A three hour wait for a transfer flight in Paris is a very cruel thing after a 9-hour, through-the-night flight, particularly one which was quite so turbulent. I've always been a slightly uneasy flier, but as we took off yesterday, I realised that traveling in darkness freaks me out a whole lot more. Without day light one never gets a sense of how high the plane is, and I've been known to convince myself that we're plummeting back down to the ground again, purely because I can't see where the ground is. I basically sat for the entire journey trying to keep a handle on my nerves, whilst listening to classic albums on the Air France in-house entertainment system. In the absence of any music by ABBA, I started my musical odyssey with Sergeant Pepper, before moving on to the Faure Requiem, and, for some light relief, a hugely eccentric (for the sake of being eccentric) recording of the Four Seasons. I fell asleep listening to the whinnying of Maroon Five.
The short hop back to London from Paris was easy enough, and made rather fun by a brilliantly witty purser called Stefan. As we touched down, he made one of the greatest aircraft tannoy announcements I've ever heard;
"Welcome to London, where the local time is 1.41pm and 32 seconds... approximately. The temperature here is 22 degrees... Inside the plane... And seven degrees outside... Which is not enough. Please don't forget to switch on your mobile phones. Thank you for flying with Air France!"
London was a miserable place to return home to. Freezing cold rain replaced the soft trade winds and the tubes were way over-crowded.
I booked myself in for a massage in the hope that I'd be able stay awake until a reasonable time in order to beat the jet lag... Although at 8.30, I'm flagging!
Friday, 31 January 2014
Amazing
We woke up this morning - our last day in the Dominican Republic - and decided we'd spent rather too long sitting by pools in all-inclusive hotels. We still had the Dominican Pesos that Brother Edward gave me for Christmas, and decided it was time to spend them on something special.
Our hotel runs a service called the "Dominican Safari", which gives more adventurous tourists an opportunity to take a trip into the "real" country. I think the tour had already left by the time we reached the lobby, but the man there explained that we could, if we wanted, commission a private tour. So that's what we did, and we had an extraordinary time.
It turns out that the Dominican Republic is a fairly astonishing place, particularly when seen through the eyes of Odalis, our personal tour guide for the day.
Odalis does these sorts of tours on a daily basis, which means we'd periodically find ourselves walking into a shop which was run by a mate of his, who'd do the hard sell on some kind of ghastly souvenir, but that's all part of the deal, I suspect. Did we want a bottle of Mamajuana bark? No. Did we buy one for fifteen dollars? Sadly, yes!
But blimey, it was worth it for the exhausting, exhilarating, extreme riot of colour that today became.
As we pulled out of our hotel, we found ourselves following an open-backed truck which was precariously piled high with everything you'd associate with a house move. Wicker furniture, mattresses, even a little potted plant. On the top of the mound, a young lad was trying to keep everything balanced. "Only in the Dominican Republic" said our guide, and we instantly began to understand why...
This place seems to be suspended in the 1950s. Shop signs are hand-painted and little men sit on the edge of rural villages with plastic bottles filled with gasoline. At one point we passed a man on a horse overseeing the resurfacing of a road, and a steam roller going through a car wash!
Our first port of call was a delightful village called Macao, which was situated in the middle of banana plantations, and a series of green pastures on dark red soil, which could almost have been the meadows around Cambridge, but for the odd palm tree! The pastures were the home of an assortment of livestock from horses and donkeys to a strange part-cow-part-buffalo creature which seemed to co-exist quite happily with a white bird with a long beak.
Macao has its own beach, and that's where the Dominican people go to eat fish al fresco and surf. The whole place smelt of wood smoke and a patchouli-like flower. It was a heavy, breathtakingly beautiful aroma, which immediately made me want to drop everything and simply be. "Dominican people are always happy", said Odalis. With beaches like this, it's hardly surprising.
We got back into the car and drifted up into the mountains through a series of ever-larger towns, all of which were one street wide, which, by the time we'd reached a place called Veron, became almost nonsensical. The main street in Veron is more than six kilometres long!
All of the towns we passed through looked fairly similar. The insides of shops tumble out onto the main roads. Piles of pineapples, limes and coconuts, raw meat hanging on washing lines. All houses and shops are a single-storey high, and all are painted in bright colours; blues and yellows with red roofs, or, for the more rural properties, dusty shades of green and pink. In one village we passed a giant Christmas Tree made out of beer bottles. "Why on earth is that still up?" I asked. "Well, they've not yet taken them down from Oxford Street," replied Nathan, sagely, "it's the hot weather which makes it seem so out of place." And he was right.
People buy water in these parts. There are no pipes, believe it or not, so a common sight in the villages is a giant water truck, stationed by the side of a building.
We went off the beaten track into an intensely rural area, where grander Catholic Churches are replaced by little tin shacks where the evangelists on the island go to worship. Here, enormous pink flowers line the roads and scores of insanely bright butterflies dart through the air.
Odalis took us to the house of one of his "friends", a family of small holders, who make honey, vanilla extract, coffee and chocolate. They welcomed us into their gloriously cool, shade-filled home, and gave us a little tour. It was like something from the Grapes of Wrath, with a modern fridge. The sort of thing you'd see in a film about the Deep South of America.
