This took me a little while to get around to. Hopefully it helps anyone who is planning on going down there, but the main goal is just to tell you a bit about what we did while we were there.
Christine and I booked a trip to the Luperon Beach Resort in the Dominican Republic about 6 months ago. We used the Armed Forces Vacation Club and waited as long as we could for cheaper plane tickets. I’ll have a total cost breakdown at the end of the post.
We partied at the Hak5 house the night before we flew out, and well, we partied a little too hard. I was approximately 1 second late in putting my credit card into the e-ticket checkin thing at the airport, and thus we had to be standby for the next flight to Atlanta. Luckily for us everyone thought we were married and on our honeymoon, because we got some sort of special tags put on our standby tickets, which allowed us to bypass everyone. Sorry to anyone we screwed over on that, we had no idea what was going on.
The flights to the Dominican weren’t that bad, obviously I hate flying so I just had to deal with it. We landed in the early afternoon, and after a $90 cab ride, got to the resort at 5pm or so. It then promptly started raining, and kept raining until late into that evening. Luckily for us though, we only had to deal with rain twice during the entire time we were there, and left right in time to avoid the recent tropical storms and hurricanes that have made their way through the Caribbean.
Some of the events we did included horseback riding, dance lessons (which I was horrible at), crazy games (usually some sort of watersport that you won some rum or viagra for.. yes, viagra!), kayaking and more! Each night there were also shows and events on at least 2 different parts of the resort. We did karaoke one of the nights, and participated in some of the games they had on stage another night, where we danced in front of over 100 people and they judged which couple was the best. There was ALWAYS something going on, other than during 2 siesta periods during the day, and obviously after the “disco” (dance club type thing, not exactly like we have in america, but close) shut down at 2am.
The place was pretty much a 2.5-3 star resort, so if you go, don’t expect to be living like a god there. It’s nice, but you can tell they make their profit by everything being as cheaply done as possible while still remaining of a quality that won’t piss too many people off. Prime example of this was the tennis/basketball/archery area. The courts looked good, and there was equipment for it, but it looked like a bunch of used stuff from a high school that went out of business. On the other end of the resort there were some water activities you could partake in, such as a mini-sailing lesson on a pretty mucy one-man boat type thing with a sail on it, which was very primitive and not something my clumsy self could pull off very well. You could also take out ocean kayaks probably a few hundred yards out before they came out to pull you back in (guess their insurance is picky).
The food was about what you’d expect out of a 3 star facility. Good, but not godly. One weird thing about the resort (and this ties in with the subject of food) was how everything was setup according to a schedule during the day. We conveniently forgot my watch, and refused to spend 20 bucks on one that we’d only use a few days, so we were constantly asking everyone what time it is, so we didn’t miss something. There were BBQ type food places that had random stuff each day, sometimes fish fries, and always some pizza to go along with whatever the main option was. Those were only open from noon-ish to about 4:30 in the afternoon. The main buffet which served as the place to go for every mean was open for breakfast, lunch, and dinner and usually had some great food mixed in with some average food. There was always at least one cook making some kind of custom something for each meal, whether it was omelets, lobster, steak, burgers, fish, or even pasta.
If you reserved ahead of time (typically the first morning you were there), you could book the “el restaurante” dinner which was in a different building, and required dressing up a little to go in (mainly closed toed shoes and long pants for men, women were pretty much able to wear whatever they wanted as long as it was classy). I only brought 1 pair of jeans and some sneakers, so I looked like an idiot the 4 times we went. Our first night was Italian, and boy that was amazing. The mozarella stick was better than any other i’ve had in my life, and was probably 4x the size, and you could tell it had not been frozen beforehand. Brazil night was the worst of the 4, they simply didn’t have enough waiters to pull off going around to everyone constantly with kabob sticks full of steak/chicken/veggies/shrimp/etc. What we did get was few and far between.
Spanish night was a not as distant 3rd, the problem being that we were eating food that was more american than spanish. I guess they didn’t know what spanish people ate. Mexican night was a close 2nd to Italian, but obviously couldn’t touch it. One thing I noticed a distinct lack of was hot sauce and bbq sauce. The only place we found even one of them was at the restaurant, and their hot sauce wasn’t really that great. I guess these people just don’t have our tastes.
Although our stay on the resort was very nice, the best time we had during the entire vacation was when we spent $49 each to go on a Catamaran trip. There were a bunch of other similar trips going on throughout the week, but none were as cheap, and as it turns out, none were as good.
We left at appoximately 8:30am and I think after all of our flip flops were in a bin, roughly 20 of us piled onto the catamaran boat. With plenty of sunscreen on (yes, note for anyone who heads down that way, bring a TON of sunscreen, you WILL run out, trust me, bring lots, lots lots lots) we were on our way into the middle of the ocean, it seemed. 40 minutes into our voyage, we arrived at a buoy, which was a marker for where schools of fish passed through often I’m guessing, because they threw some sort of fish food into the water and told everyone they could put on snorkel gear to see the fish/coral up close if they wanted. Christine did this, but I was feeling very seasick (a first for me) so I didn’t get to do this.
After a short while, we continued our trip, and were joined by a school of dolphins who swam with our boat for awhile. Christine and I were sitting on the front of the catamaran with our legs hanging over, and some of the dolphins swam right underneath our feet, keeping up remarkably well. Our next stop was a beach on what looked like a small uninhabited island, where we all had some rum, broke open some coconuts, and made a bonfire. We partied there for a little while, and then headed out to sea again, this time our destination was an inhabited island.
Once we anchored and swam to shore, we were greeted by the locals there, who immediately wanted us to buy ice cream. We politely declined, and a short time later we were directed to some tables that were setup to eat some lunch. The food was very good, although I could tell it had been brought there, most likely by the resort, probably for health reasons. We then went over to another part of the village where there were a whole bunch of tables setup with wares on them. Haggling with the locals was fun, and we managed to come away with a pretty even amount of goods for what we spent. I bought a tobacco pipe, some rum and a bottle of “mamajuana” which had bark from some local tree, and was said to give any liquor put into it and cured for 2 weeks healing properties. Ironically, I think it helped us out, as we took a couple shots out of it during our bout with a rotavirus we could later come down with after we got home, and our recovery was rapid after that.
Once everyone had spent all their money, we were taken through the village and got to see various buildings, chickens, people, and a little pig farm. Further down the path was the enrance to another beach, in which we had some more fun with the locals. Christine taught some of the kids the game “tag” and there was much laughter.
Finally our time there was at an end, and we gathered our things, went back to our catamaran, and headed back to the resort. We departed a day and a half later, taking with us memories that we will have the rest of our lives.
For anyone interested in just how much this cost us:
Resort cost: $329 for the week through the AFV Club
All-inclusive fees: $560 for both of us ($40 per person per day)
Plane tickets: $992 for both of us.
Cab rides to/from resort: $180 total.
Goodies bought: $60 + trading an old beat-up digital camera, and cd player.
Airport food to/from: $40
Gas to/from airport: $35ish
So about $2200 for 2 people for a week at a resort in the Caribbean. If you’ve done better, great, we’re not trying to show off, just trying to help people gauge realistic costs.
Thanks for reading, I hope you enjoyed it!
