Dominican 2017

Diving continued today with two more dives. Still no turtles etc, just a stingray, an eel and some random small fish. By the way, next time when I take a diving course abroad I will definitely do the theory before hand online. It could have been possible now too, but we decided to read it here. There really isn't too much time or motivation in the evenings to read the book.. :p

We also managed to find a free, good public beach nearby and spent the afternoon there, getting slightly red due to sunburn. That's pretty much it for today, been kind of a lazy day. I exchanged some emails with a flight club in Santo Domingo, on Monday we will go fly a Tecnam with them. :)

Today was the first diving day, and everything went much better than yesterday. We met the dive center people at the resort in the morning and did two dives from the boat. The dives both belonged to the Advanced Open Water Diver course, which we are taking and which consist of five dives in total.

Nothing special in the dives, just some decent corals and small fish. Anything after Palau feels a bit flat, as the visibility and marine life there were so much better than almost anywhere else. Now we were mostly concentrated in training some diving skills, like proper kicking techniques.

In the afternoon nothing really special was done. This is the main tourist resort area of the country, so it's a bit difficult area to do anything for budget-concious resort-avoiding travellers.. Almost all the good beaches etc are private properties of the resorts, and there are not much other sights around here. Well, that will change in a few days when we move to other areas.

We noticed that the supermarket cafeteria is actually very popular lunch place among the locals, the food is cheap and tasty so today we had our lunch there just like yesterday. Well, works..

We had agreed to meet the dive company guys in the morning, but I didn't exactly manage to get Iryna moving as she was still very tired after the flights. I drove to the dive company alone, trying to sort out our dive schedule, pick up the course book and so on.

That didn't turn out to be really easy. The dive company was located inside a big all-inclusive resort, and the resort security guards wouldn't let anybody inside without company. They didn't recognize the name of the dive company either, or speak anything else than Spanish. And, the dive company managed to give us wrong phone number so I couldn't call them. After some futile attempts to contact the company I just drove back home.

Quick visit to the nearby city of La Romana, obtaining SIM cards for phones, some local money and food from a supermarket and we went to the resort again. It took an hour of phone calls and waiting, but finally we managed to get inside, meet the dive company staff and schedule our dives for tomorrow. Have to read some chapters of the book in the evening..

After the long flight we landed to still sunny Punta Cana. Aah, the Caribean weather, I have been missing it. Not too hot, just perfectly warm and humid.

Getting a rental car from the airport caused a bit more trouble than it should have, but in an hour or so we were on the way towards our apartment in a Chervolet Trax SUV, which seems to be brand new., just 2700km in the odometer so far.

The slight mess was caused by the rental companies in here operating the same way as they do in the US: They require a separate LDW (loss damage waiver, insurance) to be purchased, and they are not included in the rental price when booking online. Naturally they are way overpriced, which I was not too happy to accept. I was going to use the UK insurance company ICarHire which I usually use with US rental agencies, but here I had no internet access yet to purchase their policy, and this small local car rental agency wouldn't have accepted it anyway. There was no WiFi available at the airport either. Well, lost some $50 each in that mess but it's not so horrible.

Finding the apartment required some searching and phone calls, but finally we managed to meet the apartment owner and settle in our comfortable residence where we stay for the next couple of days. One pizza, one beer and both were totally ready to sleep for the next 12 hours..

I'm starting to hate airports more and more.. Been travelling too much in the last months I guess. The crowds, hassle and confusion of inexperienced tourists make them annoying places to be. Some idiot decided to check in a dog cage on bagdrop desk today, making everyone else wait 15 minutes for the operation.. It's BAG DROP, not "Check your fucking dog in" desk.

Ah well. Brussels airport Diamond Lounge is peaceful and nice, with Leffe beer on tap and some proper coffee and breakfast. In an hour we should be already in the aircraft and on our way towards warmness. The aircraft should be 787, so this will also be my first flight on the Dreamliner. :)

Meh.. 7am, already boarded a Finnair flight to Brussels and slept like four hours. Not a suitable time to be awake for me.

Well, at least getting to the airport was easy. Lauri is visiting Finland from Prague where he lives nowadays, and borrowed my car for the rest of the week, driving me to the airport. He happens to be a taxi driver, so I also learned a handy way to drop people to Helsinki-Vantaa Airport, the underground tunnel below Terminal 2. No need to walk in the snow. :)

Finland became really cold and snowy just yesterday, so I escaped at the right time..