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October 11th, 2015:
Sosua, Dominican Republic
So..... It's only been two days but I already have so much to say! I don't know when I'll have WiFi, since it's $30.00 US dollars for a week, and it's not even guaranteed in your room... And you can only connect one device, so it's not really worth it. But I'm trying to find ways to call home since it's Thanksgiving today. But if I can't figure it out, I'm sorry everyone! I wish I could have at least contacted you! :(
Let me tell you about our first night here. Our flight left Toronto at around 9:00 am. Since the Dominican is in the same time zone as Toronto, we got here at like 1:30 pm. Mid day! It made for a very traumatic temperature change from the plane to the very very very humid air outside. Plus there was no cloud in the sky! So the sun was really hot. Unfortunately, we were all wearing Canadian fall clothes, so we were NOT ready for the heat! We weren't about to complain though!
We had about a 20 minute bus ride from the airport to our hotel. I didn't realize that we aren't actually staying in Puerto Plata. We're staying in a small city right next to it called Sosua.
Our first impression of our hotel rooms wasn't very good. Especially compared to the other resorts that I've stayed at. But I also realized, what should I expect from a three star hotel? There are cracks and rough patches on the ceiling, the base boards are discoloured, there's not even any pictures in our rooms. Not to mention, we got the wrong sized beds we were promised when booking. The TV is basically the size of my iPad... One of the rooms' A/C doesn't work... And Cayly got locked in the bathroom within the first 5 minutes of getting settled in! They actually had to break the door to get her out!
Another problem we had was that there were SO MANY LOCALS staying at the resort!!! Like, everyone here is dark and speaks spanish. Apparently the locals like to come here for the weekends and spend some family time. I thought that maybe it's busy here this weekend because of Thanksgiving, but do they even celebrate Thanksgiving here? The pools are pretty busy, the beach is pretty busy, and the buffet is always packed! It probably doesn't help that the buffet is only open for a certain amount of time. :( Which is kind of a problem when we have three big boys who want to eat 24/7!
Anyway, I calmed everyone down a little by bringing out my locks... I brought three mini combo locks to lock up my suitcase and the two zippers on my backpack. I also brought a bike lock to lock the suitcase to something in the room... Unfortunately there's nothing really stationary in the room, so I just locked the suitcase to a small table. It's pretty awesome. So all of our valuables, including passports, money, and electronics, are all locked in my backpack, which is locked in my suitcase, which is locked to the table, which is locked in our room with the Do Not Disturb Sign on it. So, I'm sure everything is going to be fine. We're all being extra cautious. Plus having 6 pairs of eyes watching out for our stuff should be enough if we're all smart about it.
ANYWAY! We spent the rest of the day exploring our resort, which is actually really nice. There's three main pools, and two beaches that are separated by a massive chunk of dead, grey coral reef. It sounds kind of ugly, but they added cold jacuzzis around it, so you can cool off in these bubbly pools overlooking the ocean. Its really pretty.
One other thing, is that there are literally so many vendors that push you to buy stuff every single time you walk by. It's very frustrating and annoying. But having two salesmen in the group is very handy, since they know all of their tactics and call them out on them so they just shut up.
The food! I'm sure everyone is wondering how the food is. It's not disgusting, but I can tell that everyone will get very sick of it very quickly. There's only one main restaurant, as all the other ones need reservations. You can only make three reservations per week, so we won't be eating much different food. Even though we thought we would be since there's technically TWO resorts in this one area under the same company. So that's a little disappointing. But that doesn't mean that we can't go into the city to explore once or twice!
So yeah. There's not much more to say since we haven't done much yet, but I'm sure it's going to be fun. There's tons of excursions available to us, including scuba diving, zip lining, jeep driving, and waterfall climbing. So we should find tons of things to do during our stay!
Talk soon!!!
Love always,
Lindsay
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