Trip to Punta Cana: Part 2
We continue our trip with a few shots from around the resort!
This shot is from just outside of our villa. As you can see on the other side of the villa is another villa. Looking out our balcony from the one on the left we see the ones on the right. It was cozy and yeah you could see into other peoples room. I saw only 1 person topless, sorry no photos!
A shot of the local wildlife! There wasn’t a ton of these, and this one was right near the spa (sigh, didn’t go in!) and I thought it was pretty cool. Probably made in USA but still looked cool!
Here is the pool which was about 1 minute’s walk from our hotel. There is more you can’t see here and it was a very nice alternative to the ocean (which was extremely salty for my taste). The swim up bar was new to me and I enjoyed it a lot. There were little bar stools that you could sit on and enjoy your drink. This was the party zone I think a lot of the time. On either side was a snack bar so you were never far from food. The first time we went to the pool it was cloudy and not very sunny, you can get the idea from the picture. It wasn’t until the second last day that we got some real warm sun and it was awesome to make use of the pool and the lounges. It was tough when it was cold out to swim in cold water and have a cold drink at the bar!
Michael Jackson in Punta Cana?
Yes you heard it here. I couldn’t for the life of me figure out what the fascination with Michael Jackson is down there. Even when Laura and I went on the excursion sailboat they played a lot of the King of Pop. What I could figure out is if they really were fans, or they thought most tourists would enjoy it and they secretly hated it? Now I’m a fan of Michael’s music so I didn’t complain, but it was a little much. I mean it seemed like we couldn’t get away from it. Maybe Michael’s music is like a universal constant, everyone loves it. We even heard it on the in flight radio on the way home..weird.
Anyone who went to our Jack n’ Jill knows I made pretty much a fool of myself dancing to Billy Jean… yes I admit it, and as you can guess a little inebriated. Well when I heard they had a special MJ show down there, well we had to attend. Even if you weren’t a fan, this show was impressive!
Here we got Michael warming up! Pyro!
Check this video of the Billy Jean performance!
There was some pretty cool looking statues there too. Sorry no shots during the day! There were a lot of lights on this casting a bunch of shadows, but I thought it looked neat at night regardless!
The Astron Wreck… or Wreck Astron!
In one of the coolest things down there in Punta Cana is a old freight ship that crashed on a coral reef. When we went on our excursion a Russian tour guide gave us a story. In fact on the second day orientation when we got there, one of our resort guides for Air Transat told us if we took the “Tropical Storm” (seriously, that was the name) excursion we would hear the story. I honestly think the story changes from guide to guide, but whatever.
This is a shot from the snack bar closest to the beach. Sorry I don’t have a better zoom on the camera! We were told we would get closer on the excursion to the ship, but really we didn’t get any closer. It’s hard to tell but the water were very rough when we were in Punta Cana, and I’m sure there was no way to get very close to the ship. Now when we went on the excursion we only took the disposable camera for fear of losing our digital one, turns out we might have missed some good shots!
The basic story was that a Russian ship was sent during the 70’s to provide relief to Cuba. Well on the way they ran into the reef. A few of the men sailed ashore (where our resort was) to get aid. Well they enjoyed their stay a little too much with lots of rum and good time. Why not? It was pretty cold in Russia and very nice here!
Well they did go back to their ship, but they came back with a bunch of rum and I guess things got out of hand and somehow a fire broke out. They abandoned ship and it sat there ever since.
I saw pictures down there from years past and the ship seems to be sinking more and more every year. In fact it has gone down quite a bit. Likely in a decade or less this ship won’t even be visible anymore, so get down there and see it!
I took a video of the ocean from the beach (up to the water, no closer sorry).
I mentioned the excursion where we got to go on a motorized sail boat and get a bit closer to the ship. It was about a 45 minute drive the shore where the sail boat was, then another 40 minutes or so before we sailed off. However, there was plenty of dance music and rum and orange drinks (and beer) to go around. It was probably the first and best nicest day we had the entire trip, so we were glad that we went.
They asked that you surrendered your shoes or sandals upon boarding where they would take care of them. Before I leave this post, I want to let you know that there was a casualty that day. I had begrudgingly left my expensive Birkenstock sandals with them in their little bench compartment. Against our better judgement we thought they would be safe. However, as we disembarked the sail boat, we thought we would wait until the end because it was a lot of people getting off at once.
Well, as I went to get my sandals at the end, all I found was 2 Birkenstocks, but they were both for the right foot! Somehow someone had very similar shoes to me, but they were different in colour and size. They for some reason took two left foot sandals and had no idea they did it. They must have walked barefoot back to the bus and hotel and just thought “why would I put shoes on, the parking lot is only covered in glass afterall.”
We asked the whole bus heading to our resort and no one spoke up. Can anyone figure out how this could happen? And if you are reading this and you have my shoe, please send me a photo so I know it’s ok? Here is yours:
I mean seriously, how can someone screw that up? What are the odds? At least now no one can say I have two left feet.
On Part Three…
I will post some scans from our under water disposable camera from when we went snorkelling. I will discuss a bit of the excursion we took, and then some shots from the plane on the flight home on the final post for the trip!
Need to read part 1 again? Click here!