2007 wasn't exactly what you would call a good year for us, both of us had been very stressed with work and the start of the year saw me hurt my back and be off work and house bound for 4 months. Feeling very stressed and frustrated we decided that we needed to get away. Neither of us are what you would call 'beach people', I get very bored sitting on a beach doing nothing and so our usual type of holiday is to go and tour around like we have done in places like Tuscany or to visit a city like Rome and do a lot of sightseeing.

We knew that for this holiday we wanted to relax and do nothing and that a beach holiday would be perfect this time. The only beach holiday I'd ever had up until then was for our honeymoon when we went to Mauritius but as much as we loved our time there we wanted to try somewhere new this time, but where?

We started looking at places like Fuerteventura but as we were going to be travelling in September we found out that the coast that we wanted to go to was going to be particularly windy at that time of year. We then started looking at the Greek Islands but the more we looked into it the harder we found to find a resort that was near a sandy beach, that would get good weather and that wasn't either a German, American or British resort. I should point out that we have absolutely nothing against Germans or American's and being British ourselves we obviously don't have a problem with the Brits. It's just that when we go on holiday we would prefer to ideally be in a resort with a broad mix of nationalities rather than one specific, including our own, as hotels that do cater for a specific nationality often tailor everything from the food to the decor to their tastes and if you are not that target audience you also often feel excluded as all you hear being spoken all around you is German, Italian, Spanish etc.

Eventually we decided to look further afield in search of the perfect holiday destination and started to look at the Caribbean. It was then that we decided to go to the Dominican Republic. We ended up booking at the Riu Palace Macao at Punta Cana through Thomson Holidays which turned out to be an excellent choice. The hotel is rated as a 5 star hotel but to be honest I would say that it was really a 4 star hotel. That's not to say that we were unhappy with anything just that the 5 star rating seems to get handed out a little too easily and if I were staying in a 5 star hotel I'd expect supreme quality not 'just' excellent quality.

The first thing that hits you about the Dominican Republic is the heat. When you step off the plane and walk across the tarmac to a thatched roofed terminal building it's like walking into an oven. The second thing that hits you is how poor the country is and how reliant they are on the tourist dollar. This has two effects, one is that you get excellent service the other is that they try to milk you for every penny and it starts at the airport. Now don't let any of this put you off because some of it isn't compulsory and most of it is dirt cheap anyway. For example, as soon as you get off the plane and walk into the terminal building you have no choice but to pose with two women in grass skirts for a photo. The weird thing is that there is no explanation for this or any way it seems of avoiding it and it only becomes clear when you come to fly home when, in the departure lounge, you can buy a print. I can't remember how much these prints where other than it wasn't a lot but there was no pressure at all to buy them. The next thing you have to do is buy a tourist card which costs you $10, after you've then gone through passport control and baggage claim you are pounced on by dozens of eager baggage porters who want to take you case to your coach. We found at later that you can just say no and they will leave you alone but we let one of them do it and ended up paying him $5. It turns out that we 'over paid' by about $4 but to be perfectly honest I would have felt bad about paying someone 50p to carry all my luggage in 30+ degree heat.

As you leave the airport you become acutely aware just how poor the rest of the country is, it's basically a third world country, roads are often little more than dirt tracks, some people do live in tin shacks, you'll often see 4 or 5 people on the back of a moped and 20 men in the back of a pick up truck hoping to get a day's work at one of the thousands of construction sites that are all over the island (mostly new hotels and holiday apartments).

Morally we did feel bad about the fact that most people on the island earn only a few dollars a day yet here we were off to a 5 star luxury hotel but then if nobody came to the island they would be earning even less or nothing as most of their economy is completely dependent on tourists. Before arriving we had pretty much assumed and had decided that we would have to tip for everything and that when we did we would tip well but at our hotel anyway tipping simply didn't seem to be something that anybody did or that the staff expected. Not wishing to carry money around with us all the time we simply decided to give one large tip at the end to our waiter (you get the same table and therefore waiter each evening), chamber maid and bar staff. Either they were particularly good actors or they really did seem surprised to be tipped anything at all which is a real shame if they aren't because they work incredibly hard, work very long hours, have very little time off and, by our standards, don't get paid a lot.

The resort itself is truly stunning, white sand beaches, beautiful turquoise sea that is like getting into a warm bath and palm trees as far as the eye can see. As I have already mentioned I am not normally a beach person and get bored very easily but I would sit for hours just gazing out to sea. In fact that was pretty much all we did the entire time, just sat on the beach, had cocktails brought to us, read, then went and had the most spectacular massages we have ever had in a little hut on the beach itself, before having lunch in one of the four restaurants and then going back to the beach for more 'doing nothing' and then a little dip in the sea to cool down. Perfect.

Here are some photos that I took around the resort.