Barb and I took a winter break to the Iberostar Grand Bavaro in Punta Cana, Dominican Republic.
Here we are again at an all-inclusive resort in the Caribbean. I don’t mean that to be cynical, jaded or ungrateful. It’s a pleasant exercise in over-indulgence, a test to see how much we can stand to consume, tinged with a frisson of guilt. I don’t honestly love this kind of vacation, but I keep coming back, and I think maybe I’m getting better at it, perhaps in the wrong ways. Most of all, it’s nice to see Barb relax, get a few days of sun and some respite from work.
This is my third trip to the Dominican Republic. The first was more than 20 years ago, to Casa de Campo with the Harders when Allie and Maddie were babies and I was a golfer. That was an odd experience in its own right, and it was a long time before I wanted to come back. In the past few years, I’ve sent Barb a couple of times with Allie because the prices were good, once to the Hard Rock Hotel (with Sara and Kristen) and once to the Chic resort. Two years ago, with Allie unavailable, I elected to come back with Barb and chose a nice place. We stayed at the Excellence El Carmen which was a highly rated new property from the Excellence chain which has some of the top resorts in Mexico and elsewhere. It was indeed quite nice in a sterile, upscale airport lounge kind of way. Last year we went to Aruba as a winter getaway with Allie. This year, with Allie otherwise occupied, I shopped around, was tempted to return to the Excellence but was put off slightly by some recent reviews, and ended up choosing a well-rated alternative.
So here we are at the Iberostar Grand Bavaro which got very high marks on TripAdvisor and everywhere else I looked. We booked through Southwest Vacations whose one-stop online shopping makes everything easier and a tiny bit cheaper than doing it yourself. It kind of sets you up for the “turn off your brain, open your wallet and let us take care of you” attitude you need to successfully succumb to the all-inclusive bubble. Also, Southwest flies nonstop from BWI to Punta Cana, making things even easier. Iberostar, I came to learn, is a large Spanish hotel chain and the Grand Bavaro is their top-rated resort in the world for the time being.
Tuesday, Jan. 29
We got up early, bid adieu to Manny and Buster, and got to BWI airport by 7am for our 8:45am flight. Everything was on time, and we arrived in Punta Cana by 1:30pm. We’d bought transfers with our package, so found our contact, hopped in a minibus, and were at the Grand Bavaro by 3pm. Check in was easy and we were in our room soon enough to check out the tail end of the lunch buffet.
Every resort is a little different. Here, there are buffets for all meals, with an option from five menu-based restaurants at dinner. There’s an Italian, French, Mediterranean, Surf & Turf and Japanese teppanyaki place. It was suggested that we make reservations at the various menu restaurants, but no obvious way to do it online. Instead, they said to check with your “butler” on arrival. We did, and still had trouble getting in places. More on that below.
The lunch buffet was impressive, with an array of hot and cold dishes, ceviches, charcuterie, cheese, and a grill area. Reflecting the hotel’s Spanish heritage, each buffet featured a number of familiar Iberian items like jamon iberico, chorizo, manchego and mahon cheese, and churros and chocolate. It was easy to like. We sampled a bunch of things until they closed down the buffet around 4pm. We wandered the resort a bit to get oriented, then headed back to the room to unpack, get settled, check email, and get ready to eat again.
We met our “butler,” Luis, and discussed dinner reservations at the various restaurants. He said the Tuesday night was fully booked but he would help with tables for the other nights. We decided which ones to try and he said he’d let us know in the morning. That meant we were back at a buffet later that evening for “Dominican Night” which featured a few local specialties including a roast sucking pig, a tasty fish soup, and variations of beans and rice. One featured item was the Chimi, a pulled pork sandwich grilled with a bunch of other things like onions, cheese, peppers and several special sauces. It’s hangover food, greasy, tasty and hard to resist.
Wednesday, Jan. 30
Barb woke up early to claim a front-row beach palapa by 7:30 or so, then headed over to breakfast. I found her at the breakfast buffet about an hour later. We stayed at the beach for the morning, with Barb out in the sun and me in the shade. The beach itself was quite lovely, reasonably quiet despite a steady stream of walkers going past. Iberostar owns four contiguous resorts along Bavaro Beach, amounting to a good half-mile or so of beachfront. The beach appears to extend for miles after that, but with an achy foot I didn’t get far beyond the Iberostar properties. Giving credit to some level of local zoning, the resort buildings are low-rise and set back from the beach, so mostly what you see are sand and palm trees…and lots of people once you get to the more family-oriented resorts.