Their garden was stunning; filled with the most beautiful flowers with hummingbirds flitting all over the place. The air was rich with the aroma of coffee and chocolate. It was, in all honesty, a paradise. Plainly, a paradise which is fuelled by the pennies of tourists who turn up from time to time and buy, at wildly inflated prices, the little pots of produce which the family produces, but somehow, to me, this doesn't matter.
We continued further into the mountains, past a little school, where kids were posting their satchels through the windows.
Odalis gave us a lesson in the difference between the three types of dance music they have in the DR. Salsa, Merengue, and something I'd not heard of, which is called something like Bartiada or Barcharga.
Up in the mountains, we pulled up beside a Creole man who was selling coconuts on a truck. Odalis encouraged the man to chop one open, and poured the milk into a cup. It's the first coconut milk I've ever had, and I didn't like it at all. It was slightly fizzy and tasted rather bland. Neither of us were much impressed by the nasty fleshy stuff inside either, but we ate it like the polite boys we both are!
We learned at this moment that the Haitians, with whom the Dominicans share an island, are considered to be a something of a sub-class. They are dark-skinned by comparison and most of them are apparently refugees. If they're walking down a street wheeling a barrow filled with fruit, or begging in the town square, you expect them to be Haitian, apparently.
Our final destination was the curiously named Cuidad de Higuey, or (appropriately) White City. A sprawling 250,000 resident city in the mountains, which was beyond description. Definitely a million worlds away from the White City I was working in this time last year.
Odalis took us first to the market, pouncing upon a Haitian with a wheelbarrow filled with black sugar cane, and insisting we were given pieces to chew. The poor bloke, who didn't speak a word of Spanish, duly cut us off a few morsels and Odalis instructed us to chew only, then to spit it out. It was a remarkable sensation. A little like chewing a lump of candied rhubarb, or a sugar cube soaked in tea. You could almost crunch the sugar crystals inside. It was absolutely divine.
The market itself was insane. Behind every stall, another careworn, remarkable face peered out. Wild dogs and skinny, feral cats wondered everywhere. Honey and preserves were sold in whatever bottles and jars the stall holders could get their hands on, chickens and rabbits sat in tiny cages, huge pigs heads covered in flies lined the walk ways, piles of offal were strewn across the floors, the stench of death was everywhere, mini-warehouses were filled with second hand clothes from the USA, whilst next door, a shop filled with men sitting at sewing machines customised the second hand clothes.
A shambolic 500 year-old Catholic Church in the middle of the mayhem was filled with men on their knees praying and women on plastic chairs softly reading the bible to themselves, broken windows plugged up with pieces of broken concrete...
As you can probably tell, my mind is still trying to filter through the riot of colours, shapes and smells I experienced today, and as I'm about to board my flight home, it's probably best I try to post this before a day goes past without a blog, but suffice to say, today was the day I wanted in the Dominican Republic, and I owe it all to my brother. Without his pesos, we'd never have been able to afford the excursion, or had the currency with which to pay for it.
Our hotel runs a service called the "Dominican Safari", which gives more adventurous tourists an opportunity to take a trip into the "real" country. I think the tour had already left by the time we reached the lobby, but the man there explained that we could, if we wanted, commission a private tour. So that's what we did, and we had an extraordinary time.
It turns out that the Dominican Republic is a fairly astonishing place, particularly when seen through the eyes of Odalis, our personal tour guide for the day.
Odalis does these sorts of tours on a daily basis, which means we'd periodically find ourselves walking into a shop which was run by a mate of his, who'd do the hard sell on some kind of ghastly souvenir, but that's all part of the deal, I suspect. Did we want a bottle of Mamajuana bark? No. Did we buy one for fifteen dollars? Sadly, yes!
But blimey, it was worth it for the exhausting, exhilarating, extreme riot of colour that today became.
As we pulled out of our hotel, we found ourselves following an open-backed truck which was precariously piled high with everything you'd associate with a house move. Wicker furniture, mattresses, even a little potted plant. On the top of the mound, a young lad was trying to keep everything balanced. "Only in the Dominican Republic" said our guide, and we instantly began to understand why...
This place seems to be suspended in the 1950s. Shop signs are hand-painted and little men sit on the edge of rural villages with plastic bottles filled with gasoline. At one point we passed a man on a horse overseeing the resurfacing of a road, and a steam roller going through a car wash!
Our first port of call was a delightful village called Macao, which was situated in the middle of banana plantations, and a series of green pastures on dark red soil, which could almost have been the meadows around Cambridge, but for the odd palm tree! The pastures were the home of an assortment of livestock from horses and donkeys to a strange part-cow-part-buffalo creature which seemed to co-exist quite happily with a white bird with a long beak.
Macao has its own beach, and that's where the Dominican people go to eat fish al fresco and surf. The whole place smelt of wood smoke and a patchouli-like flower. It was a heavy, breathtakingly beautiful aroma, which immediately made me want to drop everything and simply be. "Dominican people are always happy", said Odalis. With beaches like this, it's hardly surprising.
We got back into the car and drifted up into the mountains through a series of ever-larger towns, all of which were one street wide, which, by the time we'd reached a place called Veron, became almost nonsensical. The main street in Veron is more than six kilometres long!
