Dominican Republic~ days 4 & 5

Tuesday morning, the day we got to sleep in, ahhhhhhh.  We lazily ate breakfast, packed up our things and travelled about 2 hrs to an all-inclusive resort in La Romana for the remainder of our stay.  At this point, I was still pinching myself that we are in the Caribbean, and we have the rest of the week to play and relax!

The lobby of the resort was completely open air and you could see straight out to the ocean.  Incredible!  I've never seen anything like this!  We couldn't check in until 3 pm so we hit up the buffet.  There were FLAMINGOS in the courtyard!!!  Once we got to our room, we got into our swim suits and headed down to check out the beach.  After a little while, we went back to our room and got dressed up for dinner.

We found this cute little hermit crab in our room!

Wednesday morning we booked a snorkeling excursion to Saona Island.  Elder Anderson had recommended we contact John at ScubaFun in Bayahibe, which is right down the beach from where our resort was.  We met up with several other people and boarded a speed boat.  We stopped practically right in front of our resort (wayyyyy out from the shore) to snorkel first.  It's always such a surprise when you put your face in the water and see fish right there!!  We got back on the boat and made the rest of the trip out to the island where we had lunch.  There were ladies with briefcases full of jewelry, trying to sell to  all the tourists.  There were also guys with wheelbarrows full of fresh coconuts that they hack open with machetes, waiting for someone to buy.  I got anxious, I just wanted everyone to leave us alone!  We did end up buying a couple souvenirs for the kids and a coconut to drink.  I'm probably in the minority buuuuut not a huge fan of (warm) coconut water.

These fish are everywhere!  (sergeant majors)

On the way back, we stopped at this shallow natural pool.  The water was SOOOO clear and there were gigantic starfish just lying on the bottom.  

This might have been the night we ordered room service for dinner.... and Matt swore we'd go out later and have a second dinner, but nope, I'm pretty sure we were dead on the bed.

One funny thing..... we realized that we weren't going to make the rest of the week with the clean Gs that we packed, we had them laundered for us at the resort.  They brought them back all individually hung up on hangers!!!  They were probably like, what the heck are these???!  haha