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Punta Cana, Dominican Republic: May 2008 |
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Melissa and I were a bad children during Mother's Day this year. After arriving on the island of Hispaniola (the Dominican Republic and Haiti are on the same island); I immediately felt comfortable. But why? ...it was my first time there and it's a Spanish speaking country. As I looked around closer, everybody looked like they could have been related to me. And as I'm pretty good at expressing myself in Spanish, the language was no barrier. Most people that we came into contact with knew English; however, I used as much Spanish as I could throughout the trip. The resort was quite large, a tram was needed to take you to different sections. It had about 7 restaurants, 5 lounges, nice beaches, pools, etc. It was your typical, all inclusive resort... nice. But what we didn't expect was the room arranggements. The hotel assumed that Melissa and I had just gotten married, and as a courtesy, they upgraded us to a room above what was paid for. (You can view our video of the room tour.) We took the opportunity to leave the resort one day. This day trip started with a bus ride through the interior of the island to the Carribean Ocean side. On this trip to La Isla Saona (Saona Island) were travelers from all over the world. The tour guide began with, "What languages are spoken on this bus?" There were about 5 different "native languages" spoken by the people on the bus. Beacuse some peopel spoke two or more languages, it was agreed that the tour guide would give the tour in English, Spanish, and German. So everything the tour guide said for the rest of the day, he said in 3 different languages. Our tour included a bus ride to the Caribbean side of the island, a catamaran ride to La Isla Saona, lunch while there, and a speedboat ride back to the bus. The island was beautiful, but the most memorable part of this trip was during the speedboat ride back. We stopped at a spot in the ocean that was only about 3-4 feet of water. They called it a natural swimming pool. Of course we got out and swam. Unbelieveable... we were walking on the ocean floor while being about 200-300 yards out from the beach. One other thing that we noticed during this trip was there was a national election taking place at that time. We could tell because we passed many places during the bus ride where there were demonstrations of support for the different candidates. These demonstrations actually looked like parades or celebrations as opposed to campaign rallies. Overall it was good to see some of the "real" life in the Dominican Republic. Enjoy the pictures... |
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