After a morning roast and another round of lunch buffet, Barb headed to the pool for the afternoon; I give her credit for also trying an exercise class in the pool. I stayed in the shade at the beach for a while, reading, curating my iTunes downloads, and listening to a podcast or two. The wifi signal on the beach was strong, thank goodness, another modern requirement for the overindulged tourist. Around mid-afternoon, with my battery getting low, I repaired to the room to recharge and rest from the exertions of the day. This is pretty much all we want from a first day of vacation.
I was told to reconfirm our return airport transfers that first morning, which I did, and found that it was also a chance for the Amstar transportation fellow to sell me on excursions. The only one he really touted was an all-day whale-watching trip. I hadn’t heard about such a thing before in the Dominican Republic but I did a little quick research to confirm that Atlantic humpback whales winter there much like the Pacific ones do in Hawaii. I was game to book a trip for Friday.
Luis continued to keep us posted of his efforts to get us into a restaurant. Finally, at about 6:00pm he let us know he managed to get us a table at the Italian restaurant at 6:30. We thanked him and headed down, still mostly full from lunch. The deal with the restaurants is that you order from a more limited menu and you get table service like a regular restaurant. But everything is still already included unless you want an upgraded wine. Barb had a nice beef carpaccio appetizer and a salt-baked fish while I had a calamari appetizer and risotto with lobster and shrimp. All very delicious. We were done quickly and didn’t really want any of the menu desserts, so we headed over to the main buffet restaurant where it also happened to be Italian night. Barb got a capstone little plate of spaghetti with butter while I stocked up on a cheese plate and another glass of wine. As we were enjoying ourselves, Luis busted us and asked why we weren’t still at the Italian restaurant. We explained that it had been very nice and we thanked him again for getting us in, but we wanted something a bit different for dessert. He didn’t seem convinced. I’m not sure if he somehow lost face in the exchange or if he just decided we were true pigs, but we felt somewhat diminished. We finished our plates, though.
That evening, Barb settled in the room to do emails and TV while I sought out some scotch and a quiet place to sit. I ended up on the beach where it was pleasant for a little while but eventually became a little too quiet and dark. It was amazing how little activity there was toward the ocean side of the resorts after dark, and I began to think there was maybe question of security.
Thursday, Jan. 31
This day was largely a repeat of the first. Barb got to the beach just a few minutes later and was not able to snag a front-row palapa, but she got one in the second row which ended up working just as well for me. I read for the morning, managed to take a walk on the beach, and generally lazed around for the day, as did Barb. The weather was a little overcast and breezy in the morning, which was fine for me. Barb preferred the sunnier afternoon.
After the previous evening’s dinner issues, Luis let us know he didn’t have any reservation for us this night, but had been able to make a 9pm reservation for Friday at the Mediterranean place. We were fine with it, particularly since it was “meat lover’s” night at the main buffet. We enjoyed some decent roast beef and somewhat less-skillfully grilled lamb and steak. More than enough for us to fill up.
There were entertainment shows that we skipped each evening, mostly in an auditorium that was some distance from our room (a good thing). This particular evening it was “Caribbean Night” and a band set up on the “ship” that was just outside our room. The ship is the main architectural feature of the resort, but it served little actual purpose other than as stage for this one night. Barb stayed in the room, trying to drown out the music with TV while she did emails and fell asleep. I found a scotch and another quiet place to sit until the carnival was over. We are not party people.
Friday, Feb. 1
Excursion Day. I woke up at 5:30am to get down to the lobby to meet my bus at the appointed hour of 6:05am. I was the first one on as we slowly made our way to about a half-dozen other resorts along the coast. We accumulated a total of about 40 other tourists, mostly Americans and a smattering of Europeans, including Russians, based on overhearing their conversations.
We then drove another two hours along the north coast to catch our whale watching boat at Sabana de la Mar. This was my first chance to see more of the island, and in fact my first time off the grounds of a resort on the Dominican Republic, other than going to/from the airport. The island appeared pleasantly green, largely agricultural and/or pasture land. The north coast seemed sparsely populated and road traffic was light, mainly consisting of various commercial trucks and small scooters, often with two people aboard; very few cars.
Whale watching tours seem to be relatively new for the Dominican Republic.The whales have been coming for centuries to Samana Bay to give birth and mate. I’ve long wanted to see the whales during winter in Hawaii, but haven’t yet had the chance. Stumbling into this opportunity in the Caribbean was an unexpected surprise.
Samana Bay is a long way from the main tourist areas on the island, but has lately become a destination for cruise ships since a dock at Samana has been built for them. To make a day of it from Punta Cana, most tours also incorporate a visit to Cayo Levantado (aka Bacardi Island). The itinerary for our tour was a little vague, and not well advertised by brochure or on the web, so the day was a little bit of a mystery, but I was fine to be carted along for a ride.
