Punta Cana? Trip Report?? Pics???

Ha ha ha ha. I've been totally missing! Again! Oh my gosh I just can't keep up with all the blog, Facebook, Twitter, chat, email business anymore. I'm so behind in reading all of your blogs and can't even keep my own up.

I'm not sure if the appeal is wearing off or not but I just find it more difficult. Am I busier than I use to be? Yes. So that has to have something to do with it. But even during times when I technically could blog I don't. What up? I dunno but I'm rambling and you probably don't give a shit and just want to see pics of the beautiful beach in Punta Cana!

Guess what!?

You're not getting them right now. Hahaha. I do have some great personal pics and videos that I will share but I don't have them with me right now. The only thing I have with me are the pics from my professional photo shoot which was tonnes of fun and totally worth the moola. But I think I'll just post those with the rest of the pics.

So, my trip was f'n great. I miss it. But I will say that it's so much nicer to take a vacation than quote un quote live in paradise and never vacation (trips home don't count). Because lets face it, paradise wasn't truly paradise all of the time. In fact it was just paradise for a fraction of the time and even then I still found room to bitch. Because, that's me and that's what I do.

Before I went I had a few haters say how they hated Dominican or that I would be bored, and the hotel is a compound and you're not allowed to leave blah blah blah. Guess what people? Let me make my own decision as to what I think of the place. It's none of that and I'm sorry you couldn't make an effort to have a better time but don't rain on my parade. Gracias!

To me, this is what it was:

The perfect beach vacation paradise for beach lovers. You like a little bit of action but not too much. You want to chill around the hotel, but want the hotel to provide enough entertainment to keep you content should you want to do something more than lay on the beach and roast. You want to take a tour or two and want a couple clubs to visit off the hotel property but really, this is a vacation of relaxation and beach beach beach. You want palm trees, white sand beaches & turquoise waters galore. Punta Cana is for you.

Something I learned on the bus and flight back to Vancouver:

Choose your hotel wise wise wisely!!!! Half the people we talked to were not very happy with their hotel. What does that lead to? ------> Not so happy with your vacation and not so happy with Punta Cana.

But we got lucky. Our hotel was great. There were some things that annoyed us but hell, that's normal. They were honestly so small it's silly to mention. All in all, I really think that since we had such a great hotel, we had such a great vacation. Dominican Republic is pretty much made up of All Inclusive resorts and this will be your home/city for the duration of your vacation. If you hate the food at your hotel, you're screwed. If you hate your room, you're screwed. If you hate the fact that the hotel doesn't offer entertainment or nice lounge chairs, you're screwed. So if you go to Dominican (really if you go anywhere), pay super duper close attention to your hotel BEFORE YOU GO. You get what you pay for! Check Trip Advisor reviews, look at recent photos taken of the place do your homework! I did and voila. I was a happy camper.

We stayed at the Gran Bahia Principe Bavaro, Punta Cana. If you're going to honeymoon, you may want to stay at the Ambar as it's a tidge nicer in terms of hotel rooms and private pools. The resort is huge as I believe it's like 3 Bavaro hotels in one giant resort. We got lost more than once. :) They even have little busses that can take you the length of the resort if you're feeling lazy and don't want to walk. We were only there for a week but wished it was 10 days. We felt like we needed a couple more since the recovery from our hellishly long flight was a bit of a longer process than we wanted. But seriously? It was worth it.

Ok this is too long. More later...