Arrivin’ in Style
How do you arrive at a destination wedding?
Our return to North America and brief stop in San Francisco in early November was planned so that we could get to the Caribbean for November 17th. Amy, one of Yuki’s high school friends who now lives in Red Deer, invited us to a destination wedding in the Dominican Republic. We decided to include this in our travel plans and spend November and part of December in the Caribbean.
The first step was figuring out how to get to the wedding. We booked our flight and then tried to do some research on ground transportation. Online forums like TripAdvisor were not as useful as we hoped; they offered little information. Others had posted the same question (“How do we get from the airport into Santo Domingo, and from Santo Domingo to the resort in Bayahibe using public transportation?”) but most answers contained unhelpful suggestions to ride over-expensive taxis and subsequently get ripped off.
When we arrived in the country, we spent the better part of 3 hours in the Santo Domingo Airport going through immigration, exchanging money, and figuring out how to get into town like the locals do.
Gua guas are small 12–20 person vans that serve as public buses. They’re not government-owned but somehow they run on a system — it’s not online and only spread by word of mouth. There are no designated bus stops or any signs indicating route or fare information. Online forums said that these were impossible to take without speaking Spanish, but we managed to get by just fine. The gua guas usually wait until they’re full before taking off. Along the way, a conductor hangs out of the door yelling the destination’s name and calling people onto the bus. They cost around 50 pesos a person (less than $2 CAD), which is miniscule compared to a taxi that would cost $40 or more. The second gua gua we took cheated us out of 25 pesos ($0.80 CAD) but since then we have found the drivers and other passengers to be generally helpful and empathetic to our plight — even if we didn’t speak the same language.
We spent two nights in the capital city of Santo Domingo before setting off for the Dreams La Romana all-inclusive resort, where the wedding would take place.
To get there, we took a gua gua to an intercity bus terminal in Santo Domingo and then caught a greyhound-like bus to the nearest city of La Romana. To our surprise, the express bus offered free-but-slow WiFi. The ride was comfortable and a movie played on the small TV in front. In La Romana, the bus conductor showed us where to get off and pointed to the next gua gua that would take us to the front gate of the resort.
This last gua gua dropped us off at the resort entrance and about half a dozen gardeners stopped working and stood upright to watch us as we picked up our backpacks and walked up to the guardhouse.
The guard checked our names on his guest list and made a call to some manager, who said we could not walk the 2.5km long entrance road to the resort. Though he couldn’t give us a reason, I suspect it was because it wouldn’t look good to the other guests arriving by private coach. Most guests would have booked the resort stay as a package, with flights and transportation included. The manager insisted on calling us a taxi but we weren’t willing to pay (we had gotten this far on buses, haven’t we?). Only out-of-place backpackers like us would arrive to a resort on foot.
Under the advice of an employee who had subsequently arrived on another gua gua, we decided to walk in anyway and left the guard at his post. A few vans passed us. Shortly after we began walking, a guy in a truck slowed down to pass us, looking at us inquisitively, so I pointed to the back of the truck and smiled questioningly. He stopped, waved us on, and before we knew it we were bobbing along in the back.
He dropped us off far enough from the entrance to avoid rousing suspicion and strange looks, but it was close enough for us to see the lobby. We were very grateful for the ride and tried to give him some money for his kindness, but he wouldn’t take it.
We felt pretty proud of ourselves for getting to the resort inexpensively and were happy to fill up at the lunch buffet; we hadn’t eaten very well in Santo Domingo. We got some cocktails and made sure that we enjoyed the resort for all that it had during the time we were there.
Travis and Amy’s destination wedding was a magical and spectacular sight. It was held in the late afternoon, beside the ocean, and the sunlight peaking through the clouds made for a dramatic bridal entrance. We were two of 17 guests in a very intimate ceremony and were honoured to be among the closest friends and family who undertook the journey to get there.
What made the wedding especially enjoyable for us was that it was the first where we got to mingle with the other guests and get to know them. This was the first time we met new people at a wedding and actually talked to them enough to become friends with them.
The day after the wedding, Travis and Amy organized a trip to Saona Island for their guests. We thought they’d be coming with us, but they were too exhausted and likely needed time to themselves.
The tour got off to a rough start, as the van driver couldn’t find the right place to drop us off to get the boat to the island. On top of that, it began raining and the rain whipped into our faces as the boat sped along the coast.
Along the way to the island, the boat stopped at a sandbar shallow enough to stand in. The water was a beautiful turquoise. There were lots of boats and people standing and swimming around. It was a new experience for us and it was nice and refreshing to be in the water just as the sun broke through the clouds.
We didn’t know it at the time, but Saona Island is the #1 thing to do in the Dominican Republic. People take 2-hour bus rides from resorts all over the country just to go to the island, which seems funny because the island’s main attraction is a long beach — not unlike the ones in front of every all-inclusive resort in the country.
Admittedly, the beach is very nice and we had a lot of fun in the water, rolling with the waves as they crashed into shore. However, we found it odd that people would pay so much for an all-inclusive resort with a beach and pool and then leave it to go to another faraway beach.
What we enjoyed was the opportunity to bond with our new Albertan friends: Helen, Will, Vivian, and their families. They were all very nice people and it was special that we could enjoy each other’s company so well.
It took a lot longer to get back to the resort from the island than it did to get there in the morning. Whereas we’d taken a speed boat to the island, we cruised back in a sailing catamaran. The rum came out and the crew were dancing, but our party sat in the shady back of the boat, chatting.
We checked out of the resort in the morning before the tour, so we had to sneak back in under the cover of our friends. Then we gorged ourselves at a poolside pizza stand because the dinner buffet wasn’t open yet, and we didn’t know what food we could get in the town we’d be staying at that night.
The one unfortunate part of this wedding is that everyone booked their vacations separately and so everyone had different arrival and departure dates. It would have been nice to spend more time with the other guests, but we had only booked two nights in the resort.
To save money, we shortened our stay in the resort and booked a much cheaper AirBnB in the nearby town of Bayahibe. Two days later, Vivian messaged us about visiting the town, so we met her and her mom on the beach and took them for a walk around the area.
The town is small and there isn’t a lot to see. Perhaps the highlight of the otherwise uneventful little town is the supermarket. It’s the first grocery store I’ve been in where the shelves are lined with only one row of products. This is because everything is imported and food is expensive.
We’ve actually had a lot of trouble finding affordable non-touristy food in the Dominican Republic. There just aren’t a lot of restaurants and a lot of the food tends to be fried. The favourite dish here is fried fish or chicken, which we got on our last night in Bayahibe.
The beach at Bayahibe is supposed to be nice but it turned out to be quite dirty and unappealing, so we only stayed a few nights and then set off for Punta Cana. I’d been secretly hoping that we’d end up somewhere with a nice beach so that we could extend our stay there for a week or more… we’ll see.