This makes my third time seeing whales. The first, in Alaska about 20 years ago, was especially enchanting. As part of an excursion from our cruise ship, we were in a relatively small boat on a glass-calm inlet among several pods of humpbacks. We could hear them breathing as they surfaced and watched their tales as they dove to feed. It was quiet and magical. The second time was the summer of 2017 out of Boston when I had a day to kill. That tour was through the Boston Aquarium on a large boat. We went out near the finger of Cape Cod where humpbacks come to feed. The Aquarium announcer was informative and the large boat gave us an elevated view down into the water, with everyone getting a good rail-side view. Today’s trip offered the potential of seeing humpback calves with their mothers, and seeing the breaching and tail slapping activities of mating.
The tour guide gave us a running spiel on the bus ride about the Dominican Republic, making me realize I knew precious little about its actual history, political or economic climate. I now know a tiny bit more, thanks more to Wikipedia than the guide. For example:
The Dominican Republic is the largest economy (according to the U.S. State Department and the World Bank) in the Caribbean and Central American region. It is an upper middle-income developing country, with a 2015 GDP per capita of US$14,770. Over the last two decades, the Dominican Republic have been standing out as one of the fastest-growing economies in the Americas – with an average real GDP growth rate of 5.4% between 1992 and 2014.
During the last three decades, the Dominican economy, formerly dependent on the export of agricultural commodities (mainly sugar, cocoa and coffee), has transitioned to a diversified mix of services, manufacturing, agriculture, mining, and trade. The service sector accounts for almost 60% of GDP; manufacturing, for 22%; tourism, telecommunications and finance are the main components of the service sector; however, none of them accounts for more than 10% of the whole.
Wikipedia: Dominican Republic
My overall impression of as much of the island as I saw is that it’s underdeveloped, which is not a bad thing. It has potential, the climate is favorable, the hills offer variety and greenery, the farmland and small towns we saw from the road were, if not exactly thriving, not in abject poverty. It’s a more favorable impression than I’ve had before from the area immediately around Punta Cana. Granted, I haven’t seen a large city like Santo Domingo, or larger towns like Higuey, but the north side of the island is quite pretty.
The bus dropped us dockside at Sabana de la Mar where we were given wristbands for entry to the national park of Samana Bay. It’s encouraging they seem to have some rules and restrictions on the number of daily boats and tourists. The boats themselves are fairly small and spartan and we saw maybe 8-10 boats on the bay that were not small local fishing boats. There are ostensibly rules that no more than 3 boats can be around a given pod of whales, but that is not well enforced, as we found.
We were hustled onto the boat right about 9am, given a life jacket and were on our way within minutes and without much explanation. Winds were light and the seas near the coast were only 1-2 feet, but almost immediately everyone was splashed by spray in the open boat. It reminded me of the Disney water ride warnings, “You will get wet, you may get soaked.” I had a small travel bag and quickly stowed my phone, hoping it and the rest of the contents would stay relatively dry.
After maybe 20 minutes of high speed running (and bouncing and splashing) out into the large bay, we slowed with the first sighting of whales. It was a pod of 4 humpbacks making their way along the surface at a fairly good clip. We followed along for a few minutes, attracting another couple of boats. Our boat rocked sharply in the choppier waters as we slowed for the whales, and everyone scrambled around to get the best view without falling overboard. I knew with that much movement and so many people jostling for position, and with the memory of having about 50 mediocre shots of whale bits and waves from my last whale watching experience, I kept my camera stowed and just enjoyed being in the presence of the leviathans, hoping we weren’t bothering them too much.
Over the next hour or so we moved from pod to pod (or were they the same pod?), generally seeing whales on the move for a few minutes at a time. We didn’t see any calves, nor did we see the characteristic glimpse of their tail as they dived. It was still very exciting to see these giants motoring along in the water, catching a glimpse of their mass just before they surfaced. Twice, in the far distance, I got a glimpse of a big splash, presumably from a whale breaching, but we didn’t see any jumps nearby.
It became a game of chasing other boats to see who might have a sighting, with the seas getting rougher, upward of 3-5 feet as we got closer to open ocean. Samana Bay itself was quite large, with a dramatic headland on the north side and a couple of cruise ships in the distance. Even when we weren’t immediately around whales there were things to see and keep your mind off the waves. Nevertheless, I was glad I hadn’t eaten and no one else became visibly seasick.
We spotted some bigger splashes relatively nearby and found it was one whale doing tail slaps. He kept at it for several minutes as we got within 20 yards or so. These were very forceful slaps, with nearly his whole back half rising in the air and smashing down. A couple of times he twisted into a full tail throw (or penducle throw, for those in the know, evidently). Very impressive. I still don’t think I would have gotten a good photo of my own, but there are plenty on the web, like this one.
