Dominican Republic (Puerto Plata 4/26-4/29/07)

Puerto Plata, Dominican Republic

... we're off again...

So if you loyal blog readers remember... and God bless you if you do!... Phil and I won a weekend trip to Burlington, VT including airfare and hotel in a silent charity auction about a year ago. The good news is we found out after the fact that the tickets were not attached to the hotel deal, so we ended up with 2 free tickets on Jet Blue to anywhere that they fly! The bad news is we didn't pay attention to the expiration date, oops...so we were forced into a last minute vacation before May 1st. I know, poor us! Since I couldn't get any extra time off given the recent big trip to NZ, we decided on places within a few hours for an extended weekend. After much debate, the trip that worked best with the days we could get off was a trip to the Dominican Republic.

The good news about the D.R. is that most of the accommodations in the resort towns are all-inclusive, so for the cost of your average U.S. beach front hotel, you also get the added benefit of all you can eat and drink! A big fat loss for the company when 2 bottomless pits like Phil and myself are let loose on the grounds! We were somewhat limited in where we could go though because Jet Blue only has one flight into the country each day, and that flight is into Santiago. (although we learned on the return flight that they are adding 4 more flights by this summer, so it wouldn’t be as painful for anyone looking to head there on Jet Blue in the future) Now the quick geography lesson for everyone is that the Dominican Republic takes up about 2/3 of the eastern side of the island of Hispaniola, with Haiti making up the western third. The island itself sits more or less in the center of the Caribbean Islands, with Turks and Caicos and the Bahamas to the North, Cuba and Jamaica to the west, Puerto Rico and the Leeward Islands to the east, and South America to the south. The north coast, where we stayed, gives way to the Atlantic Ocean and the south coast gives way to the Caribbean Sea. Santiago sits in the northwest corner of the island, about a one hour drive to the north coast. Because our painfully early arrival time of 3:30am gave no real travel options from Santiago other than a taxi, we chose to go to the closest resort town, Puerto Plata, to make the expense as little as possible.

Puerto Plata http://puertoplata.8m.net/about.html is the largest city on the north coast, and a growing tourist stop in the D.R. Apparently Puerto Plata was actually discovered by Christopher Columbus in 1492... you know, that famous year he sailed the ocean blue and discovered the Americas, come on, you remember this… attacking the native indians along the way, introducing pestilence throughout the lands, and... um. ha ha... oops, I digress. Seriously though, it is apparently a beautiful historic town, with charming narrow streets, open parks, and an old fort to name a few highlights, and one that would have been nice to explore if we had a little more time. The northern coastal flats and foothills near Puerto Plata are covered in sugar cane fields as they blend into the Cordillera Septentrional, the country’s northern most mountain range. Mount Isabel de Torres is the centerpiece of the range in this region, and is one of the higher peaks. There are hiking trails and a gondola to get you to the top for great views of the coast. There is also a giant stone statue of Jesus Christ, a la Rio de janeiro. It is a beautiful contrast, and definitely worth a visit if you have the pleasure of getting to the island.

We arrived at 3:30am after an essentially painless flight, and had no problems getting through customs. My meager Spanish skills helped us snag a taxi at the curbside, and before we knew it we were off and running. Now Santiago sits on one side of the northern mountain range, so we had to cut over and through it to get to our destination in Puerto Plata. The road is a doozy, and it winds something crazy through the mountain. Having recently been in New Zealand, this shouldn't have been an issue, but a few things made it a nail-biter! First, what we didn't realize, and a bit of advice for some of you traveling to these parts, is that the roads outside of the main cities can get pretty bad, with large potholes mottled throughout, and whole stretches of road reduced to coarse rubble, often without warning. Furthermore, the weather when we got there was less than perfect, and the light rain falling when we got into the cab started getting heavier as we sped along our way. Oh, and did I mention speeding? The driver was a wee bit crazy at times, flying around blind curves while jamming to his satellite radio, only to stop abruptly at the aforementioned holes in the road! Then, just to make it interesting, we were fortunate enough to lose ourselves completely in some oh so scary patches of fog. It is probably better that we couldn’t see well, because we zoomed through numerous small towns with poor small one-roomed targets, I mean homes practically on the road, and other stretches looking like the road was about to collapse into the dark abyss below! Good times! It’s a good thing we were tired! Of course, as we neared the end of this adventure, we learned that this road was apparently one of 2 that take you from Santiago to Puerto Plata... what we didn't know until the ride home was that he chose the scarier of the two! Yeah, the other drive was a nice smooth drive over a real highway! Maybe he liked adventure... who knows! At least we made it one piece!

