Our 6:30am Westjet departure from Halifax to Toronto, upon descent into Pearson Airport. We were treated a very different approach than one normally gets into Toronto: our routing went somewhat into the Niaraga Escarpment and included an excellent view of Niagara Falls.
Toronto had clearly gotten a sprinkling of snow: the fields in southern Ontario were surprisingly white.
Our second Westjet flight of the day left and arrived right on time! Oh and the lead Flight Attendant sang to the entire plane a few times! She was hilarious.
Both flights were packed to the gills, as they say. However, as luck had it, the only empty seat was in our row! We have a little scheme called, "Dave takes the aisle, Pam takes the window, and let's hope no one wants the middle!" Surprisingly, it works quite often - as it did today. So with a row to ourselves, we bought a meal and made our own 'first class' in Economy.
The hilly and very green topography of the Dominican Republic. With 10 million people crammed into an island (half of which is shared with Haiti), we didn't expect to see much green space. But there is definitely lots!
We landed in Punta Cana on time at 3:15PM. The small airport was host to at least a dozen wide-body jets, from several countries, including Canada, the USA, the UK, France, Germany and Colombia. Customs formalities were quick and easy, but the car rental process took a full hour.
We had been warned about the drivers in DR, and the plethora of motorcyclists weaving in and out of traffic. Three people crammed onto a motorcycle was not a rare sight. And helmets? Forget that! Somehow we survived our first day of driving here and arrived at the Melia Caribe Tropical Resort at 5:30PM.
Darkness had descended on our long day by the time we were checked into the hotel. The palms and empty loungers on the beach were kind of nice in the darkness, though...
...as was the empty pool.
The resort is simply massive -- beyond what we had imagined. A small 'train' is used to move everyone around, as the distances are too great to walk. In the dark, we didn't really know where we were going, but eventually, we stumbled upon the nucleus of the resort and had a huge pick of restaurants. We settled on the American Grill: Pam had ribs and I had filet mignon.
Having been up at 4AM, our batteries are pretty well worn down by now (11PM). It's great, though, that there is no time change between Halifax and here. Beunos noches from the DR!
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