All of the towns we passed through looked fairly similar. The insides of shops tumble out onto the main roads. Piles of pineapples, limes and coconuts, raw meat hanging on washing lines. All houses and shops are a single-storey high, and all are painted in bright colours; blues and yellows with red roofs, or, for the more rural properties, dusty shades of green and pink. In one village we passed a giant Christmas Tree made out of beer bottles. "Why on earth is that still up?" I asked. "Well, they've not yet taken them down from Oxford Street," replied Nathan, sagely, "it's the hot weather which makes it seem so out of place." And he was right.
People buy water in these parts. There are no pipes, believe it or not, so a common sight in the villages is a giant water truck, stationed by the side of a building.
We went off the beaten track into an intensely rural area, where grander Catholic Churches are replaced by little tin shacks where the evangelists on the island go to worship. Here, enormous pink flowers line the roads and scores of insanely bright butterflies dart through the air.
Odalis took us to the house of one of his "friends", a family of small holders, who make honey, vanilla extract, coffee and chocolate. They welcomed us into their gloriously cool, shade-filled home, and gave us a little tour. It was like something from the Grapes of Wrath, with a modern fridge. The sort of thing you'd see in a film about the Deep South of America.
Their garden was stunning; filled with the most beautiful flowers with hummingbirds flitting all over the place. The air was rich with the aroma of coffee and chocolate. It was, in all honesty, a paradise. Plainly, a paradise which is fuelled by the pennies of tourists who turn up from time to time and buy, at wildly inflated prices, the little pots of produce which the family produces, but somehow, to me, this doesn't matter.
We continued further into the mountains, past a little school, where kids were posting their satchels through the windows.
Odalis gave us a lesson in the difference between the three types of dance music they have in the DR. Salsa, Merengue, and something I'd not heard of, which is called something like Bartiada or Barcharga.
Up in the mountains, we pulled up beside a Creole man who was selling coconuts on a truck. Odalis encouraged the man to chop one open, and poured the milk into a cup. It's the first coconut milk I've ever had, and I didn't like it at all. It was slightly fizzy and tasted rather bland. Neither of us were much impressed by the nasty fleshy stuff inside either, but we ate it like the polite boys we both are!
We learned at this moment that the Haitians, with whom the Dominicans share an island, are considered to be a something of a sub-class. They are dark-skinned by comparison and most of them are apparently refugees. If they're walking down a street wheeling a barrow filled with fruit, or begging in the town square, you expect them to be Haitian, apparently.
Our final destination was the curiously named Cuidad de Higuey, or (appropriately) White City. A sprawling 250,000 resident city in the mountains, which was beyond description. Definitely a million worlds away from the White City I was working in this time last year.
Odalis took us first to the market, pouncing upon a Haitian with a wheelbarrow filled with black sugar cane, and insisting we were given pieces to chew. The poor bloke, who didn't speak a word of Spanish, duly cut us off a few morsels and Odalis instructed us to chew only, then to spit it out. It was a remarkable sensation. A little like chewing a lump of candied rhubarb, or a sugar cube soaked in tea. You could almost crunch the sugar crystals inside. It was absolutely divine.
The market itself was insane. Behind every stall, another careworn, remarkable face peered out. Wild dogs and skinny, feral cats wondered everywhere. Honey and preserves were sold in whatever bottles and jars the stall holders could get their hands on, chickens and rabbits sat in tiny cages, huge pigs heads covered in flies lined the walk ways, piles of offal were strewn across the floors, the stench of death was everywhere, mini-warehouses were filled with second hand clothes from the USA, whilst next door, a shop filled with men sitting at sewing machines customised the second hand clothes.
A shambolic 500 year-old Catholic Church in the middle of the mayhem was filled with men on their knees praying and women on plastic chairs softly reading the bible to themselves, broken windows plugged up with pieces of broken concrete...
As you can probably tell, my mind is still trying to filter through the riot of colours, shapes and smells I experienced today, and as I'm about to board my flight home, it's probably best I try to post this before a day goes past without a blog, but suffice to say, today was the day I wanted in the Dominican Republic, and I owe it all to my brother. Without his pesos, we'd never have been able to afford the excursion, or had the currency with which to pay for it.
Thursday, 30 January 2014
Princess
We're in a new hotel, a little further down the coast, which we booked independently to extend our stay by a day. Sadly, the Punta Cana Princess Hotel doesn't seem to have any hot water at the moment, so we're covered in sand from the beach, aching from the sun, and unable to relax before bed. I should point out that this is the most expensive hotel we've ever stayed in! A whopping £200 for a single night! I really think hot water would have been a nice touch!
I woke up at Hard Rock feeling a little confused after a series of incredibly vivid dreams. At one stage, I was in a church in the grounds of Balmoral Castle, talking to Prince Edward and Prince Andrew who'd just commissioned me to compose a piece of music! Five seconds later I was in a hyper-market with Nathan who was trying to steel a purple shirt. Do any dream analysts reading this fancy a crack at working out what that's all about.
We sat on the beach last night until about midnight, watching scores of Chinese lanterns drifting up into the sky from a point about a mile along the coast. The tiny dots of yellow light formed the most amazing, ever-changing constellations in the ink-black sky. Seconds later, the heavens opened, and for about five minutes it absolutely bucketed it down with rain. I was so relieved to finally experience a tropical shower!
We took a car from Hard Rock to our new hotel, and, in the process, finally got to see a tantalising glimpse of the actual Dominican Republic, which my rose-tinted glasses presented to me as something from the pages of On The Road.
