Saturday, July 14th, 2007
I know what you are asking yourself…I know. You are asking, “Where the heck at the pool pictures?” Ahh, yes, here they are.
Actually, I only have three of them and they aren’t that great. For the sake of documentation, I will post them now.
There is one pool at this particular resort. It is really cool. There are two sections…one that is about six feet deep and one that is about three feet deep. Some of the edges are like a beach with no sand. I mean they slope into the water like a beach does, as opposed to an edge, like many other pools.
Call me shy, but I was never one of those people who could approach a strange pool and jump right in, especially when there are a bunch of people staring at me. Laura and I did most of our swimming after the pool closed at 7PM. Everyone was out of the water and probably taking showers back in their rooms. This is also after the pool dude comes by and dumps some chemicals in the water. There is a semi-good reason for our madness.
Take a look at some of these pictures above. You can’t see it, but there is a bar right at the pool. You don’t even have to get out of the water. You can stand there all day and drink of you want to…and many people do. Isn’t it funny how proud people get because of the amount of alcohol they drink? Anyway, here’s the thing. Some of these people at this pool bar are absolute drunks. You can sit there and watch them drink all day. After a few hours, you will most likely ask yourself, “Where the heck are these people peeing?” Yeah, nuff said.
Otherwise, the pool is very clean and very nice. There was also plenty of room for people to jump right in, if they were so inclined.
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Saturday, July 14th, 2007
I am going to try to keep this short. I thought I might write a bit about some of the things we bought while we were on our vacation in Punta Cana.
First and foremost, if you go to Punta Cana, you will likely return with a piece of Larimar. Larimar is the national stone of the Dominican Republic. They are quite proud of it and sell it almost everywhere you go. I bought Laura a few pieces of Larimar as pendants. They are really nice.
Here are the shops on the beach that we bought the Larimar…
While shopping on the beach, we also picked up something called, “Mamajuana Santiago.” Wikipedia says this about Mama Juana…“Mama Juana is a drink from the Dominican Republic that is concocted by allowing rum, red wine, and honey to soak into a bottle together with tree bark and herbs. The taste is quite similar to port wine and color is deep red. It is seen and advertised as an aphrodisiac.” We had some of this stuff and I would say it tasted like cough syrup. It isn’t bad and it may quite possibly be the aphrodisiac they say it is. Maybe…
When you head down the beach to browse around, you are going to be aggressively called by many shop employees. They want your money bad. Just ignore them and do what you want.
We also went shopping at the shops located within Iberostar Punta Cana Bavaro…
These shops are more formally run and quieter than the ones on the beach. We picked up a beautiful painting that is sized at about 40″x30″. They take the canvas off the wood frame and roll it up, so you can get it on the plane back. We also bought a cute coconut purse for Laura and two stainless steel rings for me.
One word of wisdom whenever you go shopping at a place like this…haggle the hell out of them. You should at least be able to purchase what you want for less than half of what they initially ask for. If they say they want $120 for something, I tell them I will give them $10. I know it seems funny, but it works.
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Sunday, July 8th, 2007
Ok, only three posts about Punta Cana left and that’s it. My fingers are getting tired.
During our short trip, we saw many different animals that were pretty foreign to us. After all, I have never actually seen a real Pink Flamingo in our front yard. I am just going to post the pictures with some descriptions below them. I really don’t know what any of them are, so maybe you can help out with that if you recognize something.
During breakfast, there were a few kids who liked to feed the fish little pieces of bread. The fish went crazy for this, but so did the ducks. This was a pretty agressive duck that came by to stir things up.
One of the first things I noticed after showing up, was the good number of peacocks at the resort. They were near the pool, on the sidewalk and, like in this photo, on people’s porches. Instead of roosters, we heard peacocks screaming like kids in the morning.
I saw a few of these unidentified lizards here. I remember the first time I saw a lizard like this in Florida. I just thought it was the most amazing thing. I kept trying to get a good picture of this one, but he would keep hiding on the other side of the tree.
I have also never seen a live pink flamingo (I think). These birds are neat because their legs bend opposite of the way ours do. They also sleep standing on one leg with their heads tucked in their backs.
This is a good photo of a bird (I am not sure what kind of bird) with its new little chicks. They were just walking around chilling out with the rest of us.
The pictures above are of the different kinds of fish that were in the ponds. The last one is of this huge carp that looked kind of lonesome. The others were various tropical fish. I mentioned earlier that I actually used to have some of these types of fish in my old tropical fish tank at home.
