Day Two. Mojitos. More Success.

I’m not actually sure that vacation days come any more perfect than this one. There’s actually not even that much to tell as we didn’t really DO anything. But, come on, isn’t that the whole point of vacation?

It started out at a French bakery (okay, Katie and BJ started out there a LOT earlier than I did) enjoying a long, leisurely cup of coffee. Another long, leisurely stroll back to the hotel and then a long, leisurely stroll to the beach. And, yeah, that was pretty much our morning.

We were told by a colleague of Katie’s that lives down here that when we got to the beach, we should keep walking way out past the cove as it was less crowded and more shady there. It took us about half an hour and I was burnt by the time we got there. Ah, the life of the pale-skinned. But it turns out there was a fringe benefit that made it oh-so-worth it. Right at about the point when we had settled on a spot to plunk down, we noticed a sign for a spa across the street. What we had to do became obvious. We detoured, made massage appointments for later in the afternoon, then continued on our way to the beach. Which, I might add, was completely delightful. Sunny, warm but not hot, clear blue water at a bath-like temp, palm trees…. aaah.

But finally we had to tear ourselves away…. for massages. It was rough. The thing about this place was that not only were you paying for a massage, you were paying for an experience. You start out outside sitting in the fresh warm air on cushioned benches full of pillows.... then come in and shower.... and then are taken to a Turkish bath to “sweat it out”.... and THEN you have an hour of massage bliss, at the end of which you are praying for it to never end. But it does and it sucks that it does but then they serve you tea and fresh fruit to help you get over it. Katie and I came out at the same time and I’m pretty sure it took us about a full half hour to be able to be conversational. And another half hour of just lounging around on the pillows outside and watching the storm before we could move on. Our only consolation is that we're going back tomorrow. I'm not kidding.

The weather was totally on our side today, as well. All morning and afternoon while we were at the beach, it was sunny and lovely and not too hot (as opposed to yesterday when I did not stop sweating all day, literally). When we were in having our massages, a torrential downpour started, but at that point the sounds of it only added to the relaxation experience. It kept up for a couple of hours so, since we clearly had NO choice, we went to have drinks and an early dinner to avoid making the long walk back in the rain. Divine intervention as the food was fabulous and, more importantly, we finally found the as-yet-elusive mojitos! (And, yes, I realize that saying that we “finally” found them sounds a tad absurd since we’ve been in this town less than 24 hours but, you know, we’re on vacation time. Twenty-four hours without a mojito while in the DR is kind of like a month in the real world. It works sort of like dog years.)

We tore ourselves away and headed back to our room to refresh after our clearly grueling day where we are, as I speak, storing up energy to head out around 10 tonight for dancing and, yes, more mojitos. Vacation is hard.