Night on the town

We had a long lay in this morning and a cold shower to try and soothe our sunburn, which although no where near as bad as that of Miami was still rather sore. We spent the remainder of the morning and much of the day hiding from the sun, trying to find a campervan on the incredibly crap internet which is off more often than it is on and reading on the kindle or Ipod. After dinner that evening we got ready to go out as we had arranged to meet a guy from couchsurfing, Alexei,in Parque Colon at 9pm. We arrived a little early and so sat on one of the many benches, admiring the Cathedral which is artfully lit up at night and watching various children playing in the open space the park afforded. Just after 9 Alexei came and found us and after introducing himself we joined him and his friends at one of the bars close by. Alexei is a journalist, speaks good English and is very easy to be with being entertaining, funny and interesting to listen to. We spent a little time here before he showed us around his local hang outs, places we'd been by day but were completely different by night, for example the serene plaza on the road of all the convents which by night is 'the' place to be! He showed us how the plaza was segregated into different groups of people and told us how when the country was in recession 10-15 years ago and prices of everything went up, people stopped going to pubs and bars and instead hung out here where there are a couple of Colmados (little shops/bars that people sit outside of) where everyone could afford to buy drinks and enjoy a night out in the company of their friends. We watched as a succession of people came over and said hello to Alexei, clearly this has been his local for a long time, everyone was really friendly and we enjoyed meeting some more locals and doing what they do on a typical Friday night. After an hour or so we left so Alexei could show us a couple of the popular bars where sometimes there is good dancing, we stopped in one called Parada 77 where there appeared to be some kind of party going on with everyone there wearing strange or amusing hats and dancing to the Merengue that the Dj mainly played. We sat out the back where it was a little quieter and chatted for a time until Alexei asked the Dj to play some Bachata for us. When it came on we enjoyed a few dances before the return of the merengue and shortly after left to see what else was happening in the town. The other bar Alexei recommended, La Sarten, wasn't particularly busy and so we wandered back to the plaza where a large bottle of beer appeared from one of Alexei's friends whom he had made a bet with and won, the beer being the prize which he shared between us. When we asked what the bet was on he told us there had been a political debate scheduled today and his friend had bet there would be a fight, that someone would get punched, pushed or slapped and Alexei had bet they wouldn't and surprisingly won, apparently the Dominicans are as obsessed with their politics as they are their Baseball and things often get heated! We ended up staying in the plaza for the rest of the night chatting about all kinds of stuff, drinking another bottle of beer which Andy bought at the Colmado and before we knew it, it was 3am and the park had slowly emptied around us. After watching a couple of the local homeless guys nearly come to blows over some of the bottles they were gathering up to take to get money for, we called it a night and said a fond goodbye to Alexei before walking back to the apartment and to bed.