Headed to the DR

So, Josh and I are headed to the Dominican Republic. This trip will be a little bitter sweet. Bitter because we are going with a big somewhat work group and we don't get a lot of control over the trip. Sweet because it's 5 days in the DR at a 5 star resort, all expenses paid. As most know, we just aren't the all-inclusive resort types. We'd rather be exploring and meeting locals than sipping pina coladas in a pool.

So the first day was pretty uneventful. Our flight left at 10am so we were at the airport and eating some breakfast by 8am. Josh was working non-stop until the wheels took off. People were already ponied up to the bar at the airport so I knew it was gonna be a crazy trip.

Josh and I were the ever exciting younger couple on the trip (there were some folks around our age bust most couples had a good 15 to 20 years on us) that spent 3 of the 3.5 hour plane ride playing scrabble on our iPad. I'm starting to get better at giving Josh a run for his money.

We landed in Punta Cana and the aiport was small as usual. I thought the thatched roofs were pretty cool. We laughed at the folks getting off the enormous Belgium plane and taking pictures. Now, I wish I had done it so that I had something to post on this day.

Getting through the airport seemed to take forever. It was pretty hot and the airport is mainly open aired. They had a band playing that played the same song over and over and over. It was a bit like herding cattle as we went through one line to the next. Once we got through we then had play the group luggage game. I had learned from the last trip to make sure I had a bathing suit in my back pack because it took them 3 hours to bring our bags. I had to make a trip to the little girls room and then quickly fished out a suit to throw in my pack. There was a baggage guy standing over me that kept trying to take our bags. I wasn't sure if he was supposed to or not. He just started walking (very briskly) with our bags so I darted after him. Still unsure of who he was.

He took us to the VIP booth. No, we weren't special. The name of our tour operators with the group. The people pointed him back outside. He had gone to the wrong place. After a few confused conversations it appeared we were the last to arrive at the buses. How was that possible? We were pretty quick. Our bags were tagged with what we discovered was our room number and we loaded onto the bus. By now we had been here almost 2 hours and I was ready to get there.

The bus ride took about half an hour. While I appreciate having the tour guide folks on the bus. I'm not sure what the point was. They made us cheer for the two guides whenever they got up. They didn't speak great english and made corny remarks like "Hasta Lavista Baby! See ya later alligator!...." The most useful information I got from them was to by no means drink any water except out of a bottle and not to drink too much Mama Juana.

We arrived at the hotel, were handed a drink and then escorted to a big room with tables set up. As usual Josh and I were the last to figure out what was going on. We were also the second bus to arrive. We got our room keys and then started signing up for dinner reservations. When you travel in a group you have to eat with others. We made reservations for what we hoped would be the safest bets at the beach, surf n turf and japanese. (I mean there is a lot of fish....)

We then tried to figure out how to sign up for the Bavaro Runners trip for the next day, our only free day. We were bummed. I had found this awesome tour guide who was a local. I had heard he does this great day trip to the actual cigar factories (not the tourist stops) to a local shipping village, on a boat through the river, etc. The catch was it was a minimum of four people and even though we offered to pay for ANYONE to come with us, no one would. The next best thing was to do one of the tours offered by the tour company. We pretty much never go that route but we sucked it up. After our travel agent hunted down the VIP chic we signed up four the next day.

Now I was really exhausted. We were happy to see that our bags had beaten us to the room. We threw on our suits and headed down to the pull to get a little sun time since it was already 4 and we heard the sun sets at around 6.

We found the pool bar to be pretty quiet so we grabbed two of the seats at the swim up bar and got some sort of fruity tropical drinks. Rum Punch I think they said it was. No clue what is in it but they were yummy. A bit stronger than we realized. It was pretty quiet out by now so we decided to explore the beach some. The sun started getting lower so we headed up to get changed as we had a welcome reception that night.

Dinner was pretty normal. It was pretty dark and none of us had a clue what we were eating. We tended to get in a group around the buffet and whoever figured out what was in the next dish would let everyone know. When the band started playing American Wedding cover songs Josh and I snuck back upstairs to go to bed.