 5pm ( 4 hours later ) it might finaly have stopped, which is good at it has taken most of the heat out of the day.

This quiet and sleepy town seems even more isolated as I am here on my own, since my friend has not been able to meet me yet, and I have been reading "The Day Of The Triffids". For those unfamiliar it is one of the original end-of-the-world-as-we-know-it master pieces of fiction where the hero wakes up in hospital to find that 99% of the people around him are either dead, missing or mysteriously blind with no logical reason.

So far I have seen a few nice locals, a few shops worth visiting more than once but no fast-food-chain-stores ... no McDonalds, Burger King or Taco Bell ... which is a mixed blessing.

As far as watching live football in the caribbean, unless its a home team your just as likely to want to watch it in your room as in the bar or in a local pub, they show the games but noone really cares what happens.

It is even worse if you have the misfortune to be watching it with American commentators. Despite putting the effort in, and even having a team compete, they still are a loooong loooong way behind the BBC and you wish that they would stop making stupid comments or obscure comparisons.