It was a strange, disorientating experience to watch everything flashing by from behind a car window which refused to open. The Spanish road signs, the dilapidated street-side bars with corrugated iron roofs filled with men smoking cigars, fanning themselves casually whilst watching the world passing by. An old-school, rickety 1950s truck screeched past - beeping its horn at a clutch of mopeds with one, two, three riders - its tall sides covered in a giant advertisement for Coca-Cola.
Our mad driver was in a hurry to get us to a hotel he didn't know. (In this part of the world, all hotels have the same name.) He dodged every piece of traffic around him, and we bobbed about in the back seat, feeling like we'd been thrown onto the most dangerous roller-coaster in the crappiest touring fair!
"You want music?" He shouted
"No thanks. We had too much music at the Hard Rock Hotel. The silence is lovely..."
A minute later, he switched the radio on full blast and sang along at the top of his voice whilst drumming the steering wheel with his fingers. A light waft of halitosis drifted back to us from the front seat.
We drifted through a little town, back from the beach resorts, and probably the nearest the Dominicans can get to their coastline in this part of the country. Here there were car washes with neon signs, curious hairdressers, cigar stalls, men selling paintings by the side of the road, handmade, faded, jaded shop signs, red, yellow and bright pink flowers, tiny supermarkets, heaps of fruit on trestle tables, motorbike repair shops. Waste-not-want-not...
The poverty levels behind the fancy resorts are incredibly high, making a desperate mockery of the terrible wastage we witnessed at Hard Rock. The food that place must throw away. The bins I saw filled with brand new pens, paper, glitter and glue which delegates had used to make banners for a few tawdry minutes during their conference. It all suddenly felt grotesque as we juddered through that little town. I thought about the kids coming from school in their yellow busses and how excited they'd be to find a bin filled with such amazing stationery. I imagined how excited I would have been as a ten year old child to find it! What's happened to the world in the last thirty years?
In this dusty part of the world, most of the buildings either look like they're in the process of being built, or about to fall down. We saw kids playing on gravel paths next to piles of rubbish and people waiting for buses on benches made out of tree trunks.
But there's a life here which excited me. A life I never once saw at the Hard Rock Hotel with its crazy marble crypt-like walls, sycophantic staff, piped music, ornate lawns and fancy smells.
And yet, I go to bed in a bad mood because I can't have a hot bath! I've got some serious thinking to do haven't I?!!
I woke up at Hard Rock feeling a little confused after a series of incredibly vivid dreams. At one stage, I was in a church in the grounds of Balmoral Castle, talking to Prince Edward and Prince Andrew who'd just commissioned me to compose a piece of music! Five seconds later I was in a hyper-market with Nathan who was trying to steel a purple shirt. Do any dream analysts reading this fancy a crack at working out what that's all about.
We sat on the beach last night until about midnight, watching scores of Chinese lanterns drifting up into the sky from a point about a mile along the coast. The tiny dots of yellow light formed the most amazing, ever-changing constellations in the ink-black sky. Seconds later, the heavens opened, and for about five minutes it absolutely bucketed it down with rain. I was so relieved to finally experience a tropical shower!
We took a car from Hard Rock to our new hotel, and, in the process, finally got to see a tantalising glimpse of the actual Dominican Republic, which my rose-tinted glasses presented to me as something from the pages of On The Road.
It was a strange, disorientating experience to watch everything flashing by from behind a car window which refused to open. The Spanish road signs, the dilapidated street-side bars with corrugated iron roofs filled with men smoking cigars, fanning themselves casually whilst watching the world passing by. An old-school, rickety 1950s truck screeched past - beeping its horn at a clutch of mopeds with one, two, three riders - its tall sides covered in a giant advertisement for Coca-Cola.
Our mad driver was in a hurry to get us to a hotel he didn't know. (In this part of the world, all hotels have the same name.) He dodged every piece of traffic around him, and we bobbed about in the back seat, feeling like we'd been thrown onto the most dangerous roller-coaster in the crappiest touring fair!
"You want music?" He shouted
"No thanks. We had too much music at the Hard Rock Hotel. The silence is lovely..."
A minute later, he switched the radio on full blast and sang along at the top of his voice whilst drumming the steering wheel with his fingers. A light waft of halitosis drifted back to us from the front seat.
We drifted through a little town, back from the beach resorts, and probably the nearest the Dominicans can get to their coastline in this part of the country. Here there were car washes with neon signs, curious hairdressers, cigar stalls, men selling paintings by the side of the road, handmade, faded, jaded shop signs, red, yellow and bright pink flowers, tiny supermarkets, heaps of fruit on trestle tables, motorbike repair shops. Waste-not-want-not...
The poverty levels behind the fancy resorts are incredibly high, making a desperate mockery of the terrible wastage we witnessed at Hard Rock. The food that place must throw away. The bins I saw filled with brand new pens, paper, glitter and glue which delegates had used to make banners for a few tawdry minutes during their conference. It all suddenly felt grotesque as we juddered through that little town. I thought about the kids coming from school in their yellow busses and how excited they'd be to find a bin filled with such amazing stationery. I imagined how excited I would have been as a ten year old child to find it! What's happened to the world in the last thirty years?