We made it to the Playa Dorado area by about 5am, and checked in to the Occidental Grand Puerto Plata http://www.occidentalhotels.com without a hitch. See, there are some perks to arriving at the crack of dawn; there are no lines to speak of! We were taken to our room in edificio once (building 11) in a golf cart by a nice gentleman. He made sure everything was to out liking, and bid us goodni- er morning. I think we were asleep before we could say bienvenido al Dominica- zzzz . We woke up around 9:30 feeling much more refreshed, and ready for our 2 days of relaxation.

Our room was actually pretty perfectly situated. It was right next to the main pool, and more importantly, the pool bar... and it was a short walk to the beach off to the left, and the main dining areas beyond the pool to the right. Not bad at all. The grounds of the hotel are beautiful, with flowering plants and palm trees galore; just what a tropical destination should be! The buildings are all 3-story white stucco with red Spanish tile roofs, and dark wood trim along the windows and balconies. Thankfully, the evening rain had passed, and the sun had come out to give us a warm welcome. We head out around the pool to get some breakfast, and found a small hut set up with the words Rancho Pandora written on the side. It turns out the all-inclusive plan included horseback riding, so we decided spontaneously to try to brave it and take a morning ride on Saturday. It seemed like a fun and different way to get off the resort grounds and actually see a little of the countryside. Feeling revived, we set out to fill up at the main international buffet at La Giralda. While nothing out of this world, the food was reliable fare, and certainly good enough to stuff ourselves silly! After filling up on made-to-order omelets, fresh cooked French toast, and some assorted breakfast meats, we were ready to hit the beach! I mean, there's nothing sexier than sprawling out on the beach with giant food babies pushing out our bellies! Look out fellow tourists, here we come!

On the way to the beach though, we were hijacked by an overly friendly Dominican, whose name escapes me. Perhaps that's because I wanted to kill him! Okay, I kid... mostly. Phil and I were having a nice chat, and this man managed to schmooze his way into the conversation and convince us that it would be great for us, and more importantly, his commission, to head back towards the reception to listen to a little presentation about a vacation package the occidental folks were offering to VIP travelers like ourselves... yeah, you see where this is going. Well we were easy targets after all, as we were still half-tired and in happy food comas... What is worse, he sealed the deal with the promise of a free premium local bottle of rum... yeah, he played dirty... we were like lambs to the slaughter! He went so far as to even promise that the rum was ours whether we accepted or declined the offer... um, well, we're still waiting on that bottle, and here I sit in Forest Hill's writing this. Yeah.... Unhappy campers, party of 2, your table is ready. Anyway, after smelling the con, Phil quickly dropped the unsubtle hint that he wasn't interested, and I soon followed... and we were thanked for our time and sent on our merry way. Although only a 15-minute ordeal, we were none-too-happy. Curses!... stress be gone.... stress be gone...

We made our way back towards the beach directly, and in short order were laughing about our morning mishap!! The walk takes you through the hotel grounds past fountains and palm trees, and out to a small stretch of mangrove forest before getting to the beach front. The Playa Dorado is a long curving stretch of beach that the Occidental hotels share with some 14 other hotels, just outside of the town of Puerto Plata. The hotel has a bar / restaurant, Las Marismas, at the edge of the grove overlooking the soft light brown sands of the beach and the turquoise waters of the Atlantic Ocean beyond. Dried palm frond huts are set up along the tree line to provide shelter from the sun, and recliners and towels are provided. We started our day by heading right out to the water. Our stretch of sand sat at a curve in the beach, with views of a small harbor, neighboring resorts, and the higher mountains to the right, and wide open water stretching out to the horizon in a brilliant combination of blues to our left. We walked along the breakers, wading in the warm waters, enjoying the sounds of the soft winds and mild surf crashing at the shoreline, and felt the stress just melting away!

