Dominican 2020

Pre Game

This was the first trip where we have ever used the Park and Ride. This was semi necessary as we were flying out of Montreal at an ungodly hour. We parked our car and then ran towards the bus. When he asked where we parked we looked at each other and pointed in a general direction, realizing we would never see the car again. 

When we got to the airport, I had my general airport stroke where I have no idea what I am doing or where to go. We managed to magically check our bags, go the wrong way, find the right way and then try and go through security with an over ripened banana and a bottle of water. And I don’t waste water y’all so the whole line had to wait for me to chug my precious Flow water. 

After we circled every food stand for the next 20 minutes, complaining about prices, lack of gluten free food, the lines and being generally indecisive, we sat in our flight area, casually staring at other people that would be on our flight. When I took off my coat I realized that my hoodie (which read – “Ok, but first kombucha”) or something health trendy was so covered in cat hair, I had an OCD meltdown. I had obviously tried to nap on the couch (Tiger’s couch) before we left and not realized that every inch of my black sweater was now an orange sherpa sweater. I started trying to pick off all the hairs and then got so into it, I took it off and tried to continue to pick each and every hair off one by one. I looked so insane, an older trio pointed and laughed. I did this for more than 45 mins. I cursed that I had packed my lint roller into my checked luggage and vowed to never be without one again. EVER!

I am always gently reminded as I sit down on a plane that they are, literally, the most uncomfortable modes of transportation I have ever encountered. You cannot move your legs, you cannot rest your head on anything to sleep, you cannot get comfortable and then, during the flight, random things on your body go numb and then hurt for no reason. No? Just me?

After sitting in our seats we were accosted by a gentleman telling us we were in his seats. Well no sir, we are not in your seats. And you know why? Because I know the fucking alphabet and can put the letters J and K together and match them with a sign. So fuck off. He called a flight attendant who showed him he was sitting on the other side of the aisle. Imagine that! There are two sections with the same number! Wild! Gawd.

My boyfriend leaned over just before taking off and loudly asked what that intense smell was. I leaned over and quietly explained that it was the woman sitting next to me and apparently before leaving for the airport she had been performing ceremony with 1000 lit incense sticks. He nodded in understanding and then we spent the next 6 hours being molested by Nag Champa. 

Game Time

When we landed, everyone clapped. You know how there are weird triggers in your life that you autopilot cry or tear up for? Like some nobody you have never heard of winning some olympic sport you give zero shits about, but they are up on that podium so you just cry? (Maybe this is just me.) But when a plane lands and people clap, I just totally tear up and have a little moment. Is it because we are alive? Maybe…

We piled onto our bus, taking good looks at all the characters that may be coming to the resort with us. I had already pointed out all the sketch people and was positive they would probably be in the room next to us for the whole week. As we drove to the different resorts, dropping off people, I was starting to have a full fledged panic. Each resort we had been to looked like total dives. I started explaining to the boy that I had researched ours and the reviews were pretty good and I hoped it wasn’t a bug infested dumpster fire. I checked my Fitbit and my heart was racing. They announced that EMOTIONS was the next resort (possibly the worst name for a resort that I have ever heard, felt very French Canadian) and I closed my eyes and just prayed to the beach gods we hadn’t booked a shit hole. We stopped, we got out and, deep breathe, it looked nice. Thank the sun and sand baby Jeebus. 

When we got there our room was not ready for us. They told us to go down to the buffet and help ourselves while we waited. Picture this, I am dressed in a half covered in cat hair black hoodie, jeans and Blundstones and holding a giant winter coat, walking into a restaurant where everyone is basically wearing bathing suits. Just blending right in. No big deal. I felt like I was representing a winter biker gang on the set of a beach party music video. We ate, drank a few margs and then went to our room. So up until this point, the resort is amazing. 

When we get to our room, it gets a little less amazing. The couch has enough dodgy marks and stains on it to guess it may have been a prop for a porn shoot and we instinctively knew we would never sit on it or else we would absolutely contract a disease. The other desk and table were white and also showed a thousand stains and scuffs. The bathroom is trying to be fancy but has obvious issues. There are gaps in the caulking, there are chunks out of the wall and the drain in the shower is basically there for show. There is no door to the bathroom, it is just part of the suite – awesome. The toilet has a decorative glass door on it, so when I start reacting to something stupid that I eat, I am basically doing it in the middle of the room. Weeee. When it came to the bed, we just had to disassociate. Every night I took my little lint roller (that was in my fucking checked luggage and not my carry on for my bloody kombucha hoodie travesty) and went over every inch of the bed. Mainly for foreign hairs (gag). The first night we had a thousand daiquiris and stayed up late brainstorming about the different diseases we could be contracting just by being in the bed. 

The bed was so hard it was like basically getting a spinal adjustment every night. I enjoy my spine being punched into submission, so I was fine.

