Day 7 – A Mouthful of Seawater

Punta Cana. Martine 336, originally uploaded by palm0014.

We had planned to go out in these great underwater sea-doos which looked like something out of a James Bond film but in the end we decided to head out to do some snorkeling. It was a good day for it…nice and sunny, no real bad hangovers from the wedding before…all was well in the world.

Gaetan, Vero and I headed out on a boat which brought us along the coastline to a spot with a bunch of coral so that we could snorkel. I must admit that when we first got the snorkel gear a bit of fear came over me as I found it hard to get used to breathing out of a tube and not through my nose. However, I realized that if I calmed my breathing (and fear!) down, there would be no problem.

Until we got to the spot. It is quite choppy once you get a little farther off the shore. I never realized how choppy the ocean can be out there! Armed with flippers and a mask, we all hopped in and went for the ride. The mask took a little getting used to….it wasn’t TOO bad to breathe out of it but if a wave came on top of you then you got a mouthful of saltwater…yuck!

At first I was swimming around some massive corral reefs in which they were very close to you…in fact the wave once smacked my knee into one (good thing it was just rock and not sharp corral!). After realizing that the waves would continue to smack me into these rocks, I decided to head to another area. I met Gaetan on the way who was having trouble with his mask. I think it kept fogging up and we figured it wasn’t tight enough.

Let me tell you, the ocean is quite the amazing sight once you lay your eyes to it through a scuba mask. It’s really something out of National Geographic. At one point I was literally swimming with hundreds of blue fish…the size of a perch. It was like I was a part of them. They weren’t scared of me at all. I was just one with them trying to swim along. That’s another point about the ocean…the fish don’t exactly swim…they just move with the ocean waves. It’s pointless to try too hard to move against the ocean…simply flow along. I still marvel at the fact that I was alongside hundreds of fish and they weren’t moving around quickly like you see minnows move around…it was just calm and they were along for the ride.

We stayed out there for a good 30 – 45 minutes but we had grown tired after all that time of sucking in some salt water and fighting against the waves. We headed back for the boat and Gaetan had mentioned that when he had removed his mouthpiece in the water one time, he had almost lost his teeth. I commented that it would have been funny as there would have been a fish with a great smile somewhere out in the ocean! We all had a good laugh.

I believe we paid around $30 for this excursion and it was well worth it. We had at least an hour on the boat (which is a great ride, although I was feeling kind of sick after swallowing some saltwater) and 45 minutes out snorkeling. Some people had gone on an all-day excursion which they said wasn’t too interesting as most of the time the boat just laid anchor somewhere and stayed there for an hour. I think they would have preferred this excursion more.

Have I already spoken about the excursions? While it cost a little extra money, I thoroughly took advantage of the location we were in and the opportunities they provided. I lucked out and had some great excursions. If I returned I don’t think I would try the snorkeling again but I would be up for a safari tour if it was a different area as well as the parasailing. The view was amazing from the parasail. Definitely worth the $200+ that we spent in total.

We returned to the beach and grabbed a bite to eat at the outdoor eating area.

At one point in the day, Vero and I headed down the beach to the merchants tents.  This was quite a long walk down the beach but it’s not like we had anything else to do!  When we got to the tents they sure knew how to wrangle us in with comments about how beautiful Vero is and how they have the best deals in the land.  After haggling (which I still have to learn the fine art of) Vero ended up with a ton of jewelery with larimar (the stone native to the Dominican Republic) and I had found this neat shaker percussion instrument and also a gift for my Dad.  Actually, as I write this a few months later, I realize that I have never sent my family their gifts from the Dominican Republic!  Woops!  I guess I’ll send them along with the next batch of Sopranos Dad!  I was also trying out some hats but never found one that I really liked (which is funny because two months later I found one I liked in Giant Tiger of all places).

That evening Vero, Andreane and I headed to the Italian restaurant for a late eat. I must say that it was quite horrible. The service was bad, I got the wrong order and after we got our food served they never returned once in the 30 minutes afterwards. At one point I got fed up and we decided to leave the place. Enough was enough, I wasn’t going to spend the last night sitting in a restaurant!

We ended up back in our hotel room and Vero and Andreane had some bad sunburns so they needed some Aloe Vero. I was doubly disappointed that night as we had left the housekeeper another $5 that morning and I came back to find that the beer hadn’t been restocked! What the heck? At various points while I was watching a movie and they were applying Aloe Vero to themselves I kept putting my cold beer on Vero. I was like the 7-Up Man!

But at one point, Andreane was lying on her back and I put the cold beer on her stomach but she freaked out and the can tipped over her and then beer went all over her! THEN she flips out even more, jumps up, the can goes flying onto the bed and chaos reigns. There’s Andreane and the bed soaked with beer. All you could hear are screams from all over. It was quite funny. We threw the comforter out in the porch and got Andreane some clothes to wear. Vero’s aunt had heard the screams so a bunch of them came over to hang out for the rest of the night.