After an hour or so, we turned back, and happened to pass a local artisan with a variety of crafts on display in the sand. Happily, and quite accidentally, we found a charming carved wood cat for my mother (recall the NZ ordeal) Hurray! We were feeling good about the day now… good and hot… damn! We realized that in our haste to start the day, we hadn't applied any sunscreen, and decided to head back to the room to protect ourselves before too much damage was done… yeah, let’s just say we were a little too late! Of course it didn’t help that as we were heading back towards the room, we were approached on the beach by a local man holding a notebook with laminated photographs. Apparently he worked for a tour guide and was trying his damnedest to try and get Phil and I to join him on Saturday for a 7 hour tour of Puerto Plata, Mount Isabel, and some waterfalls and caverns beyond if we felt up to it. The pictures were beautiful, and half of me was tempted to do it, but the other half was thinking 2 days is just not a lot of time, and the idea of touring all over the place, while usually right our alley, just didn't have the same happy ring to it that it normally does. Not to mention he was being awfully persistent, and I was getting a little nervous we were being set up. The websites mentioned that you should be wary of tours that are not arranged through the Resorts, as you might get bamboozled. Phil stepped back and left me to decide...yeah, thanks... although I think he was just trying to get me to make a decision, which I am often loathe to do. Finally, after what seemed-like an eternity of him trying to convince me that we should go because Phil really wanted to do it, and just wasn’t saying so, I said that I'd rather see what the hotel had to offer first and feel it out since we had so little time to relax, and we had the horseback riding already set up. D.R. travel lesson number 2: Don't make eye contact with any local man ever! because they will suck you in and try to convince you to spend your money somehow, someway!! Furthermore, if you hear someone start yelling, “My friend, my friend, do you have a minute” run!!! It was amazing... oy!

After a little laugh, we got the sunscreen well applied and realized that it was beer o'clock and hit el Lago, the pool bar, for dos cervezas. el Presidente is their beer of choice, and one we became quite familiar with by the end of the trip! The pool was very comfortable, and we had some nice R & R just lounging in the water, beer in hand, taking in the sun, the palm trees, and the mountain views beyond! This is what we came down for! We had lunch at the buffet again and on the way we saw a team of young men and women in sporty royal blue unitards with yellow stripes down the sides practicing on the resort’s open air stage. Apparently the Occidental had its own team of dancers to entertain us! Who knew! They were at it all day, work work work, and every time we walked by they were practicing something… wow! Sadly, while the troupe spent the entire day rehearsing, they were um... less than organized. We were hopeful they were just starting on some new material.

After lunch we head back to the beach for some more down time, and then returned to spend the rest of our afternoon sun in the comfort of the warm pool and cozy pool bar! I know, we're terrible! As the sun got lower in the sky, we opted on a one hour power nap before starting the evening fun. As you might imagine, sleep came oh so easily, and when we woke up, we realized just how burned we got! OUCH!!! After a very mild shower, and tons of aloe moisturizer, we got ourselves dressed for dinner. Men had to wear pants to dinner, but women could where Daisy Duke shorts and have no problem getting in... interesting double standard! No worries though. Instead of the buffet, which we'd eaten at twice already, we opted for La Fontana, which is a nice outdoor brickoven pizza restaurant with views of the stage and the pools. We ordered 3 thin crust pizzas because we are disgusting glutonous pigs (although they were smallish personal pizzas, so don't judge yet... when i tell you we decided to hit up the buffet AFTER the pizza dinner, then you can say all that you want! ) While enjoying the food and wine, we noticed that the Occidental Dancers were still at it. Now that is dedication... easily 10+ hours at it by now! Sadly, they were looking no more organized at this point. They were kind of like the Bad News Bears of dancing. Que triste! After dinner, as I mentioned, we may have decided to see what was at the buffet for the evening. I'm not saying we ate much, I'm just saying we walked in the doors...

... after our "visit" to the Buffet, we moved out to the bar next to the stage. At this point, some of the dancers had been recruited by some M.C. type with a microphone to help lead the children that were still awake at 9pm through some fun silly dance moves. They were cute as hell, but we were wondering about the adult entertainment. Where was the high-kicking Occidental Dance number we'd been waiting for? Sadly, it wasn't meant to be, and after learning that the adult show for the night was going to be 2 hours of stand-up, we opted for an early night to try to be somewhat rested for our horseback adventure.