This resort had a coffee shop in it. Did this play a large part in my interest in this resort? It did. I DRANK ESPRESSOS EVERY DAY. It was glorious. We had them every morning, we had them whenever we felt tired in the afternoon or when we felt like we were a bit too day buzzed to carry on. It was magnificent. It was all included too except for the luxury coffees. My favourite luxury coffee on the “Berevage Menu” was a cup of Tim Horton’s Coffee for $5 USD. Hahah! I wouldn’t take a free cup of Tim Horton’s let alone pay that much for it. I secretly prayed the whole trip I would see someone order it so I could speak to them about their life choices. Purely out of curiosity. 

On the first day we decided we were not going to fuck around with sunscreen (I usually chose one day to Russian roulette it). We stood out on our tiny balcony and sprayed and slathered every inch of our bodies. This took forever and made the balcony floor a terrifyingly dangerous, grease skating rink. At the precise moment we decided we had enough sunscreen on, we had packed our beach bags with all of our necessary things and decided to head to the beach, it started to rain. It was the perfect comical timing.

The beach was lovely. Although, walking into the water was a solid test of how much pain you could endure on the bottom of your feet. It was like walking on a bed of nails in order to swim. Which meant that by the second or third time doing this, I basically just jumped in swimming after 2 steps regardless of how badly I bottomed myself out and beached myself. It was just less painful. 

We spent the day (everyday) reading our books on the beach. At around 5, the boy wondered if he had drank too much and also considered the fact that he was having a stroke from possibly drinking the cheapest, off brand booze all day (Like Gin was called Gem, shit like that). I asked him why he thought that. He said it was because his eyes were randomly hurting and hard to focus. I explained that he was reading at dusk and that was just his eyes desperately trying to adjust to the light. Not a stroke. We has a good laugh. 

The entertainment that night was a terrible magic show where I considered tipping off PETA to the amount of tricks that involved a dove up the magician’s sleeve. RIP magic show dove. RIP. 

On one of the days that we were sitting next to the pool (because it was raining randomly every half an hour and we kept trudging back to the room every time it did) a man approached us about their spa services. I took a look knowing full well I was probably not going to the spa. I took out my phone and took a picture because one service interested me the most. “Linphatic Dreinage.” Because the services were phonetically spelled I could not possibly trust this spa. 

There was an interesting mix of people at our resort. There were the country Canadians that stood in the pool for hours every day with their hideous Big Bubbas in hand. They were there everyday, all day. Who comes that far and doesn’t prioritize the beach?! Anyhoo, there were also a couple groups of very young boys. Like disgusting teenage boys and they seemed be by themselves. Watching them eat dinner made my stomach turn. Plates and plates of food basically being thrown at their pimply faces. And I vowed then and there that I could never raise teenagers. One night at dinner, a DJ setup on the beach and started to play dance jams while we ate. When Usher’s Yeah came on, an anthem of my generation that no matter what effing music you are into, you dance to. And as I paid my homage to the song with a quick pursed lips and back slide, I saw the young boys didn’t move and had never heard of the song. Ho boy. Babies.

Going on vacation for me is half about reading and drinking and half about people watching. I could people watch for dayssss. Which is what I did. I become obsessed with groups of people, like the 2 couples that brought a full bottle (or two) of premium booze to their dinner tables each night and finished the whole thing while the boy and I looked on drinking the free paint thinner off-brand Rhem and coke. I even took notes of what booze they brought and looked them up after. One night the man’s phone rang like 16 times at the dinner table so the boy and I loudly joked about how important he was to have his work phone going off every 8 seconds while on vacation. You are SOOO importantttttt. 

I won’t bore you with every second of the trip (also, it is about at this time where I stopped writing notes and just drank more). But I will tell you about the day trip that was infamously the most harrowing day I have experienced in a long time.

For those of you that don’t know this about me (and how could you not, I talk about it regularly to try and normalize it) but I have some wacky digestive issues. And by wacky, I mean my stomach  basically runs its own program, completely unbeknownst to me. I try my best to repeat what has worked in the past and has produced positive results but there is no telling if it will work a second time. So on the day of our day trip that we booked, I woke up early to slowly whisper sweet nothings to my intestines in hopes that a full evacuation would occur before we got on a packed tour bus and drove for 2 hours. Lucky for me it worked and then right before leaving, it worked again! Yes! Do other people in their mid thirties cheer when they BM in the morning and pray it is the last of the day?? Probably not. But this gal does!

On the bus we sat next to chatty, young couple from Ontario. They introduced themselves as Annie and Adam from Oshawa. We laughed and said we were Angie and Alex from Ottawa. They said they were there for their 4th anniversary and asked how long we had been together I looked at the boy and said uhh, maybe 3 years? He replied that it was our fourth anniversary last week and I smiled and nodded pretending I was agreeing with the information or confirming my knowledge of it. An hour into the ride I wondered why we signed up for something that had us in a fucking tour bus for so long. I was starting to feel a bit queasy from the trip, which is a bit unusual for me. The boy from Oshawa also didn’t look great either. I let him know I had a couple medical options with me if he needed them. The couple asked what I had. As I started to rhyme off my list, I realized I was old. I had Advil, Tums, Gravol, Robaxacet, ginger, Imodium and digestive enzymes. For a day trip? Yes, I know, I know. Did I also have my expensive Hauschka cream? Yes! Because even in the fucking backroads of the Dominican, my face would be moisturized. He took an Advil, she took a Tums and I took both. Weeee. I am sure you are wondering why I did not take a Gravol at this point. I have taken Gravol once before in my life and I basically fell asleep in bumper to bumper traffic, while driving, having not read it makes you drowsy. So I have generally avoided it since then.

