Stepping Out of the Boat

The resort that we decided to take Claire's parents to was the same resort that we had gone to over Thanksgiving weekend. We liked the resort, and with the reasonable price during this peek winter season, we figured to have another go at it. Sorry if some of the scenery in the pictures is a little repetitive from the Thanksgiving post, it's just so beautiful its hard not to show it off.

Claire and I took last period of the day off on Friday to ensure that we catch the earlier bus out of town. By doing so, we accomplished a couple things: 1. we beat most of the weekend traffic out of town and 2. we got to the resort early enough to have dinner. Just as we had gotten onto the bus and were sitting there waiting to leave, it started to rain, a preview of what was yet to come. We again took the 3 and a half hour Metro bus ride to the north side of the island to Puerto Plata. It rained on and off the entire way up. When we arrived at the bus station, we took a taxi to the resort, and indeed made it there in plenty of time for dinner. After dinner, Claire and I showed Brad and Gail around the rest of the resort. It was rainy off and on the entire night so instead of staying out, we decided to make our way back to the rooms for a game of cards. The shot of us in the room playing cards was a strategic camera placement on the part of Brad and me. Its almost as if someone was in the room with us.

The next day we were ready for some fun in the sun; unfortunatly, there wasn't a whole lot of sun to be had. After watching the drizzle out the window during breakfast we decided to head out to the beach anyway to see what the clouds had in store. We walked around a little while taking another little tour of the resort and then out to the lookout point. Sometime around midmorning the clouds broke, and we took our post out on the beach. About 15 minutes later the clouds rolled in as did the rain, and everyone went running back for cover. This phenomenon Claire liked to call the "mass exodus." Twenty or so minutes later, sun and back out to the beach. A half hour, rain, run for cover. You get the idea how much of the day went. Because of this we saw about a dozen different rainbows at various times throughout our weekend. If you look closely you can see a rainbow in the picture of Claire and I in the water. We didn't let the weather get us down however. We found a nice little table that overlooked the ocean that was covered and played cards in between our runs to the beach. Claire and I had gotten some card games when we were home over Christmas to play in times like these. There was a longer period of time in the afternoon when we were able to stay out on the beach and do a little swimming, so we were pleased. That night we had dinner at a little sit down place they had at the resort where we again got to see our waiter serve us some flaming ice cream for dessert. I took a little video of it and hopefully will have it up on the video page soon. Then after dinner we did what almost any resort tourist does....we headed to the show!!! Claire and I, having been to half a dozen different resorts now around the island, have seen just about all they have to offer. The same music is played no matter where you go, the skits all come from the same idea, and the dances are very similar. Really the only thing that changes from place to place are the outfits - and boy did this show have some outfits. To spare you some of the details let me just say that the ladies had more on their heads with their headresses then they did below the neckline. After the show we were too exhausted from running back and forth to the beach so we retired to our rooms to get a good night's sleep and dream of a sunny tomorrow.

The next morning the sun wasn't shinning. Again we sat at breakfast watching the drizzle out the window and spent the morning heading out to the ocean and back to our Rook nook. This is the term we developed for our little table with the ocean view because Rook was the card game we played. Finally after lunch the clouds broke for good leaving the rest of the afternoon for some nice sunny weather. It was nice to take a nap, read a little, and swim. If you hadn't guessed we spent the rest of the day on the beach.

Here in the city we don't get to take "hot" showers like we do in the USA, so when we head to the resorts this is one of the things that we look forward to the most. After our long day on the beach we were ready for our hot shower. Wrong. It turns out that a main water line that brought hot water to all three of the resorts on the complex had burst and there was no hot water anywhere to be found. So it was yet another cold shower before dinner. After dinner that night we decided to skip the "Magic Show" that was being performed and sit nearby and play some more cards. Because we had waited longer in our rooms for the potential of hot water, we didn't make it to dinner very early so we were all pretty wiped out by this point in the evening. Knowing that we only had a morning more to spend we decided to hit the sack a little early in hopes to rise a little earlier in the morning. When we got back to our room ...Eureka: HOT WATER. We both took extra long showers that night.

Monday morning (Claire and I took the day off) we awoke to some more dreary weather and did some running back and forth to the beach, but fortunately for us there was more sun than rain. We stayed until around 1 when we then caught the 2 oclock bus home. We then arrived safely home sometime just before 6. All in all it was a great trip, even with the rain. Because we weren't able to stay out on the beach all day we were able to do a few other things besides getting sunburnt such as taking mini walks down the beach or playing cards.

For those of you who don't know Claire's dad, Brad loves to take pictures. So we have a ton of pictures from this little trip. We are going to try and put some of these on our picture page so please check it out by clicking on "Picture Page."