Saturday morning we got up early to get some breakfast before the horseback adventure. We met in the lobby and climbed into the back of a truck with bench seating on either side of the bed. We head down the Resort Road and picked up a German couple from a neighboring hotel before heading out of the Playa Dorado Region and into the world beyond. We head east along a main road with a view of the Atlantic coast to our left and sugar cane fields and the beautiful mountains beyond to our right. After about 10 minutes, we turned off the main road and found ourselves on a stretch of broken road that took us through a rather poor series of towns. Humble one room houses hugged the road, with small children playing in small groups along the way, waving as we passed, and the random dog here and there, roaming the streets for what looked like a well-needed bone. Beyond the town, we crossed a wide braided river and head up the hill to Club Paradise! =) where we found Rancho Pandora. We met our guide as we got off the truck, and were lead to our horses which were lined up and ready to go out front. The first thing we noticed is that the Dominican horses are much smaller than the American ones we're used to, which was a good thing, since Phil and I aren’t exactly cowboys. I know, hard to believe that two men with such rugged exteriors are not horse-savvy, it’s a shocker, but there it is…


Phil was given Sombrero, and I was given Pepe. The trail took us into the valley beyond the stables, along the foothills of the mountains, through narrow passes in a sugar cane field, and across several beautiful mountain streams, before looping back up to a high hill with views of the ocean and Mount Isabel. It was quite beautiful. Now I should say, Phil and I faired pretty well, although our legs took a beating!! We were freshly sunburned and holding on for dear life at times, as apparently Pepe, Sombrero, and our German friend’s horse were great buds, with a little bit of a competitive streak in them! It didn’t help, I think, that they could tell that they had some inexperienced riders attached, because at almost every stretch of the route, each horse tried to jockey for first place, and none wanted to bring up the rear! Now that wouldn’t have been too bad, except some of the stretches of road were washed out leaving several wide ragged gashes in the trail, with deep thick wet mud in places that left us all thinking our horses would lose their footing! SCARY!! What is worse, is they didn’t seem to care about sneaking up on the other’s flanks, even if it meant they had to traipse through the sugar cane or into the trees at the trail edges! Oh so comfortable on our exposed legs! Even worse, was one scary moment when they all sort of trotted up to a single lane water crossing with hopes of being first… Woah Nelly!! YIKES!!

On they way back from the stables, we stopped at a point in the local town we’d passed on the way in what was clearly a mutually beneficial arrangement made by the stable owner. We were let out at a modest open air plaza with a few locals sitting around a table and various chickens underfoot to view some paintings made by a local artist and pick up some post riding refreshments if we felt so inclined. Phil was sold on an earth tone oil on canvas painting with various local symbols signifying luck, love, and family… among others. We bargained him down $20 and managed to have a smaller piece thrown in for free. Phil was sure we could have gotten him down lower, but I was a big wimp, and didn’t pursue it.

We were taken back to the Playa Dorado, and were dropped off at a little shopping center next to our resort. We did the quick walk-through a several story open-air mall of sorts, and decided after a few quick stops, that it wasn’t worth the harassment we were getting! Again, remember that when traveling outside of the resorts especially, ignore the locals trying to get your attention for business, and stand your ground… THEY ARE PERSISTENT!!!
We had lunch at Las Marismas, enjoying the ocean views, and split the rest of our afternoon between the beach and the pool, lounging, drinking, relaxing, drinking, and eating, and maybe drinking a little more… ok, I exaggerate, please, what do you take us for... we didn't eat that much. =)

After a full day of fun in the sun, we got dried off, and went to the recreation area for some shooting. Now when we saw that shooting was included, we thought it might be skeet shooting or something. It turns out we were a little off. When we got to the "range" we found that there was a stand set up for archery, and a board on the wall that looked like it mounted gun targets... okay, so maybe it's just straight target practice. Well that was fine. The last thing I fired was a paintball gun, so we thought it would be funny no matter what. Well, we were wrong again. It turned out they alternated days between air rifle practice and archery, and today was archery. Fine. What the hell. I think I last tried this in High School, and poor Phil, I'm not sure he ever did it. Of course, I shouldn't say poor Phil because he was just as good as anyone else! There was a group of about 10 of us in all, and of them, only 2 of the men managed to hit the target one time. Tragic indeed. I was so bad, I managed to hit the back wall and send the arrow shooting back at my own feet! Who does that?!

