Tony James' photos

Then came the deluge as the rain front finally gets to us. The force of the wind pushed rain high up our balcony walls under a 4 metre overhang.

This storm was a "rattler"! A wall of heavy rain was visible offshore, and as it got nearer, the first symptoms of the wind were strong gusts hitting the trees in our area as the falling water pushed aside the lower air. We have experienced this before where torrential rain sounds like a roar getting nearer as the heavy rain drums on the leaves of all the plants. Here the wind from it pushed many of the Palm tree fronds hard over.

A fairly regular occurrence resulting from the fast moving rain deluges, lightning was very difficult to capture as sporadic strikes appeared randomly. In the end, after many missed discharges, I switched our new little camera to "movie mode", recording a fixed area of the sky. Even this was foiled for a while, as obtuse strikes seem to avoid the area in view, or were obscured by the deluge of rain falling. Finally, a strike occurred and a re-play allowed me to find this frame in the video. Not super impressive, but a capture, at last!

Every afternoon you could see large black clouds developing across the gulf over the land in the central part of the island. These then came north almost in line with Samana, and by the time they had got half-way across, heavy curtains of rain had formed blackening, then obscuring the horizon. This was the sign that decided our returning to our room in preparation for the weather.

Walking up the track away from the coast, we entered a Banana plantation. This was where we came across the dogs to begin with, and they adopted us readily, deciding to hang around as we walked along, often getting underfoot if we were not careful. It was the sudden unexpected bursts of aggression between them that made us a bit uneasy, although it was never at us, only between themselves.

Although not very impressive, this shrub at the track side provided a bit of alternative colour in the green swathes of leaves.

Nymphalidae - Wingspan: ~ 80mm. A common species in the Neotropical areas, which has developed a number of sub-species. This particular sub-species is particular to the Dominican Republic.

Nymphalidae - Wingspan: ~100mm. There were butterflies present around the area of the track, but often they were very active, not settling anywhere. This is one exception resting high in bushes at the side of the track. The underside of this pretty, large, butterfly reflects the top patterns, although they are deeper shaded and more contrasted than those seen here.

Under the wet weather during our stay, this track was very muddy, and not as easy to explore. Although potentially an interesting area to search at night, we also found another handicap as a small pack of dogs from the inland village behind the hotel roamed this area day and night. They appeared quite friendly, but would suddenly ferociously fight for no apparent reason, so we felt that it could be dangerous to sortie out in the dark. I did, however, try on one night, but although the dogs stayed nearer the village, the general wildlife population where I looked was not in evidence much.

Not particularly big beaches here, but the small sandy areas in amongst the Almond trees was quite popular as a relaxing area out of the hot sun. For anyone wanting to "bake", there was a small pool near the Beach Cafe, and a sun deck for reclining in the full glare.

Plenty going on when we sat at the rotunda on the point. The water in the small bay seemed to be quite shallow, so was ideal for. Snorkelling, and the sea was usually quite tranquil so canoeing was also quite safe.

A fairly level stretch of walk-way in front of the small bay accommodation was also a busy shuttle track. This view also shows the steepness of the slope that the accommodation was built on.

A common species seen close to the coasts. Although they can often be seen dive-fishing, these three were flying back and forth just off the headland and across the bay. At the time, there was an approaching storm in the distance, so perhaps they could sense it and were uneasy as to where to go safely. They certainly made an effortless formation display whilst they decided.

Another bird at ~100 metres distance. This strange black bird has a large parrot-like beak, and it and it's related species can be found throughout the Caribbean islands and also Central America.

This image was a small dot in the red circled area of the previous picture (34), and we were very impressed at the resolution of our new camera at this distance, with the option of even greater enlargement of the image if desired.

The view from our balcony. Most mornings were sunny and it was clear enough to see across the sea to the main body of the island. The view included occasional birds being revealed down in the trees at the shore around 100 metres away. The next pictures show a couple, the first of which was a small dot on the top of the tree circled in red. Our new small camera is very powerful (see the "about our pages" notes) and using the 30x telephoto setting it was easy to see detail very impressively.

Although it looked quite wild along this short road down to the accommodation, night-time walks didn't produce any interesting wildlife.

Almost everyone in Dominican Republic used Motorcycles, and this is where the staff left theirs along the downwards road to the small bay. We noticed that all sorts of things we carried on these small motorcycles, with a maximum of 5 people seen on one as we came through one of the towns on the way here.