In this dusty part of the world, most of the buildings either look like they're in the process of being built, or about to fall down. We saw kids playing on gravel paths next to piles of rubbish and people waiting for buses on benches made out of tree trunks.
But there's a life here which excited me. A life I never once saw at the Hard Rock Hotel with its crazy marble crypt-like walls, sycophantic staff, piped music, ornate lawns and fancy smells.
And yet, I go to bed in a bad mood because I can't have a hot bath! I've got some serious thinking to do haven't I?!!
Wednesday, 29 January 2014
Sun burnt eccentrics
We may well be in Paradise, but today's lesson taught us what hard work in Paradise feels like... and let me tell you, it's exhausting! I can't even remember this morning, it seems so long ago.
At about 9am, Nathan, Carrie, Pete and I were standing on a stage in front of 2000 people, teaching them how to sing One by U2 in three part harmony. We were backed by a Vegas U2 tribute act called 2U. We asked their Bono how he wanted to be introduced, and he said we should probably simply call him Bono, which triggered a rush of jokes about what might be a more appropriate name; "Faux-no" "Oh-no!" "Mono" ('cus he's only half as good as the real thing...) It turns out he was rather good and was a very nice chap to boot, so we thought it was fair to call him Bono!
A rush of activity followed the singing session, which found us firstly on the beach setting up the most bizarre and complicated obstacle course, then in an air-conditioned corridor in the depths of the complex putting 400 kazoos into individual white paper bags, before watching Nathan teaching delegates how to play the instrumental from The Final Countdown on said kazoos. We then returned to the beach to run a two hour "Olympics", which involved the delegates in groups of 50 rushing from one peculiar race to another. I was stationed by the side of the water and put in charge of a group of people building six giant sand castles. It was mayhem. Great, great fun, truly exhausting, but one of the most surreal things I've ever done! I kept looking out to the banks of palm trees on the edge of the beach, and thinking "I can't believe I'm in the Dominican Republic judging a giant sandcastle building competition!"
At the end of the day, we took our sorrowful, sand-baked, sun-burnt bodies to the nearest pool and threw ourselves in, fully dressed. And it felt bloody good.
Nathan has a migraine, bless him. It's hardly surprising. None of us drank enough today, and by the time we'd cleared an entire beach of the detritus our event had generated, we'd been working solidly for 12 hours, at least 7 of which had been in direct 30 degree sunlight. Nathan also chipped his tooth whilst trying to gulp down some lunch in a twenty-minute break earlier, so the poor bloke is properly in the wars. For my part, I actually managed to get sun burned on my back... THROUGH my shirt!
I think today will embed itself in my brain in a series of images. Lying, fully-clothed in a swimming pool at dusk, whilst enormous bats swept over our heads like a scene from Scooby Doo. The giant green and yellow butterflies which periodically fluttered past whilst we prepared our beach Olympics. The "legs, bums and tums" class that was going on in one of the swimming pools which made Hard Rock look more like Hi-De-Hi. The colour of the sea just before sunset tonight, like a peacock, dark indigo at the horizon and then every shade of blue to a yellowy shimmering turquoise as the water met the beach. Riding a golf buggy through a hotel corridor (so Rock and Roll) and then, on the same buggy, steaming through the hotel gardens performing (in multi-part harmony) the Final Countdown, on kazoos, whilst bemused hotel guests looked on wondering quite how eccentric the Brits could get!
At about 9am, Nathan, Carrie, Pete and I were standing on a stage in front of 2000 people, teaching them how to sing One by U2 in three part harmony. We were backed by a Vegas U2 tribute act called 2U. We asked their Bono how he wanted to be introduced, and he said we should probably simply call him Bono, which triggered a rush of jokes about what might be a more appropriate name; "Faux-no" "Oh-no!" "Mono" ('cus he's only half as good as the real thing...) It turns out he was rather good and was a very nice chap to boot, so we thought it was fair to call him Bono!
A rush of activity followed the singing session, which found us firstly on the beach setting up the most bizarre and complicated obstacle course, then in an air-conditioned corridor in the depths of the complex putting 400 kazoos into individual white paper bags, before watching Nathan teaching delegates how to play the instrumental from The Final Countdown on said kazoos. We then returned to the beach to run a two hour "Olympics", which involved the delegates in groups of 50 rushing from one peculiar race to another. I was stationed by the side of the water and put in charge of a group of people building six giant sand castles. It was mayhem. Great, great fun, truly exhausting, but one of the most surreal things I've ever done! I kept looking out to the banks of palm trees on the edge of the beach, and thinking "I can't believe I'm in the Dominican Republic judging a giant sandcastle building competition!"
At the end of the day, we took our sorrowful, sand-baked, sun-burnt bodies to the nearest pool and threw ourselves in, fully dressed. And it felt bloody good.
Nathan has a migraine, bless him. It's hardly surprising. None of us drank enough today, and by the time we'd cleared an entire beach of the detritus our event had generated, we'd been working solidly for 12 hours, at least 7 of which had been in direct 30 degree sunlight. Nathan also chipped his tooth whilst trying to gulp down some lunch in a twenty-minute break earlier, so the poor bloke is properly in the wars. For my part, I actually managed to get sun burned on my back... THROUGH my shirt!
