Luna de Miel - Day 2

Day 2:

Tuesday was our exploration day. The day started out with a traditional American breakfast which we shared with our peacock friend. He especially liked the pancakes.



In total, they had 3 or 4 peacocks at this resort. We're pretty sure they were there as an alarm system. They would squawk every time someone arrived at the place and if you've been around peacocks much, you'll know how loud they squawk.

We checked out the private beach after breakfast. Usually it was just us there, or maybe one other couple.

Isn't it beautiful?

Snorkeling was our first adventure. The waves crashed quite hard on the beach so it was hard to get out in the ocean, but once we were out, it was pretty calm. I'll be honest, the snorkeling here was nothing compared to the Virgin Islands. It was fun to be out in the water, but we pretty much only saw Dory fish and Nick spotted a puffer fish once. In the Virgin Islands, the first time I put my head under water, I was looking into the eyes and pointy teeth of a barracuda. My second day there I touched a sea turtle. Kelsi even spotted a nurse shark at one point. There were always dozens of brightly colored fish, sea stars, puffer fish, lobster, squid, sting rays, jellyfish, etc. This is what I was expecting the DR to be like, but it wasn't like that at all. There were probably better locations for snorkeling in the DR, but our little beach had pretty sparse ocean life.

After giving up on the snorkeling, we spotted a kayak the resort had sitting out. We dragged it out onto the beach (which was not as easy as it sounds), and after forging through the crashing waves, we got it out on the open water. Sea kayaking is one of the best upper body workouts I know of, and also one of the most fun. I love it. We explored quite a bit in our yellow ocean kayak and made our way to a secret, secluded beach that we found. The waves here were even stronger though, and when we had almost made it to the beach, a monster wave came and flipped us over. I got pulled under and I felt the kayak and Nick get thrown over me (and hit my head). We frantically half-crawled onto the beach, barely saving my snorkel gear, while accidentally leaving Nick's to be pulled out to sea. We searched for it for a while, but in those waves, I just kept getting knocked over and pulled under so Nick made me come in.

After laying out on our secret beach and a long kayak ride home, we become known throughout the resort as the kayaking couple. I don't know why that even stood out.

That evening, we took our dinky Corolla to Cabrera, a small town nearby. It was cool to get a little taste of what life is like for the people there. Unfortunately, the pizza we had there was probably the grossest pizza I have ever had.

We felt like the biggest idiots when we were getting in our car to leave...We unlocked the door and our car alarm went off for probably a full 3 minutes. It felt like everyone was looking at us and thinking, stupid tourists. We finally figured out (only after setting the alarm off several more times), that you have to push a little green button to disarm the car before you unlock it. Thank you for telling us that little detail, Savings Car Rental.