I was in better shape come the morning. My eye slightly hurt and I had a little limp, but all in all, I was good to go!
The standard process of the day occurred; called Vero’s sister, headed to breakfast and then headed to the beach. Simple.
On the beach we decided to check out some activities we could do during the week. They offered quite a few adventure packages such as snorkeling, scuba diving, deep sea fishing (awesome!), para sailing…a whole bunch of things to keep you entertained.
Vero, Andreane and I signed up to try out the para sailing. Para sailing consists of you being strapped onto a parachute which gets towed behind a boat over the water. While you regularly are up around 300 meters in the air, the water was choppy this day so it could only be set at 200 meters.
We forked over our cash (I believe it was around $40?) and waited for the boat to arrive and pick us up. We all piled into a boat which brought us out to a larger boat off the shore which had the para sail.
Vero ended up with a sweet deal as there had to be two people on the para sail at all times but there were only three of us, so she went with her sister AND me.
We met a few people from Sudbury and Montreal and Toronto. The couple from Toronto were the first to go up and they told me it was great while you are up there. This was important for me considering I have a fear of heights. But it just looked so darn cool to be floating 200 meters above the beach that I couldn’t pass it up!
Here’s how para sailing works; they strap a harness to you. Then when it comes to your turn, you go to the back of the boat and get strapped onto the parachute which is being towed behind the boat. Then you sit down and there is your friend sitting either behind/in front of you. Then the boat picks up speed and slowly lets the parachute line out. The wind is taking the parachute away and you are attached to it, so naturally you are following it! It’s a very calm process until they reach the end of the line and there is a slight jolt because you are now feeling the towing of the boat. It’s very calm up there and quite surreal as you are high above the trees. We could see the island for miles. It was quite marvelous.
Vero went up with her sister first and they had a great time although they somehow managed to not sit down in their harness so it was like they were standing up straight in the air and the harness was pulling up into their groin. Boy, am I ever glad that wasn’t me! Imagine being stuck up in the air for ten minutes with a giant harness digging into your twigs and berries! They got back into the boat and we enjoyed the time in the sun and on the waves. We literally were out there for two hours so I thought it was well worth the $40 just to be out on the water for the afternoon.
Vero and I went up and all was good. Like I said before, very calm up there. You can see the people on the beach and we were waving and yelling at them. We even managed to see our group of friends and they took some pictures of us in the air. At one point when the boat was turning around this creates some slack in the line so we slowly descend. Vero pointed out that we were aiming to land on a topless woman who Vero commented had ‘big jugs’! Ha ha. We had a good laugh at that. I would say we were fifty meters from touching the ground before the slack of the line disappeared and we got jolted back up in the air.
When the line is pulled back in there was some slack once again and we touched lightly into the water before they tightened the line and we hopped into the boat. It was definitely a highlight of my trip to Punta Cana and I would recommend it to everyone!
To be honest, the trip is becoming a blur to me and I can’t pinpoint any specific thing we did in the evening. I have a problem in that I like to capture as much as I can in terms of memories into my entries here, but in the end, it takes so much time to write about them that I start to forget what I did! I will say that after para sailing, we most likely went back to the beach, had a few drinks (Vero definitely liked the Amaretto Sours on this trip!) and headed back into the resort to take a shower and had some dinner.
***update***
I can’t believe I forgot this point of the trip. Turns out that Vero’s stepmother had chestpains and could not feel her arm during the evening! Luckily for us, we had some paramedic friends from Hearst on hand and they assessed the situation and the on-resort doctor was called in. An ambulance was called and she was brought to an off-resort hospital (which is supposedly set up for tourists).
In the end, all was fine and as far as we know, it was caused by high blood pressure at the time. Luckily they had travel insurance as the ambulance ride alone was five hundred dollars. It’s not worth not taking medical insurance while you are travelling.
The situation was quite alarming to me as it reminded me of what Dad had recently gone through during the Christmas holidays. It was very surreal. Nothing much happened for the rest of the night and I headed to a late dinner with everyone else while Vero and her sisters went off to see how they could help.