I think today will embed itself in my brain in a series of images. Lying, fully-clothed in a swimming pool at dusk, whilst enormous bats swept over our heads like a scene from Scooby Doo. The giant green and yellow butterflies which periodically fluttered past whilst we prepared our beach Olympics. The "legs, bums and tums" class that was going on in one of the swimming pools which made Hard Rock look more like Hi-De-Hi. The colour of the sea just before sunset tonight, like a peacock, dark indigo at the horizon and then every shade of blue to a yellowy shimmering turquoise as the water met the beach. Riding a golf buggy through a hotel corridor (so Rock and Roll) and then, on the same buggy, steaming through the hotel gardens performing (in multi-part harmony) the Final Countdown, on kazoos, whilst bemused hotel guests looked on wondering quite how eccentric the Brits could get!
Tuesday, 28 January 2014
Rolling in the shallows
We've just decided not to play a round of mini-golf based on the fact that they were blasting out such loud music on the course, that we all started to panic. It comes to something when an outdoor event (which isn't a music concert) can potentially trigger tinnitus! Sadly, that's the way of things here. One spends most of one's stay trying to avoid pointless, mindless, insipid European music. This Dominican Republic prides itself on its fine musical traditions, yet the Hard Rock complex is pumping "No Limits" through its rose bushes!
Most readers, well my brother I'm sure for one, will be wondering why we're staying in the complex and not venturing out into the real Dominican Republic. The complex is absolutely enormous, and is only linked to the rest of the island by a 2-mile road, which deposits its guests on a motorway which heads straight to the airport. This part of the island is geared towards package tours, and is filled with nothing but huge resorts. There are no towns within a 50km radius, and nothing to visit other than other hotels and golf courses. We're also here to work...
We actually did our first gig this morning - and when I say this morning, I mean almost yesterday. We were up before dawn, introducing conference delegates to the joys of Boom-whackers; those brightly-coloured plastic tubes which sound a note when struck across the palm. In a fifteen minute session we, the good folk of Creative Team Events, taught 1,500 people how to play their individually pitched boom-whackers. Like a giant rainbow-coloured orchestra, we were. I'm pretty sure we were a major hit. There was lots of cheering at the end of our session, and delegates were allowed to take their boom-whackers home as a souvenir, a gesture which was very well-received, judging by the number of people we saw afterwards carrying theirs around.
My ears continue to give me problems. As soon as I'm back in Highgate, I'm going to need to take myself in for syringing as I'm grossing everyone out with the amount of waxy gunk which I'm pulling out of my ears on tissues and things, and freaking myself out by being half deaf!
After the gig, and a couple of hours by the pool, we went back indoors to rehearse tomorrow's gig, before heading to the beach. I'm a little burnt, I think. That, or an hour being buffeted by enormous waves, has pummelled a layer of skin from my arms. Body surfing is enormous fun but some waves have the capacity to make you feel like nothing but a rag doll. The one which sent me limping back to the beach carried me on its crest in an almost upright position for a few seconds before dragging me into a rolling foamy death spiral!
I was reminded of a trip to Crete with Fiona where I got trapped in a cycle of stormy waves which I didn't have the strength to fight. I could feel myself being dragged further and further out to sea and imagined needing to be rescued somewhere north of Egypt. Eventually the waves subsided and I opened my eyes to realise with horror that I'd been rolling around like a terrified freak in shallow water no more than a metre from the shore, and that all I'd actually needed to do to get myself out of peril was stand up!
Fiona was sitting on the beach at the time, and I went running back to her, feeling all shaken; "I just spent the last five minutes thinking I was in a rip-tide being dragged out to sea," I gasped. "Oh," she said, laughing, "I wondered what you were doing! I was about to come and chat to you!"
We've come back to our hotel room for a little peace and quiet but, unfortunately, the entire complex is now throbbing to the soundtrack of some kind of dance spectacular, which is going on a good 500 meters away, but, you know, why keep the music down? If you stay at the Hard Rock Hotel, it stands to reason you're going to love insanely loud moosik! I wonder how late this is going to go into the night. It rather feels like we're in the chill-out room at Heaven!
Most readers, well my brother I'm sure for one, will be wondering why we're staying in the complex and not venturing out into the real Dominican Republic. The complex is absolutely enormous, and is only linked to the rest of the island by a 2-mile road, which deposits its guests on a motorway which heads straight to the airport. This part of the island is geared towards package tours, and is filled with nothing but huge resorts. There are no towns within a 50km radius, and nothing to visit other than other hotels and golf courses. We're also here to work...
We actually did our first gig this morning - and when I say this morning, I mean almost yesterday. We were up before dawn, introducing conference delegates to the joys of Boom-whackers; those brightly-coloured plastic tubes which sound a note when struck across the palm. In a fifteen minute session we, the good folk of Creative Team Events, taught 1,500 people how to play their individually pitched boom-whackers. Like a giant rainbow-coloured orchestra, we were. I'm pretty sure we were a major hit. There was lots of cheering at the end of our session, and delegates were allowed to take their boom-whackers home as a souvenir, a gesture which was very well-received, judging by the number of people we saw afterwards carrying theirs around.
My ears continue to give me problems. As soon as I'm back in Highgate, I'm going to need to take myself in for syringing as I'm grossing everyone out with the amount of waxy gunk which I'm pulling out of my ears on tissues and things, and freaking myself out by being half deaf!
