Ah, yes. Santo Domingo appears not to have changed in the last 18 months. There are still the same fruitsellers on the same corners, the same smells, the same roadworks, the same sense that everyone thinks you are american.

Still, thanks to increased expenses budget, I am not in the same old brothel, but in a proper (cheap, backpackers) hotel, and the best bit is that it doesn´t charge by the hour!

Tried to spend some time in the National parks office archives department (i.e. a room with three bookshelves, and a bored teenager talking loudly on a phone). The parks office is literally in the middle of a slum town on the edge of the city. Major traffic headache to get to. Really, smelly dirty horrible place, ideal for creating plans to protect beautiful rainforests. Anyway, there appears to be no indexing system, and the folk who work there clearly only got the job because they have the right connections, and are less than useless. Still, am off to the national statistics office on tuesday, so lets hope things are better.

I then proceeded to get slightly drunk on rubbish beer outside of a corner shop, chatting to the boy who works there about how he is trying to save 80,000 pesos (about 1,600 sterling) to pay for the illegal boat trip to Puerto Rico, where he is going to work as an illegal immigrant on a building site, before going to New York. These two incidents show what is holding back this country, that the only way to get forward is to either work as a corrupt public official, or to leave and go to the US.

Sight of the day: A seven tier baby pink wedding cake being driven at high speed through the streets, on top of a rusty van, with two blokes hanging out of the windows to hold it down. I am never surprised but always amused by Dominican Transport.

Ah, beautiful Santo Domingo, so glad to be back.