My first international flight in what felt like forever was to .. the Dominican Republic!
My first Caribbean holiday & also my first all-inclusive.

DR is known for its beaches & beautiful waters, sugar cane, and among many other things.

I stayed at Catalonia Bavaro Beach, Golf & Casino Resort, and while it was nice – there are a lot of resort options there. Do your research, read reviews and figure out what you like and what works best for your budget. I was surprised to find that even though this resort seemed quite popular, the workers spoke very minimal English. Now this might not apply to all resorts of course but if you can brush up on your Spanish it could be very beneficial while travelling there!

Comments I’ve heard from friends and family when travelling to 1) All-inclusives 2) Caribbean countries in general revolve around food. Trying new foods, especially while travelling is one of my favourite things to do! So while an all-inclusive works for some people, it’s not particularly my fav. I love doing research on the best restaurants, trying street carts and hole in the wall places with recommendations from locals. The a la carte restaurants were better than just the buffet on the resort, but reservations were required so keep that in mind to help plan out your days in advance.

Our resort offered a day tour which was awesome! It included taking a bus around to see sugar cane field, a baseball academy + players (baseball is HUGE there), a local school, a typical dominican home and a tour of the garden with fresh coffee, papayas (did you know papaya seeds are the colour purple!!), paprika, cigar factory, a basilica, horseback riding (more on this later) and a visit to a beach. All while enjoying local rum & cokes of course.

Another really cool thing that I got to experience was a day trip on a catarman out to Isla Saona, check out the colour of that water! The bus ride from the resort to the marina was a couple hours though so be prepared, have water/snacks, wear comfortable clothes and shoes, a hat, sunscreen, a charger for your phone and gravol.

Valencio – The culprit

Okay so I mentioned that I would get back to the horseback riding part. While my previous experience with horses is limited, I was really looking forward to horseback riding and looking at some beautiful scenery. Though unfortunately, I had an accident. I won’t really get into the details but essentially Valencio didn’t want me riding on him on the trails anymore and almost rolled over me. While the pain was excruciating and it was super scary, I was VERY lucky that my accident involved my foot and not my head or chest. And that this happened on our second last day of the trip.

Before the tour (and accident) we decided to hit up the town on a night out and went to a place called Imagine which was a club that was inside a cave. Make sure to book in advance and even though it’s expensive, if you have a big enough group, it’s definitely worth it to get bottle service so that you can have a place to sit.

It was a really good vacation (minus the incident) to be able to experience Dominicana with a group of friends as my first all-inclusive! There are a lot of resorts options so make sure to do your research and lastly, ALWAYS get travel insurance!!!

With Love,
Murs