Samana Orchestra

It's six o'clock in the morning and I woke up by the sounds of the roosters in Samana. It's not one or two roosters, there are hundreds of them. It sounds like a rooster orchestra. I believe every house in Samana has at least one rooster in their back yard. We are anchored 700-800 ft from the city dock but the roosters are so loud that it feels we are on land.
Not only roosters are loud here, everything is loud!
Everybody has motorbikes here and they zip through all over the place. Yesterday we were sitting on the outdoor patio of an Internet cafe and the sounds of soft and loud motorcycles created a motorcycle orchestra. Motorbikes are the common transportation. You will see families of 5 on a motorbike. A lot of things are transported on motorbikes, anything from live animals to propane tanks and so forth. Kelly and I had the opportunity to ride one and it was a great experience.
Dominicans must be very proud of their music. It's good music but it's blasting everywhere. You hear the blasting music even up at 8000ft elevation where nobody would normally live! On the major street here in Samana music starts playing right after the rooster orchestra ends. Some general stores play the music so loud and I believe it's a marketing strategy to get attention and get more customers. To us it had the reverse effect.  We went into the store to look around and the music was so loud that we could not stand it and had to leave. 
All these sounds are ok, but the sound that bothers us the most is the sound of propaganda blasting from the old pick up trucks. It's pre-election time here and one way for politicians to market themselves is to have these recorded voices playing over and over again loud throughout the whole city and throughout the country. What a world we live in that leaders must market themselves and the more resources they have the more propaganda and the more known they will get.

Anyhow, today we are crossing to the national park on the other side of Samana bay, and in 36 hours from now we will say goodbye to Dominican and sail the Mona passage to Puerto Rico.
Thanks to the beautiful country and people of Rep. Dominica.
Love from Samana Orchestra