After the gig, and a couple of hours by the pool, we went back indoors to rehearse tomorrow's gig, before heading to the beach. I'm a little burnt, I think. That, or an hour being buffeted by enormous waves, has pummelled a layer of skin from my arms. Body surfing is enormous fun but some waves have the capacity to make you feel like nothing but a rag doll. The one which sent me limping back to the beach carried me on its crest in an almost upright position for a few seconds before dragging me into a rolling foamy death spiral!
I was reminded of a trip to Crete with Fiona where I got trapped in a cycle of stormy waves which I didn't have the strength to fight. I could feel myself being dragged further and further out to sea and imagined needing to be rescued somewhere north of Egypt. Eventually the waves subsided and I opened my eyes to realise with horror that I'd been rolling around like a terrified freak in shallow water no more than a metre from the shore, and that all I'd actually needed to do to get myself out of peril was stand up!
Fiona was sitting on the beach at the time, and I went running back to her, feeling all shaken; "I just spent the last five minutes thinking I was in a rip-tide being dragged out to sea," I gasped. "Oh," she said, laughing, "I wondered what you were doing! I was about to come and chat to you!"
We've come back to our hotel room for a little peace and quiet but, unfortunately, the entire complex is now throbbing to the soundtrack of some kind of dance spectacular, which is going on a good 500 meters away, but, you know, why keep the music down? If you stay at the Hard Rock Hotel, it stands to reason you're going to love insanely loud moosik! I wonder how late this is going to go into the night. It rather feels like we're in the chill-out room at Heaven!
Monday, 27 January 2014
Humidity
The trouble with Hard Rock's version of paradise is that it involves music... almost constant music. Every bar, every cafe, every single corner of the complex which has been set up for R and R has music piped into it. There are even Bose speakers in the bushes, so as you walk around the complex, you get little blasts of music... And it's not good music. Not by any standard. This isn't the music of rock legends. It's people like Avril Levigne if you're lucky, and if you're not, it's some ghastly techno track, which repeats the same single phrase over and over again.
I actually want to listen to the minor birds, and the bees, and hear the crashing of the waves, but there's even a stage set up on the beach. For a musician, particularly one who wants to sit under a tree and write whilst the trade winds blow, it's a form of torture...
Perhaps as a result of all this, my subconscious has awarded me with deafness! I think it's something to do with the amount of water I've been jumping into since getting here. I obviously have too much wax in my ears at the moment, and water has managed to lodge itself behind a big old blob of it. Not the best situation for someone who has to sing in two days, but there's no way I'm going to pay out to see a doctor here. The last time this happened, I was in Florida, and it cost the best part of £200 to sort it out.
Judging by the majority of staff here at the hotel, I'd say that Dominicans are a rather short race. They also seem to be a race of people who adore children. Lisa's little bab, Rosie, is here with us and is getting a huge amount of attention, particularly from the Dominican men who will regularly rush over and tickle her, sing to her and generally make her the centre of attention. How refreshing to visit a place where men aren't scared to be affectionate towards children. I realised today what a profoundly messed-up society Britain is in this respect. One of the girls we were with today said she saw man in a wheelchair giving out chocolate coins for charity at King's Cross station just before Christmas, and that mothers with children were going out of their way to avoid a situation where their child could be seen to be taking sweets from a stranger. What are we breeding? A society of children who don't trust adults? A society of children who don't understand that physical contact doesn't always need to be a prelude to sexual activity? It's shocking, it really is. We arrogantly think we've got everything sewn up in the UK - that we properly understand human rights - and yet, we don't seem to fully understand the meaning of love!
The astonishing thing about this hotel is how much food there seems to be everywhere. A buffet here, a little corporate pile of pastries there. Everything is free. You walk into a restaurant, ask for as much or as little as you like, chow down and then leave! The buffet restaurants are the most extraordinary, with plates of everything you can think of and many things you can't. I'm currently looking at a ham sculptured to look like a rose. Stomach-churning!
It pisses it down here just once a day, either first thing in the morning or just after sunset. Usually first thing in the morning. I'm sad to say I've always either been asleep when it's happened, or in rehearsals. I'm disappointed as the storms are meant to be quite extraordinary. What I have experienced, however, is the phenomenal humidity which descends around the time of the rain. One can barely breathe! I've experienced nothing of the sort before, although I'm told what we've had here is not a patch on what happens in the Far East.
This evening, at the height of the humidity, we were taken through the complex on a golf buggy. I was hanging off the back, and we were going at quite a speed through the walkways and mini-roads, past the casino, the theatre, the palm trees, the mini golf, the pools and bars, all lit up with twinkly lights, the air blowing through our hair. It was like a roller coaster ride without the safety belts. Astounding!
I actually want to listen to the minor birds, and the bees, and hear the crashing of the waves, but there's even a stage set up on the beach. For a musician, particularly one who wants to sit under a tree and write whilst the trade winds blow, it's a form of torture...
Perhaps as a result of all this, my subconscious has awarded me with deafness! I think it's something to do with the amount of water I've been jumping into since getting here. I obviously have too much wax in my ears at the moment, and water has managed to lodge itself behind a big old blob of it. Not the best situation for someone who has to sing in two days, but there's no way I'm going to pay out to see a doctor here. The last time this happened, I was in Florida, and it cost the best part of £200 to sort it out.