We made a couple stops on the bus, but I was generally feeling more and more car sick, which is not my normal ailment. They passed out baby bananas for everyone, which is great, because that is usually a safe food for me – yay! When we had been in the bus for over 2 hours, I knew we had made a mistake. We stopped at a school and I asked how much longer it would be until our destination. He said about twenty minutes. Ok, we can do this. I avoided the school because it makes me feel like such a white tourist trash watching impoverished children like a spectacle. I just can’t do it. We stopped once more to look at something and then as we returned to the bus, I felt that hideously familiar feeling of my tummy turning. I sat on the bus and I tried to relax. We pulled over again and I was annoyed. Will we ever get to our fucking destination?! Everyone got off the bus to see some plant farm and I run to the driver and ask how much longer until we are near a bathroom and he says 10 minutes. I can do this. I can do this. I start panic pacing while everyone has walked to these makeshift greenhouses. I look at the boy and tell him I am hitting emergency level. I don’t know what is going to happen, but I do know my body is rejecting something. When my tummy performs the dance called the rejection roll, I have a small window to find a private shelter for my body to remove the evil. I don’t know how much detail I should go into, but while everyone was looking at plants off the main road, passed the front of the bus, I raced down the country dirt road until another road intercepted it which was protected by a fence and bush…This, ladies and gentlemen, will be the place where I leave my dignity. This will be where things you only dream about in your nightmares, occur. This will be the day my body violently rejected the baby banana a thousand times over at the side of the road in the Dominican. A special shout out to the boy, who at this point is standing about 20 feet from me keeping watch while pretending we are taking pictures of a small houses. Like we had, for some reason, emergency ran in the opposite direction of everyone for this special chance to take a picture of this one, non-descript blue house. He hero’d out while I died. 

After the most hideous moment of my life, we quietly got back onto the bus. I looked like I had just had my body taken advantage of…by my own body. When the others got back on the bus, the Oshawa couple asked where I had been. I said nowhere, brushing them off and then looked out the window with dead eyes. When we got to the first destination which had a waterfall, a tree house and some mining activities, I spent most of the time in the bathroom being sick. At one point, the boy asked our tour guide if they could get a vehicle to take us back, because I was not feeling well. The tour guide didn’t seem convinced he could, but he said maybe. After a solid 45 minutes of me being sick and crying and wondering if they could casually hire a chopper to get me out of the fucking back country, my body stopped being an asshole. I quietly emerged from my jungle outhouse and nervously ate a bit of rice. I looked at the boy while tearing up, saying that tomorrow we would find all of this hilarious. After 20 minutes, the rice remained in my body and I knew the ordeal was over. I had survived. And thank fuck because we got back onto the bus for another hour, to get to the BOAT that was taking us the rest of the way. 

The only thing I could think of for the rest of the day was, imagine if this had happened when I was on this small boat packed in with all these people. I would have just thrown myself off the boat and risked death. The only funny thing that happened on the boat was when we passed another boat that looked the same as ours and everyone had life jackets on and then I realized none of us had life jackets on. As we motored past the other boat, the Oshawa guy and I both called the life jacket boat a bunch of pussies. As we laughed I remembered that the boy couldn’t swim, so I quietly whispered him the plan if the boat capsized. When we got to the caves we were boating to, the drawings on the cave walls were obviously put there by someone with a crayon, like a couple weeks ago. I was so confused that they were selling these as ancient drawings from the ancestors. I am like, this is basically shitty, modern grafitti done by children. Glad I nearly died to make it here to see this.

We made it back to the bus without flipping the boat or me jumping off it. When we finally got back to the resort, I cried, got a stiff drink, kissed the ground and vowed never to go on a tour bus ever again. The next morning, the boy marched to our tour guide contact and cancelled our other trip, demanding a full refund because well, I wasn’t getting on another fucking bus.

The next day I realized that not only had I lost every ounce of dignity on my trip, but I had also lost my Hauschka face cream. I guess my coping mechanism on the way home was to quietly curl in a ball and moisturize my face and then throw it on the ground or something. God dammit! No moisturizer for the rest of the trip?! Cancel it. Pack it up. Time to go home. 

The rest of the trip was just us reading on the beach and drinking all day long. The boy tried not to bring up the bus ride incident which I brought it up every minute because that’s how I deal with embarrassment. I shout it from the roof tops and then have a good laugh. My stomach was fine for every day of the trip except the one where it mattered.

The end.