Again Christmas, again New Year - the same as every year but just a little bit different. That is Christmas in the Caribbean! The Dominican Republic has a long term Spanish and therefore catholic history. For me it seems that everything is just like home. "Nochebuena" (Christmas Eve) is the most important day where families come together, have dinner and a few drinks. The most common dish is suckling pig with "pastel en hoja" (mashed bananas with minced meat, wrapped and cooked in a banana leaf). Usually a few drinks are a lot of drinks and it can get quite crazy on Nochebuena.
New Year is celebrated as everywhere. Just here with a Caribbean touch. Drinking and dancing until midnight - then short fireworks with a lot of ah’s and oh’s on the beach followed by drinking and dancing afterwards. It's really great scenery to observe what's going on at the beach. Just the weather is the only factor that limits fun here. As for Europe ice and snow are here heavy rain falls and cold weather. That means that there is no action regarding kiteboarding and the skate ramp is under water. Just surfing is possible but that is also not so much fun in the cold and rainy weather. The only option is to stay in the hotel and wait for the rain to stop and the wind to come.
In two weeks I will continue on to Cuba. At the moment I’m checking cheap flights to Cuba but it’s very expensive from here. Just two flight hours away the price for a round ticket is 600USD – From San Francisco to the Dominican Republic it was just 350 USD. It seems that poor countries are double unfortunate – Little money and higher expenses!
The Internet connection is very unreliable at the moment it is often down and there are frequent power cuts too that make life hell here. With no power and no Internet just reading is an option and waiting for the rain to stop. I really hope the weather will be better in Cub. Otherwise it would be really a strange travel in the rain.
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