David R Storms.com

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!

For me, this was the first time out of North America. I have been to the States a few times, but always driving and never on a plane, so this was a cool new experience for me. My wife has been on a plane so this was just routine for her. We got married last year in June and we bounced around a few ideas about where to go, I said Vegas (ha!), we also talked western Canada or even east coast. We settled on waiting until the cold cold winter to go somewhere hot. It wasn’t until January this year that we actually booked the trip, being sold on the Gran Bahia Principe resort in Punta Cana.

The Flight Down

So this was my first time on a plane. Our flight left Toronto at 6:45 am and we were told it would be a good idea to be there 3 hours before our plane took off. So up we were very early!

I found the plane really a cool experience. It’s amazing how much power those engines provide and really push you back in the seat. It’s true that you need to have your ears pop as the pressure changes and the plane climbs higher and higher. It was dark when we left, so it was amazing when the sun started to come up and we could get some really awesome pictures. It was fairly cloudy so no shots of the land.

I had fund taking shots from the window seat of the plane, and I thought it looked pretty special being that far up. Kind of looked like a snowy scene from above the clouds.

Our trip was about 3 hrs and 50 minutes or so. Turns out it was cloudy and raining at our arrival to Punta Cana airport so it wasn’t the welcoming sunshine and warm weather we were quite expecting, but still t-shirts were on nonetheless. Boy it was a lot different than Toronto down there, no catwalk for us, simply a set of stairs down to the parking lot like runway.

After we broke the clouds we also got our first look at the land.

Our Hotel Room

The room was a junior suite as we had requested. It had all tile floor, a nice tiled bathroom with separate shower and tub. It came with a king size bed, a small couch and table, and a balcony. We were on the third floor (of three) so it was nice to be able to keep the door open for the warm breeze. We had been told it came with a big screen TV, but it was more like a 27″ LCD (which was fine because watching TV wasn’t the main goal, but it was nice to be able to keep up on shows when it was raining!). Here are some shots from the balcony when we arrived (it was about 2 pm or so local time). It wasn’t the nicest weather day for sure, but we had hopes it would turn around. As you can see we were in a small villa surrounded by other villas. The beach is off to the right so we could see a little slice of ocean!

Our room came equipped with a mini-bar. However when I got there it basically only had pop in it. During the day when we stayed though, they made sure there was 1 or 2 small shot bottles or rum or vodka (like the sample bottles attached to the big ones here), 1 small can of regular Pringles (one day we got two! – wow!) and 2 Presidente cans of beer.

I also took some video of the room (bathroom first) and then the rest of the room leading out to the balcony.

Not the Sunniest Weather

It wasn’t until Wednesday (we arrived on a Saturday) that the sun came out and we finally got some nice weather. We liked the out door restaurants (covered thankfully) but it still wasn’t that nice being in all that crappy weather. When it was good though boy it really looked nice!

On Part Two…

We get to see Michael Jackson! -well sort of. We also take a sailing boat trip to see the wrecked Astron ship, plus go snorkeling and wade in the natural pool! Then some nice weather and head back home!