After maybe 5 minutes, the whale tired of his display or perhaps accomplished its purpose. In any case, our guide decided to declare victory and celebrated our whale watching experience by pouring rum and Cokes all around and directing the boat toward our next destination. It seemed over a little too quickly and I would have liked to chase more sightings, but I was not in charge and we didn’t get a vote.
We arrived about 11am at Cayo Levantado, a small island in Samana Bay dedicated to tourists, also called Bacardi Island because the rum company uses it for advertising and parties. Part of the island is given over to a private resort, but the public part includes a very pretty beach along with a whole bunch of tourist souvenir huts, thatched bars and restaurant/picnic areas.
As part of our tour we were given an authentic pina colada: a fresh pineapple with the meat mashed up inside, a splash of coconut water and rum. It had a straw but that was useless because every sip sucked up pineapple pulp; you had to attack it with a spoon. It was refreshing, if a bit messy, and changed my attitude toward the drink which I’d wrongly associated more with coconut than pineapple.
We were also given a beach chair and told to take it wherever we wanted, but not to use the beach chairs already densely scattered about because they each cost $1 or $5 for the nice padded ones. I wasn’t in the market for a sunburn so sought out a shaded area under a palm tree to work on my pina colada. We had about an hour to kill before it was our lunch time…an hour which I slowly realized could have been used for more whale watching if we hadn’t been cut off.
The beach was already well populated with European tourists but my spot in the shade was not bad and offered a bit of a view and a small breeze. Before long, a Russian family dragged their chair near mine in the shade and deposited a napping baby. They were a little close, but at least stayed quiet in order to not wake the baby. About 10 minutes later a group of German tourists wedged 5 more beach chairs into the shade, surrounding me and the Russians. They plopped down and engaged in nonstop conversations, eventually waking the baby and causing me to flee. American tourists are bad enough, but sometimes Europeans can be just as rude and clueless. I wandered the island for a little bit, waiting for lunch.
At noon, our group gathered and we were led to a pavilion where we had a basic but decent little buffet of grilled fish, chicken, rice and beans. We’d been offered the opportunity to upgrade to grilled lobster for $30 which seemed exorbitant. No one took them up on the offer. We ate at picnic tables and I ended up finding a spot at a table with a group of Belgian girls from another group. They were very friendly, spoke good English and we ended up having a nice conversation about travels, airplanes, life in Belgium, and life in the USA (sorry about Trump). It was the most pleasant 20 minutes of my time on the island.
Soon enough, lunch was done and we were left with a couple more hours on the island. Meanwhile, hundreds more European tourists from the two nearby cruise ships had landed, I’d lost my beach chair and there was less and less shade to be had. I hadn’t brought a book (which would have gotten soaked anyway) nor headphones for music, so I was stuck, medialess — a very unusual circumstance for me these days. I wandered as much of the island as I could then found a shady picnic table where I watched a nonstop parade of tourists taking selfies by a palm tree on the beach. This gave me time to contemplate the day and realize that while I enjoyed the whales, I really didn’t need this time on the island since I’d already paid for a very nice, much less crowded beach, pools, unlimited food and drinks back at the resort. First world problems.
At 2:30 we finally gathered back together to start our journey home. First there was another 45-minute bouncing boat ride back across the bay. We didn’t see any more whales but at least they put the flaps down on one side of the boat to reduce the spray. We hauled back onto the bus and people napped most of the 2-hour ride back to Punta Cana. I was back at the resort in plenty of time to get ready for our 9pm dinner reservation.
If fact, there was time for Barb and I to go down to the buffet for some appetizers around 8pm. It was our last night so why not take every advantage? At 9, we headed over to the Mediterranean restaurant where we had a nice meal that is now lost in the blur of over-indulgence.
Saturday, Feb. 2
Our 5pm flight enabled us to stay in the room until the noon checkout time. Barb had one last bake at the pool while I lounged on the porch for the morning. After checking out, we had one last buffet lunch and a gin and tonic before catching the bus to the airport. Our flight was delayed by about 45 minutes but the waiting area in the airport was tolerable. The flight home was uneventful and we were back home to Manny and Buster before 9pm.
In all, this was my most enjoyable trip to the Dominican Republic and probably the best Caribbean experience I’ve had, out of many. I still vastly prefer Hawaii for an island getaway, but it’s too far for a short trip. Both Barb and I could see ourselves coming back to the Iberostar Grand Bavaro. It’s not perfect, but it’s plenty good on every major count. Most important, the staff seems welcoming and interested in the guests having a good time while not being resentful, forced or uncomfortable. It’s the closest I’ve seen to a Four Seasons level of service, which is saying something.
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