Common Sense, Dancing

The weekend in Punta Cana was great, thanks for asking. It got cold here in NJ over the weekend, and the DR was warm and toasty. I am wishing for a bit more “color” today — the sunscreen apparently did its job. Read three books, had a few drinks and a few laughs. Just what the mother ordered.

Getting there was interesting. My husband the world traveler was generous enough to upgrade us to Business First, so the Special Treatment began upon checkin. Yay for elite lines. I don’t care if that makes me a snob. I love me a Special line, particularly when it’s way shorter than the Other line. Although there were no warm nuts on the trip — despite my plaintive pleas for them. What’s first class without warm nuts? Sad. Well, okay, the avaibility of a warm cookie is a bit of a consoliation — the flight was lovely. Dorothy, you’re not in Kansas anymore.

Another adventure began upon touchdown. Our plane landed on the one large runway (maybe there are two, but I am not completely sure) and screamed to a stop. Then, immediately, it made a u-turn on the runway to hurry off to the side and head to the “gate.” A u-turn. In the active runway.  I’m a Newark Airport (EWR!) kind of girl — and this sort of hanging around an active runway made me really nervous. Who’s got time for a u-turn? Uh, the Dominican Republicans do. Otherwise you can’t get off the plane at the “gate” and go to the lovely beaches.

A nice taxi driver named Antonio was waiting just outside the exit doors at the airport to take us to the resort. We climbed into his Toyota Corolla for what I figured to be a relatively short trip to the hotel — after all, it’s the Dominican Republic, not exactly a large island. How long could this trip be? Answer: 75 long and somewhat harrowing minutes. The major roads, on which we were required to travel for a considerable portion of the trip, are unfinished. In this country, some kinds of allowance are made for unfinished roads: detours, alternate lanes, whatever. Not so down there. The roads aren’t finished, but this doesn’t mean you shouldn’t use them. No lanes, no blacktop, no leveling, no speed limits, no passing rules….you get the idea. All I could think about is, what if we blew a tire on this adventure? But Antonio didn’t seem to care — he shoulder-danced to his Latin music the whole 75 minute ride. (And we got there, literally rattled but intact.)

The resort was nice. Excellence, well — maybe not so much that — but Very Good-ness, yes. All kinds of all-inclusive amenities…but a shortage of towels in the room (why no washcloths, Dominican Republic?), a decided lack of housekeeping scroupulousness, and a weird spa experience that involved lots of showering, jacuzzi-ing and assorted saunas/steam exposures….but very nice. Ok, so we blew a fuse while using a blow dryer (clarfication for anyone who’s involved in my curly hair care, it wasn’t me blowdrying….) — but that happens at home, right? We just flipped the breaker (conveninetly located in the minibar) and kept on grooving.

We had a few laughs at our specific circumstances as well. Did you know that if you travel as two women “together” and one has particularly short hair and a low-maintenance style about her, that you might often be mistaken for lesbians? That they — the resort staff — might ignore your request for two separate massages and decide to put you in a couples’ massage room together anyway? (I swear, I have yet to have a resort spa experience that is anything close to normal. Now I’ve got stories from the DR and Mexico. I’m going to keep a scorecard.)

Not that there’s anything wrong with that. Just adds yet another dimension to the whole Girls’ Weekend idea….

This entry was posted on Monday, December 6th, 2010 at 3:44 pm and is filed under Bits and Pieces. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.