punta cana: the excursions

Have you entered my Muir Glen Organics giveaway yet? You have one more full day to enter!

To read more about our Punta Cana adventures, you can read:

• punta cana: the resort
• punta cana: the food
• punta cana: the books

I wanted to save the best post about the Dominican for last.

And that’s the last time (maybe) I scare you away with a picture. You see that eye of the Husband’s that seems to be winking? It’s not – it’s actually twitching. You would twitch uncontrollably if you were married to me too.

When I go on vacation, I do love to relax, sit on the beach, read a book, and eat great food. But one of the most exciting parts for me is seeing how the people there really live. This, of course, has come with age – as my mom is now shaking her head at that last statement because I used to refuse to go on any kind of excursion that was not located on a beach for 10 hours.

We went on two excursions while we were in Punta Cana – a day long catamaran and the Outback Safari tour. The former is not worth mentioning to be perfectly honest with you. While it was fun, it didn’t really blow us away. Although it sure was a memorable experience for the Husband as about 4 layers of his skin is peeling off at this moment because of that day.

The latter was an excursion for the books – The Outback Safari tour was a day where tour guides brought tourists to see what the “real” Dominican was like.

Our day was spent in that truck – it was nice and cool, but the wind was a little bit much. I’m pretty sure I had windburn at the end of the day. Thankfully the feeling in my face bounced back quickly, unlike the Husband’s tomato colored skin which lasted a whole week.

The first stop on our tour was to a local school that the Outback Safari company supports. They actually support 8 or 9 schools in the Dominican so local children can get the education they need.

 
Growing up I have gone on countless missions trips with my church – even one to Mexico when I was a junior in high school – so seeing the school wasn’t as much of a shock to me as it was for other people in our group. The school was a one room building, a little bigger than my current classroom, and was filled with the “essentials” children need to learn.

The local children love when the tourists come through, so they make sure to hang out around the building, even though they are on their summer break right now.

This little girl made my heart melt – and made me want to adopt about 209320912 Dominican babies.

Part of me was upset that these children have so little to work with to learn so much. However, it is also the only thing they really know, so I am not sure how many of them actually feel deprived.

On our way out, I saw another little boy standing in the courtyard and I could not resist taking a picture of him. His facial expression, his body language – everything, just jumped out at me.

Our next stop was lunch on top of a mountain – but on the way we saw a countryside “gas station”. The locals in the countryside travel to the city every few days and fill up gallon jugs with gasoline. When they come back, they sell the gas to locals who need a car to travel to and from work. In the city, gas goes for approximately $7.00 a gallon. In the country, it can go from $8.00-$9.00 a gallon.

On our way to lunch, we had beautiful views – this is definitely something we would not have seen if we had stayed on our resort the entire time.

The restaurant we went to was used solely for Outback Safari tours, so the food was “safe” for us to eat even though we were outside of the resort. They had a large garden set up outside, complete with banana trees.

 

I had stashed bars and fruit in my bag just in case there was nothing for me to eat. Luckily, I had a few choices! We were served fried chicken (pass), rice and beans, cucumber/tomato salad, and potato salad (pass). I was polite and let others have their first servings, but once I everyone was filled up on chicken, I let myself take about 3 more servings of the rice and salad.

After lunch, we headed down the mountain a little bit and were able to see a “cigar factory”. When I say “factory”, I mean a little hut the tour company set up to let us see how cigars are made. It was interesting to see the process – and while I don’t condone smoking of any sort, cigars don’t use any chemicals like cigarettes do. But, smoke is smoke – and I’d rather not inhale it into my lungs.

Next, we went and saw how coffee and cacao are made. We were shown the process of cracking open the cacao fruit, roasting the cacao, and everyone was able to try some hot chocolate made with cacao powder.

Following this we saw what a typical Dominican home looked like. This home was also set up by the tour company, so I think it is probably a little bit on the “higher end” of housing in Punta Cana.  Many of the homes we saw were made of steel siding which looked as if people used anything they could find. This house was colorful and made completely of wood siding.

Dominican homes typically have a living room/kitchen area and two bedrooms – one for the parents and one for the children.
 

This was definitely much nicer of a home we had seen over the course of the day, but we were able to get the jist of it by seeing this home.

 

At the end of the day, we headed to a public beach in Bavaro, another location in Punta Cana, and body surfed for about an hour.

The day was leisurely, but informative – and it had the right amount of different activities so no one got antsy throughout it all. Our tour guide was funny, our group was lively (and actually all from England!), and if you are ever in the DR, I would recommend you take this tour.

Question: When you go on vacations, do you ever go on excursions? What has been your favorite one?

Tagged as: dominican republic, excursion, outback safari tour, punta cana, travel