Yes it is a pretty cack name for a hotel but it was a white, billowy, long pool, sandy beach sight for sore eyes when we finally made it here on Tuesday night. Note to self, when guest reviews say 'only half an hour from the airport', on a big Caribbean island you need to check which bloody airport they mean. We discovered the night before arriving that it was in fact a 2 hour transfer from Santo Domingo to here, requiring either a $200 taxi in each direction (!!!) or a hire car and taking your life in your hands vs the buses, jalopies, chickens, maniacs, scooters, stray dogs and every other mad bastard on the crap roads here. As J said 'it's a good job I'm not a nervous driver!'
Anyway, this was our blissful view on arrival. Thank god the place was worth it.
And the room! Always hard to work out quite what you're booking, but I'd gone for the '2 sunbeds on the terrace' one, based on the idea that we would have quiet space if the hotel was busy and would give us somewhere to smoke without disturbing anyone. Couldn't quite believe it when it turned out to be this enormous casita with 3 double beds, 3 loos, 3 showers, 4 terraces/balconies, a dining room and lounge, 2 TVs, a fully stocked kitchen with American fridge freezer and – most ludicrously – not just one but two jacuzzis of our own! Funnily enough, in this heat, we've not been in either of them.
Definitely time for some sunbed lounging and concerted reading of the Conde Nast Traveller mags that had been piling up from Jan-July. I just couldn't face looking at what I couldn't have while I was recuperating, so it's been a cathertic blast to nosh through them at last, while contemplating the lapping sea.
Just a shame the beach has been so busy every day……Noooooooooooot.
Popped into the main town on this peninsula for the last couple of nights – rather loving the abundance of mojitos, caipirinhas and daiquiris everywhere you go. Now that's my kind of culture.
And I've even chosen fish each night. Which is pretty unheard of in my book, but has to be done when right by the sea. And at least it does still come with chips…
All in all, a brilliant 4 nights in Miami and 4 here on the Dom Rep, which is also my only new country in aaaaaaaages, so here's to notching up one more, and to some of its friends joining the list, some time in the coming months and more x x