By Jonathan Fryer

Canary-yellow group taxis swarm round the market in Sao Tome town, buzzing like angry bees. Drivers call out their destination, and passengers pile in, along with bags of rice, chickens, pots and pans, and anything else they've managed to purchase.

There was no way I was going to squeeze in with all my luggage, let alone survive the drive down the coast to Sao Joao dos Angolares, in such cramped conditions.

But arranging a taxi just for me was more difficult than I had imagined. The older men seemed reluctant to go so far. But then a hip youth in a white baseball cap and blue-jeans beckoned me into an empty Toyota.

Letter by letter, he painstakingly wrote out his name, Pecily, on the receipt I'd drafted once the fare was agreed.

"Now drive slowly," one of the older taxi-men muttered ominously into his ear. It was rather like asking a baby not to cry.

Speeding through the outskirts of Sao Tome town

Once we were out of town - a process that took about a minute-and-a-half - Pecily turned on the quadraphonic sound. Or maybe he just had two car radios. The local version of reggae blasted straight through my head, obviating any need to blow the horn.

Pigs and goats scattered in all directions as we approached. And when we entered the village of Santana, the local children had already lined the street, and were dancing.

The carriageway had been narrowed even more than usual as a sudden burst of sunshine had prompted all the village women to lay out their washing on the tarmac.

A tropical downpour

Swerving to miss what looked like bed-linen, we scythed through the undergrowth for a while, so fast we didn't feel any impact. But we emerged with a small tree implanted in the bonnet.

I wondered what all the speed was about, other than a show of machismo. But then I noticed Pecily kept looking up at the sky. "It really rains here!" he announced with grim satisfaction, as he dropped me at the old plantation house on the edge of Sao Joao.

Plantation house from Portuguese era

Sure enough, hardly had I settled in - commandeering the upstairs sitting-room to sleep in - when the heavens opened. This was no short tropical downpour.

In keeping with Sao Joao's micro-climate - one of many round the island of Sao Tome - the rain thundered down for hours and hours, as if someone were shelling the corrugated iron roof.

In common with most of the rest of the village, the house has no electricity, adding to the gloom. And as the young men who work there wandered round lighting the wicks that floated in pots of oil, they giggled at the head-torch strapped to my scalp.

Checking for mould

All the food - apart from the rice - was what the land and the sea around had given up. A spicy fish feijoada, made of sardines and red beans. And jackfruit that had fallen from a tree.

Some of the neighbours came by to say hello. They banged drums and tin cans and anything else they could lay their hands on, then they sang and danced, till exhaustion sent me upstairs to bed.

I could hear them laughing and gossiping below, as the smoke from the mosquito coil drifted intoxicatingly into my nostrils.

Coping with the rain

When I woke in the morning, the clouds had stopped discharging rain, and mist had dropped down over the plantation like a blanket.

Though the buildings only date from the mid-20th century, they look as if they're about to be reclaimed by the earth.

Huge discoloured patches cover the walls, and plants have taken root wherever no-one has bothered to rip them out.

How could the Portuguese - who cultivated cocoa here before they fled in 1975, when Sao Tome e Principe gained independence - have stood the humidity, I wondered, scouring my clothes for mould.

Surreally, below my balcony, a man covered in an oilskin sheet loomed briefly out of the mist, followed by nine dogs.

Locals are used to the heavy downpours

I was the only person carrying an umbrella, when later I wandered down into the village, where the locals sheltered under giant leaves they had plucked from the roadside.

In one corner of the village square - which doubles as a football-pitch - there's a little hospital being built by Taiwanese; they'll do such things for micro-states like Sao Tome e Principe, if the government declares Taipei to be the capital of China.

And opposite the hospital, there's even a little caf�, run by a boy who couldn't be more than twelve.

As I stood in his doorway, the water dripping off my shorts onto the mud floor, he stared at me for a moment, and then declared, "You know, it's snowing in Germany!"