The Good, The Bad, And The Beautiful - Punta Cana, Dominican Republic

 Abe and my private getaway to Punta Cana, Dominican Republic was the perfect trip to celebrate 20 years of wedded bliss. Just like 20 years of marriage is not always bliss, neither was our vacay. There's always a mix of 

THE GOOD, THE BAD, AND THE BEAUTIFUL.

THE BAD: The mayhem started at 11:45pm the night before we were to catch our flight. The first email from the airline said there was a concern with our flight. Five minutes later it was cancelled. 😱 Immediate PTSD of our Bali trip that was cancelled at midnight the day before we were expected to leave washed over me. THE GOOD: Early the next morning we learned that we were rescheduled for 23 hours later. Not desirable, as our trip was only six days, but it could have been worse. We were scheduled for a layover in Florida. THE BAD: At our first layover I asked a lady if she was in line for the restroom (because she was totally standing in the line but not moving). After the line moved a little I heard her rudely telling her friend "THAT is the woman who said it." I realized they were talking about me and I tried to apologize and tell her what I had actually said (which was not rude at all), but she was all, "I KNOW what you said." I just dropped it. I can't for the life of me figure out what she thought she heard and how it was rude. Anyway, it hurt my feelings and made me sad that she thought I would purposefully speak that way to someone.  THE BAD:  When we were boarding they printed us new boarding tickets, with new seat assignments. We kept walking toward the plane so we didn't immediately see that we were not seated together.

THE BAD: As soon as we were seated (one behind the other instead of side-by-side) for the next leg of the trip, the captain informed us that we had to wait until the thunder storm blew past before we could fly. Thus started our hour-long wait on the tarmac. 

THE GOOD: Once we finally arrived at the resort we were greeted by Lourdes, who informed us that she would be our personal contact. We thought we were sitting the lap of luxury. I mean, our personal contact.  THE BAD: She signed us up for a ''quick" meeting first thing the next morning. She assured us there were no worries, as we would have breakfast and get a gift when we were finished. (Mind you, the resort was all inclusive so we would have had breakfast regardless.) I often come across cheap hotel stays that say if you agree to listen to their "quick" sales pitch you get a super low rate and I purposefully did not book one of those. But when Lourdes came at us, I figured I must have overlooked the fine print so we agreed to it. 

THE GOOD: As soon as we got settled in we went straight to the beach. Wow! White powder sand and turquoise blue water.

THE BAD: Our AC was at 82° when we arrived. We called the front desk about it. After exploring and dinner we were looking forward to the cold room. It was not fixed. We called again, which was like 9:30pm at this point, and they assured us there was a man working on the unit outside. We fell asleep sweating and woke up sweating. 😓 We ran to the office to tell them we were still waiting on our AC to be fixed before our meeting with Lourdes. She handed us off to Carmilo, who told us all about his timeshare-that's-not-a-timeshare. Throughout our meeting I kept getting texts from the transfer company who brought us from the airport. When we finally said, "Thanks but no thanks," multiple times to Carmilo's timeshare-that's-not-a-timeshare offer, we immediately found the transfer guy to set up our return time. He informed us that we wouldn't have had to listen to that spiel, and had we arrived when we originally planned he would have told us to skip the timeshare-that-wasn't-a-timeshare meeting.

THE GOOD: Finally at 11:00am on Tuesday (instead of Sunday night like we had planned) we were ready to start our vacay! Abe and I went straight to the dive shop located on the premises. THE BAD: Although we are certified, it has been over a year since we have dove and the Dominican are real sticklers to following the diving directions. We had to complete a refresher course in the pool, and that made it too late to go out for a real dive that day.

THE GOOD: We hung out on the beach in the pool for the afternoon. 

THE GOOD: The next morning was gorgeous.  We were able to catch the sunrise on the beach.

THE GOOD: After a relaxing morning,

it was dive time!

A little speed boat straight from the resort swept us to Coral Garden. Not a ton of fishes, but some great coral. THE BAD: The waves were pretty big. When we got to the top, Abe lost his lunch. He was OK as we ventured to the next spot, Little Cave. However, when he and I were in the water waiting on our dive master to join us, he fed the fish again. Thankfully, once we got about 40 feet down the waves were not a problem for Abe's tummy.

THE GOOD: Our hard-earned couples massage that Carmello gave us for listening was just what we needed to top off the afternoon, along with more beach.

The resort had lots of different birds walking around. The most unusual was the gallinule. It looked like a duck swimming, but when you looked closer it had chicken toes.

I called this guy Fredrico The Flamingo. He was the only one there. 

You could get pretty close, but people warned that he could be mean.

THE BAD: Two of the 7 restaurants on property required reservations (they were still part of the all inclusive deal, but you had to plan in advance to go). Lourdes made a reservation for us and promised something special since it was our anniversary. However, it was closed when we arrived. When we inquired at the front desk, they answered, "Oh. They closed for tonight." We went to the Italian restaurant and had a yummy meal there instead.

THE GOOD: After dinner there was a 'fire party' on the beach. We thought they were going to have fireworks, but there were people doing acrobatic stunts with some fire sticks along with a fun dance party.

THE GOOD: The next day we took a tour to Saona Island. We started with a bus trip across the bottom tip to the west side.

At the city of Bayahibe,

we hopped aboard a speed boat, along with half the population of Punta Cana I think,

to a place called Palmilla.

Palmilla was what they call a natural pool. We all jumped into the shallow water to play and they kept the rum & cokes flowing. 

Because the drinks were free I did not feel the need to put on the brakes.😜

Next we continued our journey to Saona Island, 

where they fed us and continued to refill our rum & cokes.

This beautiful island was baptized "Saona" by Christopher Columbus in 1494 during his second voyage to the Americas. It was named in honor of his bestie from Savona, Italy. At 15 miles long and three miles wide, it is the Dominican's second largest coastal island. Today it is part of Cotubanamá National Park.

It was the location of the movie The Blue Lagoon.

THE GOOD: One of my favorite modes of transport, a catamaran, drove us back to the mainland. To get started the sails had to be raised, and Abe chipped in.

Here is the souvenir of mamajuana they offered us. It's the country's unofficial drink. While it's believed to be a type of cure-all, word on the street says it boosts men's libido.😉 We passed on the souvenir.

THE GOOD: The last morning we had more beach time before we had to leave.

THE BAD: Our flight out was delayed by about 30 minutes. That wasn't a terrible thing because we had a 5-hour layover in Florida. We had plenty of time of get our bag through customs, and even time to wait in the long line at On The Border. We were number 42 on the list, but we got in after about 30 minutes. We sat, had an appetizer, sat, noticed everyone around us had finished and new people had their meals, and sat some more. The waitress would tell us now and then the food was coming. But it never did. After almost 2.5 hours we left to catch our flight. THE BAD: After leaving without eating, we sat at the boarding gate and eventually boarded about 30 minutes late.

THE BAD: After landing at 12:30am, getting our bag, and waiting on the shuttle, we arrived to our car. Upon starting it, there was an alert signaling a low tire. There was enough air that we were able to drive to a station to fill it up. THE GOOD: We made it home safely at 2:30am.

So, was our trip perfect? No. But we were together...on a gorgeous beach...where our only responsibility was to have fun. 

The trip was like 20 years of marriage.

  THE BAD: Accidents, arguments, missed opportunities, stress, fear, loss. 

THE GOOD: Three kids, steady income, a home, extended family, living abroad--twice, health, laughter. 

THE BEAUTIFUL: We have taken in all the good and the bad together, for the past 20 years. And that's a beautiful thing.💖

[June 12-16]