Well, I'm back from Vegas. Before I tell this story, I'm going to finish my Dominican story...

So our tour operator had a bus ready for us and bussed us across the island to Puerta Plata. It was pretty cool because we had a tour guide and there was plenty to see. We drove through Santo Domingo. It really was unbelievable how run down this city is. It's like there was a layer of dust over everything. The people here are very poor and living conditions are not good. However, they make the best of life in some ways. They like to party!

We only had a couple nights in Puerta Plata before we had to go home. We didn't really do to much. Hung out at the beach mostly. But on the last night we got a driver to take us into town. He took us to an interesting bar. ;) I won't go into details but the night ended with us being "strong armed" by a bouncer. Our driver had to help us out and get us out of there safely. Pretty exciting stuff. ;)

The trip home was an adventure in itself. We landed in Toronto only to find that I left my driver side window down!! I left my car parked in a big empty partking lot for 7 days in downtown TO, with an expensive car stereo and CD's all over the back seat, and I don't think it even rained while we were gone!! No one touched anything. I was shocked. When I saw my window open, I thought for sure my car was gonna be trashed. Another bullet dogded!

Then we started the drive up the 401 highway back to Ottawa. It's about a 5 hour drive. Of course we were right in the middle of a tornado outside of Peterborough!! I shit you not. After everything else, now we were driving through a tornado. And to make it worse, they were in the middle of doing construction on the 401, so there were know discernable lanes, just pylons blowing all over the highway. It was total chaos. And I was very tired. But we slowly made our way home. With stops at every coffee shop along the way. ;)

You would think the adventure would have ended once we got home. Well, it didn't. The next day we went for lunch downtown. I parked my car and we went across the street to eat. When we finished, we decided to wander around the market for a few hours. When we got back to my car, I discovered, not only did I leave it running the whole time, but I did so with my doors locked!! AARRGGHH! So a quick call to a tow truck and $80 later our adventure was over. Not too bad considering all the danger and trouble we could have gotten into in the past week.

I've got pictures of the hurricanes damage online now. I'll figure out how to link to them.