Judging by the majority of staff here at the hotel, I'd say that Dominicans are a rather short race. They also seem to be a race of people who adore children. Lisa's little bab, Rosie, is here with us and is getting a huge amount of attention, particularly from the Dominican men who will regularly rush over and tickle her, sing to her and generally make her the centre of attention. How refreshing to visit a place where men aren't scared to be affectionate towards children. I realised today what a profoundly messed-up society Britain is in this respect. One of the girls we were with today said she saw man in a wheelchair giving out chocolate coins for charity at King's Cross station just before Christmas, and that mothers with children were going out of their way to avoid a situation where their child could be seen to be taking sweets from a stranger. What are we breeding? A society of children who don't trust adults? A society of children who don't understand that physical contact doesn't always need to be a prelude to sexual activity? It's shocking, it really is. We arrogantly think we've got everything sewn up in the UK - that we properly understand human rights - and yet, we don't seem to fully understand the meaning of love!
The astonishing thing about this hotel is how much food there seems to be everywhere. A buffet here, a little corporate pile of pastries there. Everything is free. You walk into a restaurant, ask for as much or as little as you like, chow down and then leave! The buffet restaurants are the most extraordinary, with plates of everything you can think of and many things you can't. I'm currently looking at a ham sculptured to look like a rose. Stomach-churning!
It pisses it down here just once a day, either first thing in the morning or just after sunset. Usually first thing in the morning. I'm sad to say I've always either been asleep when it's happened, or in rehearsals. I'm disappointed as the storms are meant to be quite extraordinary. What I have experienced, however, is the phenomenal humidity which descends around the time of the rain. One can barely breathe! I've experienced nothing of the sort before, although I'm told what we've had here is not a patch on what happens in the Far East.
This evening, at the height of the humidity, we were taken through the complex on a golf buggy. I was hanging off the back, and we were going at quite a speed through the walkways and mini-roads, past the casino, the theatre, the palm trees, the mini golf, the pools and bars, all lit up with twinkly lights, the air blowing through our hair. It was like a roller coaster ride without the safety belts. Astounding!
Sunday, 26 January 2014
Paradoxes
We spent our first full day in Paradise today. Everything here is very much as you'd expect it to be. The hotel complex itself is a barn-like, rather false world, filled, almost exclusively by white people. By and large the only black faces you see are cleaning rooms, serving food, opening doors or hidden away in offices. They're all terribly friendly and I guess they seem happy enough. In fairness, I'm sure most of the people in the Dominican Republic don't give a stuff about the prohibitively expensive tourist hotels in Punta Cana. There will be better, freer and emptier beaches elsewhere on the island, where they don't need to doff their caps to people with an inflated sense of their own importance!
That said, the beach here has brought us absolute joy today. When confronted by pure white sands and warm turquoise water fringed with lines and lines of coconut palms, what is there not to love? It was like stepping into an advert for Bounty. The water is astonishingly clean, which is hardly surprising; if you travel due East from here (conveniently skirting over the top of Puerto Rico) the first land you'll see belongs to Africa... Mauritania more precisely. And oh! Those famous trade winds, acting like a fan oven, making us feel gloriously cool, and yet slowly baking us like pale Cumbrian sausages.
The waves were enormous today and we spent an hour or so being buffeted like little pieces of seaweed, laughing like maniacs, our eyes stinging from the salt in the water.
We first came to the beach at midnight last night. We paddled in the water whilst staring up at the brightest stars I've ever seen. Venus, right over head, was particularly impressive, whilst The Plough surprised us all by appearing at right angles to the horizon, almost as though the famous pan handle was falling into the sea.
To keep up the theme of Nathan always being bitten by something when we're away together (spiders, jellyfish etc...) he got stung by an ant today. I don't think it can be too serious. He only complained for a bit!
We have sat by three swimming pools already today, playing ping pong and drinking an "ABBA" cocktail in one!
As the sun set, we walked along the beach, a hugely romantic experience, with the rows of palm trees on the edges of the beach stretching off into the smokey horizon. Very magical.
That said, the beach here has brought us absolute joy today. When confronted by pure white sands and warm turquoise water fringed with lines and lines of coconut palms, what is there not to love? It was like stepping into an advert for Bounty. The water is astonishingly clean, which is hardly surprising; if you travel due East from here (conveniently skirting over the top of Puerto Rico) the first land you'll see belongs to Africa... Mauritania more precisely. And oh! Those famous trade winds, acting like a fan oven, making us feel gloriously cool, and yet slowly baking us like pale Cumbrian sausages.
The waves were enormous today and we spent an hour or so being buffeted like little pieces of seaweed, laughing like maniacs, our eyes stinging from the salt in the water.
We first came to the beach at midnight last night. We paddled in the water whilst staring up at the brightest stars I've ever seen. Venus, right over head, was particularly impressive, whilst The Plough surprised us all by appearing at right angles to the horizon, almost as though the famous pan handle was falling into the sea.
To keep up the theme of Nathan always being bitten by something when we're away together (spiders, jellyfish etc...) he got stung by an ant today. I don't think it can be too serious. He only complained for a bit!
We have sat by three swimming pools already today, playing ping pong and drinking an "ABBA" cocktail in one!
As the sun set, we walked along the beach, a hugely romantic experience, with the rows of palm trees on the edges of the beach stretching off into the smokey horizon. Very magical.
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