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Sunday, July 8th, 2007
One of the nicest things about staying at the Iberostar Bavaro Resort was enjoying their setup. It was very fun during the day and quite romantic at night.
We saw many newlyweds on their honeymoons. We actually were questioned a few times by people who overheard our conversations about Laura’s sister’s wedding on the beach. We met a couple from Ohio while swimming in the ocean one night. They just got married and were on their honeymoon. They were in their early 20s, I think. Nice people.
I loved the lighting of the landscape at this resort. All the trees were lit up and there were nice antique lamp posts all around. I get bored fast, but to be forced to relax and hold hands with my little honey was sweet.
I did my best to take some night photos. I fiddled with the settings on my camera, but many of them just didn’t come out. Some of the better ones did though, so here goes…
This photo was taken on our way to eat one night…a nice little cluster of palm trees.
This is a good one. I wonder how many photos of the same statue are floating around the internet. I don’t know…whenever I see a nude statue I have to take a picture. This was taken right outside one of the buffets.
Another small cluster of palm trees.
Here is a photo of some of those antique lamp posts I was talking about. They lined some of the water features.
I am so happy that this photo came out, because it gives a chance for you to see how large my bicep really is. I think we were setting up our wake up call when Laura took a picture of us. This guy started making a muscle, so I did the same. Mine’s bigger…right?
After all the flexing, I had to take a break. I wanted to get a shot of me sitting on the couch right under this large horse.
I thought this was pretty cool. This fountain and chandelier were located in the center of the main reception area. I liked it because it reminded me of my favorite computer video game, Unreal.
This is a photo of one of the apartments at night. I thought they looked good because of the soft lighting.
There you go…only a few more left.
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Sunday, July 8th, 2007
The next section, or blog post, of our trip has to do with the beach at the Iberostar Bavaro Resort in Punta Cana. As you can see, I have quite a few photos of the trip. Luckily, I narrowed this one down to only four.
The beach was a lot better than expected. You know, you hear all the stuff about being white sand beauties from the resort literature, but who knows what is really true? We actually heard that this beach was more crowded than Jones Beach on the 4th of July.
There were a few people at the resort when we were there, so I don’t think it was the slow season or anything, but I am sure there are many more people there in February, when it’s really cold up in New York. The beaches had plently of places to sit under the little huts.
As you can see, the beach was pretty narrow from front to back. This was nice because it kept things very cozy, like it belonged to you. The people were pretty cool too. There really wasn’t any attitude. On many beaches, I would walk around and avoid certain sections that looked like they were owned by punks. Not here. The sand was pretty nice and the water was clear. There were coral reefs right in the swimming area and I didn’t see any sharks. Not even the toothless ones that I wanted to swim with. To see them, I would’ve had to take a boat ride out to another big reef and snorkle.
Down the beach a little ways, in between the Iberostar Bavaro and Iberostar Dominicana Resorts, there was snorkling equipment that I used. I went out and looked at this big chunk of coral and swam down the right side of it. The coral was a little beat up from people touching it, but the side was really nice because it was deeper than the rest. It looked like the stuff I saw on TV, with all the blue, yellow and striped fish. Really neat stuff. The resort also offers scuba diving, glass bottom boat rides, banana boat rides and horseback riding, to name a few. They offer a lot of things to do.
Here is a picture looking back at the resort, from the water. You can see all the little shaded huts for people to lounge under. Laura and I hung out under a few for a couple of hours on Tuesday and Wednesday. The breeze off the ocean and the shade made a nice cool combination. Also, the bar was to the right, which helped.
Down the beach, to the South, were little shops owned by who knows. They sold all sorts of stuff, but you really have to haggle with them. I am pretty good at that from my days down on Canal Street buying watches. I bought a few Larimar pendants for Laura, as well as other things I will discuss in a later post. The shopping was interesting and fun.
Did I mention we hung out in the shade for a while? Amazingly enough, the only place I got sunburned was my feet and lower legs from the walk over to the little shops that one day. Even with all the snorkling and swimming I did in the ocean, I didn’t get burned at all, althought we did do a lot of swimming at night (in the buff…my favorite). I saw plenty of people with sunburn, but they may have been doing that on purpose so they have something to talk about when they get home. When you reach a certain age, I think sunburn makes you look like an idiot. If you haven’t learned about the effects of it and are still standing out in the sun getting burned on purpose, there is a problem. Laura and I avoided it like crazy.
