The Inquisitive Coder – Davy Brion's Blog

I got back from the Dominican Republic yesterday morning so i just wanted to post a short ‘review’ of the trip. Getting there took a looong time, because our plane first stopped in Cuba where we had to wait for another hour before we flew into Punta Cana. Unfortunately, we weren’t allowed to get off the plane for a short time which kinda sucks after 10 hours of flying. The little bit of Cuba i did get to see (through the window) did look pretty nice though. So after 13 hours we finally landed at Punta Cana’s airport and then we had to take a 2 hour bus ride to get to our hotel.

The hotel was great. Big, nice rooms. Lots of restaurants (4 plus a general buffet as well). Great pool, including a nice bar. Fantastic beach, also with a bar obviously. Plenty of activities and a few shops as well. If you really want to, you could have a pretty good time without even leaving the resort.

But that would be a bit of a shame because the country has so much more to offer than beautiful resorts. I went on two excursions while i was there. The first one was a snorkeling trip which was great. It was basically a whole day on a boat going along the Caribbean coastline, which in itself is already a sight to behold. Then there were 2 snorkeling sessions, one before noon, and one in the afternoon. For lunch, we went to the Saona island which you may know better as the Bounty Island (used in the commercials) to have a barbecue plus some relaxing on the beach. We also spent some time in a ‘natural swimming pool’ which is located within the sea on a huge sandbank (which was the result of a hurricane a few years back, as i’ve been told). It really is mindblowing to stand up in the middle of the ocean, with the water only reaching up to your waist.

The second excursion was a truck safari from the southern part of the island to the north side. I’d definitely recommend doing this because the sights you see along the way are unbelievably beautiful. And you don’t just spend the whole time in the truck either. We stopped along a sugar cane field and tried real sugar from a sugar cane. We also visited some people in the country side where we tried fresh coffee (from beans that had finished roasting in the sun just a few days ago), fresh cocoa (both in powder form after non-industrial processing as well as directly from the fruit), fresh Creole pine apple, coconuts, Mama Juana and other things as well. We had lunch on some ranch in the mountains (seeing large palm trees on top of high mountains is pretty cool as well) and after that we did some horseback riding. We also visited a tiny school (with only 2 classrooms) and a big church in Higuey which is apparently pretty famous. In the afternoon we stopped along a beach in the north side of the island (with the Atlantic ocean instead of the Carribean sea). We definitely saw a lot of beautiful things during this excursion. Funny side story: some British tourists that were also on the truck brought notepads and pens for the poor children we’d meet along the way. During one of our walks, they gave them to two kids who were sitting in front of their house. What these tourists didn’t realize was that those kids were sitting in front of a very nice house which actually had a beautiful pool in the backyard. Good thing these poor kids now also have notepads and pens

Combining these excursions with a lot of relaxing at the beach definitely makes for a great trip. I’m not really a going-to-the-beach-kinda-guy but the Bahayibe beach and the Carribean Sea are just too nice to pass up on. And the water is just incredible… it’s crystal clear, it’s very warm, and occasionally you’ll see a bunch of colorful fish swim by or even around you.

The one downside to the trip was that there was hardly anything to do at night where we were. The northern side apparently has a lot more going on at night (it’s only normal with all the mass-tourism over there) but on the southern side there’s really not much to do outside of what’s going on in your resort. I was there with my best friend so we were hoping for some interesting bars to go to at night, but we mostly stuck to the lobby bar in the resort for a lack of anything better. You could just go to local towns and visit the bars over there but that’s not really recommended unless you’re with a reasonably-sized group to avoid trouble.

But apart from that, everything was great and i’d definitely recommend it to anyone. And after all of that, we spent another 9 hours on a plane to land in Brussels with pouring rain and pretty chilly weather *Sigh*.

I still have to go through a couple hundred blog posts that i missed, a shitload of email and some other stuff i have to do as well. I’ll start posting and coding again in the next couple of days though