SPANGLISH IS BEST....over French.

Back safe and sound from Dominican Republic, Punta Cana. It was an excellent trip, the weather was great (except for one rainy day) and it was mostly 30 plus degrees every day. I had several epiphanies while on vacation though. One of which is that I am a terrible flyer. I had a bout of motion sickness on the flight there. I didn’t throw up, but Stu says I turned green and my whole body was covered in a thin veil of sweat. The flight home wasn’t as bad- less turbulence, but the pilot thought he was doing us a favour by turning sideways (I’m talking 90 degrees, both ways) so that everyone in the plane could get a clear view of the Niagra Falls and of TO. I won’t lie, my stomach was doing looptie loops and I thought I might pass out when he started the decent- VERY QUICKLY. Next time I will just knock myself out with gravol- the real stuff- none of this ginger crap.

The second epiphany I had was that I prefer visiting communist countries and that as beautiful as Punta Cana was, I will likely never go back. The star ratings in Dominican are significantly less than in other warm climate countries. So a 4 star in Dominican would be a 3 star in Cuba or Mexico. Also, they don't speak a whole lot of English. Their national languages are Spanish and French. I know a small amount of French, but I decided my Spanglish would be more entertaining for the locals.

The food was good (but everyone knows you don’t go on these vacations for the food). Excellent fruit and lots of interesting rice options, but the cheese and milk/cream are not to everybody’s taste. But the accommodations were pretty shoddy. The beds were hard and the tv and the fridge were ancient and none of the outlets but ONE worked lol (and I brought my hair straightener). I must have tried to shove it into every outlet, I even tried pulling out the plug for the coffee maker, to see if that one would accommodate my North American Plug, but I ended up ripping out the entire outlet in the process (it was painted on). Apart from the accommodations, I found that in Punta Cana, tourists are walking dollar signs to a lot of the employees on and off the resort. You get bombarded by people wandering the beaches and around the pools trying sell you shirts, photos and excursions and EVERYONE wants a tip, in fact, they demand it. Our baggage boy actually said “service complete, tip now!” in the airport, no less.

We went on two excursions, a buggy tour though a farming village and horseback riding on the beach. During the buggy tour the children surround all tourists yelling “give me money, give me money” and if you don’t, their little fingers and grasping hands find their way into your purse or your pockets and the next thing you know, your tour guide is pulling children off of you, scolding them for trying to rob you blind. I had brought a couple pens from the resort to give to some of the nicer kids and while trying to hand them to a child, another ripped them out of my hand with a glare and I had to yell at him in Spanish to share with the other child. In Cuba, people didn’t care about your money because they couldn’t keep it. Wealth gets redistributed to the people and they like to be tipped with ‘stuff’ over cash, which I prefer.

The horses were great. They were all fast and spirited, even Jordana (who hates horses) enjoyed it. The tour guide noticed in the first 15 minutes that I was a fairly advanced rider and so he traded me horses. He says “you, get off” and at first I thought I was in trouble. So I dismounted and he hands me the reins for the horse he was on. “You rider girl, you take my horse Spilio, he is mine and mucho faster”.

He gave me his OWN PERSONAL HORSE that isn’t used for tourists. It was UNREAL…this horse was so fast and spirited and they let me run ahead of the group at a gallop. They gave Steve the biggest (north American looking) horse, that was a big stallion, but he was lazy compared to the geldings that everyone else rode, which seemed odd.

We played some beach volleyball, where I was an MVP and then we played tennis, where I was useless under the glaring mid-day sun. The boys played a lot of chess with those gigantic chess pieces and I think Stuart may have won a single game out of 5 or 6. We didn’t buy much there because the prices were criminal. They tried charging me 43 dollars for flip flops and 36 dollars for SUNSCREEN!! The prices on the resort were appalling.

But we did catch some of the local vendors and bought some jewelry and trinkets (the turtle is like their mascot). I didn’t get much colour and either did Stuart. We found out pretty early that he is allergic to sun, or the sunscreen because he broke out in boils all over his body. I swear though, because Americans go to Dominican, I have never seen so many TERRIBLE beach bodies! HUGE woman in small bikinis and EVERYONE was topless (Euro style). Nor have I seen so many men in banana hammocks or tiny little euro shorts. Also,I have never seen so many ugly wrinkly sagging boobs in deep tan brown in my LIFE lol. Stuart was shocked at first but said by the end of the week, he was numb to boobs.

And of course, no trip would be complete without me getting some sort of virus before the end of the trip. Sore throat, congestion and the D’s. I am pretty well over it now, but there is nothing like being in warm climates or in an airport with the grumblies in your tumblies.

The last epiphany I had was that I am definitely 26. Yeah, it sounds young until you start trying to drink with the 18 year olds that you befriended on the resort. Or try dancing with them at the Disco (which is another thing I didn’t like at the resort. It was a PAY BAR. At a resort where every bar is free and flowing, when you finally really want to party at the club, you gotta fork out the Americana deniro). We made a few friends on the resort ….two of them were these 45 year old cougars that left their husband and kids at home to come and mess around with the staff. Good looking and REALLY funny ladies, but they were hooking up with locals and I wouldn’t be surprised if they bring their husbands more than souvenirs when they get home.

All in all, it was a great experience and gave me a taste for the vacation lifestyle. It’s an itch I want to scratch again, and soon. It was Stuart’s first All Inclusive experience and I don’t think he is complaining, but he does like a vacation with a little more structure. He once told me he thought it would be like the ‘Hard Rock on Sundays’ where everyone is good looking and dancing and partying the entire week away. I think he was a little shocked and appalled at the beached whales that were staying at the resort. Oh well, we could have gone to a more ‘spring break’ type of location and the problem would have been that WE were the beached whales. I definitely don’t prefer the latter.

Until next time, Loyal Blog Readers…