So, there we have it…a short little todo on our little section of the beaches of Punta Cana.
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Saturday, July 7th, 2007
So here are some of the long awaited for photos from our vacation at Iberostar Bavaro Resort in Punta Cana. As I mentioned above, I am breaking these posts down into sections so I don’t have to place all my photos in one huge post. I am sure the people with dial-up will appreciate that…that is if you are someone looking for photos of Punta Cana.
I always hated it when someone goes on vacation and comes back with either their hair braided or with a million stories. “Ohhhhh, it was SOOOOO gorgeous!!!” Really now. Just tell us about it, only if we ask. Normally people don’t care about someone else’s vacation unless they are planning a visit there themselves. If you are at home and still have the braided hair, just know that people are talking about you. Sometimes pictures are fun to look at though.
Laura and I had many questions before leaving for this trip. I will write the Q & A below (these apply only to Iberostar Bavaro, Punta Cana and Dominicana resorts)…
- Does the resort have internet access? - Yes, but only in an internet cafe. The computers look kind of old and we didn’t go in to check them out. No matter what you read out there, this resort does not have any wireless access available yet. To use the internet cafe, you have to go to the front desk and get a ticket that they will charge to your room.
- Does this area have cell phone coverage? - Yes, I called my sister a few times and it worked fine with good signal. I didn’t have to dial any differently than I do at home.
- Does this resort have American style electrical outlets? - Yes, the outlets are merged with the European style outlet (I think). Everything we had plugged in and worked just fine.
- Can you drink the water? - Yes, this resort had its own water purification system. Neither Laura nor I had any issues. Some friends of ours felt a bit sick, but that may have been because they were drunk the whole time. The hotel recommended that we don’t drink the tap water in the rooms or use it to brush our teeth and we didn’t. It did smell chlorinated though. They said that the water in the restaurants and bars was filtered. The ice is fine too.
- Can you make phone calls from the rooms? - Yes, you can call other rooms and make outside calls with a credit card.
- Is there an iron and ironing board in the room? - Yes, they have both.
- How is the food? - I would have to say that it was pretty damn good, even at the buffets. I actually preferred the buffets more.
- Is the resort safe? - I would say so. We felt very safe. There are security guards standing at all the enterances during the night and the staff suggests security if you want to leave the resort. Even with the security, we didn’t really feel them there.
- Are there any medical services at the resort? - Yes, there is a doctor’s office, a pharmacy and an ambulance.
- Do people steal stuff from your room? - No one stole anything from us. I brought a laptop and a cell phone. There is a safe in the room. I fit my 15.4 inch screen sized laptop in the safe, along with everything else of value that we had. It was nice not to have to worry. We also used those little suitcase padlocks to keep our suitcases locked. Also, you can just put the “Do not disturb” sign on the door and the cleaning lady won’t enter the room.
I know there were more and I will add them if I can think of them. Let’s get to the pictures. I tried to pull out the ones with no, or few, people…
This is a photo of one of the many paths at the resort. The Iberostor Bavaro is made up of one big main building and many small apartment style buildings where the rooms are. There are 8 apartments in each of the small buildings. I liked this better than the other resorts because it had so much more character this way.
This is one of the fountains. This one is located at the North side of the Iberostar Bavaro leading into the Iberostar Dominicana.
This is just one of the shots I took from our room balcony. I took this with Laura’s camera, which handles color much better than mine. I think I was smoking my first Cuban cigar at the time, but don’t tell anyone that.
This is another random photo that I thought looked pretty good. If you are planning to go on a trip anywhere, you really analyze every photo.
Ok, back to my camera. This photo was taken when we first arrived at the resort. We were walking out of the main desk/reception area, over this little bridge towards the rooms. To the left was a big buffet hall and to the right was a stage for entertainment and a bar.
This is another photo from our balcony. Do you like these shots? I do, that’s why I took them.
This is a photo of the front of our building. We had room number 1138. We were up the stairs and to the right. Laura’s brother and girlfriend were right next door.
This is a nice shot of a path leading to the main pool.
We were out for a walk one evening and I think I kept taking pictures of the same things. Well, this is one of them. Just some of the trees and some lawn.
They had the coolest man-made pond in the middle of one of the paths. There were all types of fish in there. I liked it because the fish were actually the same ones that I used to buy from the pet store for my tropical fish tank.