After our archery adventure, we got ourselves cleaned up, and headed to the front desk to clarify things with our dinner reservation, and to set up our transportation from the hotel back to the airport early the next morning. The sit down restaurants are included in the plan, but we didn't realize at first that reservations were required, and popular!! By the time we got there, the only availability was for the Italian Restaurant at 7. Oh well. Italian is usually safe food anyway! The taxi situation worked out even more poorly, as we didn't have the multiple taxi options like we did at the airport, and the driver set a whopping $100 fare for the hour and fifteen minute journey back. Oy!! With some time to kill, and feeling very unlucky now, we decided to change that a bit, and head out along the Playa Dorado Resort Road to try and pick up a lucky chip from one of the area casinos. Well, as luck would have it... or not have it, the first place we got to had not even opened yet! Bummer. Feeling tired and well worked out for the day, we splurged 100 pesos ( ~$3.00) for a horse and buggy ride to the American Casino down the road. The Casino was pretty much a ghost town when we got there! It was wide open and clean, and nothing fancy. It had all the basic table games on one side, and slots filling the other side. We went to an empty Black Jack table, and dashed the hopes of the lonely dealer when we explained that we didn't want to bet, and only wanted the chip for a memento! Since we were there, we decided we should probably at least gamble a little something, so we went a little crazy, and hit the nickel slots!! Look out!! Big Spenders indeed! Withlucky chip in hand, I managed to hit a 20, 40, and then a jackpot 1000 coins! Woo hoo! We ended up winning a little over $50, which paid for half the cab ride back. Not too shabby for investing $6 in coins. Suddenly things were looking up again!

We walked back along the golf course as the sun was setting over the mountains, and found our way back to the Occidental, and Via Veneto for dinner. The restaurant was very nice looking, but we were put in the back room at first, and since it was empty, we were overlooked for longer than we would have liked! We had had such a fun day though, that we were just too relaxed... or too tired to even care! And the good news was they didn't leave us empty handed, as a tasty antipasta and bread was already on the table when we sat down. That said, Phil actually had to move into a seat in view of the waitstaff to finally get their attention. We laughed it off, and just enjoyed the evening. Once the realized we were there, the food came out fast and furiously. We're not sure if it was because they rushed things, or they just didn't put enough love into the meal, but the food turned out to be a little underwhelming... so we found ourselves sneaking down to the buffet, one last time, for our second, two-dinner evening of the trip! oink oink indeed!

After dinner we grabbed a few beers and went over to the stage to see what was in store for the evening... all we knew is that the show was listed as "Sorpresa" A surprise! Fantastic... we immediately hoped it meant that the Occidental Dancers were ready to perform. Afterall, on our way to the bar after dinner we passed a group of very gaudy, I mean smartly dressed dancer types in smashing black and orange sequened outfits. Que bueno. We were poolside before we could say boo! Sadly, we were a little misled, and the folks we saw sauntering in must simply have been wearing those outfits for the, um, fun of it... wow. It turns out were were witness to some award show that was being televised for some local TV station. There was a political candidate invited up to speak and handing out awards. We think it may even have been one of the candidates for president whose posters we had seen around town, but the sound was spotty from our vantage point, and the few beers I'd had up to that point disabled what little Spanish translating ability I actually had!! Just as we were losing hope in the evening, a few musical numbers were interspersed. These were promising at first, as we were treated to a few bars sung by a very good sounding male tenor. Unfortunately he didn't stay on long enough to enjoy, and was quickly overtaken by numerous women singers. One poor diva came out in some breast popping white sequened number and sang her entire song flat. I think poor Phil's ears were bleeding by the end! Ugh! Finally, after a rousing military tribute, we think we were witness to the true surprise, a middle-aged latin songstress, whose name we never learned. The crowd went wild when she came out, and she dazzled the eager locals with her song stlyings which were a startling cross between Patti Lupone and Barbara Streisand... wow! That was enough for these tired travelers, and we decided to hit the hay and try to get a little rest before meeting our ride in the lobby.

Yon Luis, met us at lobby as he promised, and took us back on the much smoother road, for a most uneventful drive back to Santiago. Ahhh. Our flight was also painless, and we were back in NYC in short order without a hitch. We had an amazing time, as usual, and while a 3rd full day would have been perfect, we have no room to complain! We're very lucky to have had the opportunity to get out of dodge, and we're very fortunate to have grown so comfortable in each other's company.

Thank you Mr. Zipkin for making the suggestion in the first place...

P.S. If you're traveling from JFK to Forest Hills Queens, don't believe the taxi driver, as he's turning onto the Belt Parkway to your protests, when he tells you not to worry, he has a short cut!