This is a good shot out on the beach. I was facing North trying to get the beach path. I think I even got a European with a Speedo for your own pleasure.
This is a photo of our walk to the buffet and main reception area. There was a nice wooden bridge type thing that would bring you to various places, like the buffet room and some of the restaurants.
There were many gardens with water features that I took pictures of.
Here is a rest/drinking area out near main reception. People like to sit here and relax.
This is another chill out area located out in the middle of the apartments. There are chairs and a small pond. Also, in the back left, you can see a cage type thing. I beleive there were some birds in there.
As I mentioned above, there were some wood bridges. This is one of them. Be careful, they are very slippery when wet.
I think I took this picture right after the wedding. We were eating and I was crazy hot, so I got up for a break. This path leads out to the beach.
On the right side of the wooden bridge, there were really nice ponds and gardens. I will get to the animals later in another post.
Here is another picture of some of the landscaping.
This is a great shot of the wooden bridge near the buffet and restaurants.
Hey look…it’s me sitting on a big chess board!!!
Ok, so I think the resort is really nice. Everyone was very pleasant and accomodating. If you like people doing things for you, you shouldn’t have a problem here. Laura and I thought that 5 days was a good time to stick around. I think you might get bored after that. There were plenty of things to do, but the humidity kind of made us lazy. The heat wasn’t bad…very similar to up here in New York, but the humidity will kill you.
I did like some things I saw related to energy efficiency at the resort. Here is a list of what I noticed…
- CFL bulbs
- Window film
- Air conditioning shuts off when the sliding doors are opened
- Two flush buttons on the toilet…one big one and one little one. Each lets out a different amount of water. Use your imagination.
- Many trees shading the building
- Automatic switch shuts off closet light when the closet door is shut
The Dominican Republic needs a bit of work with their automotive exhaust, but it’s good to see that they are trying to conserve electricity.
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Friday, July 6th, 2007
I had some concerns about visiting the Island of the Dominican Republic. The Dominican Republic actually shares the island with Haiti, to the West.
I wasn’t sure about the safety. I didn’t wear my watch because of this. Yeah, I didn’t wear my watch worth about $100, but I brought my laptop. Whatever. I thought we were going to land and kind of be on our own. I thought the trip to the resort was going to be through some back woods jungle with people trying to stop us to mug us. Some was true, some wasn’t.
After landing at Punta Cana Airport, we all hopped off the airplane. We were organized into a group and walked into the inside of the terminal. Getting off the plane wasn’t as big of a shock as if it would’ve been if it was February. The temperature was about 88 degrees, but very humid. It wan’t much different than up here, just a lot more humid. I mean huuuuuuuumid.
We walked into the terminal to be greeted by someone taking our picture. The first sale. Well, we didn’t buy it, but that gave us a hint of what we were in for. We went through that line and had to show our passports and purchase a tourist card for $10. We took a few more steps and showed our passport to someone else who took the tourist card from us. Well, there goes our first $10. A few of us were more than suspicious about where the heck our $10 just went. Whatever…moving on.
I have to say, the terminal was very cool. It was open and airy and the roof was made of palm. You could feel the wind flow right through the place. We went to claim our baggage. I found Laura’s but couldn’t find mine. I bit later on, Laura discovered that someone had kindly taken my suitcase off the conveyor belt and left it on the ground. Nice guy, I’m sure.
After getting our baggage, we were swarmed by a bunch of guys who wanted tips. They would grab your bags and walk them to another room. They wanted your money. I gave the first guy a few bucks, but handled my own bags after that. If I gave everyone money who wanted it, I would be broke. Everyone was very nice though. Not much danger, just a bunch of people who wanted tips. If you are into having things done for you, this is the place.
We found the bus that would bring us to Iberostar Bavaro in Punta Cana. Here is the actual resort page.
The bus we got onto was parked near what seemed to be a thousand other buses. We gave the driver our baggage and boarded the bus. There weren’t too many people on it. We were heading to the resort.
The bus was an old diesel with what seemed to be an interesting transmission. Some of the vehicles need a little maintenance. The resort was 22km away and the trip took about 40 minutes, I would guess. I didn’t have a watch on. We drove along the beginnings of a highway. I would see the big signs with pictures of what’s to come. Punta Cana is under construction. It was kind of neat bouncing around in the back of the bus heading to who knows what.
We passed a bunch of what many people would consider not so nice areas. Even right outside the resort, I said to Laura, “I am not too impressed.”
Next…the resort.
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