You know that feeling when you wake up the first day after you arrive on holiday and forget for the first few seconds where you are then you remember… Yeah, we are on holiday!!!
First stop breakfast. We had not been all-inclusive before so we were pleasantly surprised by the variety of food and drink there was on offer.  Pancakes, omelettes, cereal, toast to name a few.  After a few different courses and a lot of coffee and juice, we went down to the beach to explore.

We walked all along the beach as far as your eyes can see in the photographs, it was so beautiful you could literally walk forever, past all types of hotels lining the coastline.
We stayed and sunbathed for a couple of hours then decided to go to book some trips for during the trip, we decided to book on a boat trip to Saona Island and an outback safari to see some of the real Dominican Republic.

We booked the trips to split up the holiday, we like lazing around on the beach but you can only lay around so much and read so many books before you start getting bored.
The day of the outback trip arrived and we set off in an all-terrain vehicle, we were taken to a few different places around Dominican.

We stopped at a house which made coconut oil it was like a little street with a couple of houses…

 

 

 

and a shed full of coconuts, the owners showed us the process for extracting the oil out of the coconuts.  I find it fascinating, I did not even know coconuts produced oil!

Next stop was a cocoa and mamajuana factory, we made a friend here, a little parrot.

It was so cute just sat in a tree watching everyone walking past.  I learned a few things about the fruit that day, I know totally random but…. did you know this is how pineapples grew…

I had no idea but I never really thought much about where or how the fruit was grown, I was totally surprised by this one. I also learned mangoes grow in massive trees at the side of the road.

So that was my ‘what I learned today’ covered.
There was another plant we saw while we were there ‘the cocoa plant’ i took this picture but did not see the funny side of it at first, until we were looking back at them when we got home.  What do you think?

We had a chance to sample the chocolate made from these plants, I say chocolate I mean the drink.  Then they let us try the traditional version of the mamajuana, WOW, that was strong.  It was not the version back at the hotel, this was much stronger.  After a wander around the site we set off for the cigar factory, I keep saying factories, in truth they were like small shops or even stalls by the roadside rather than factories.

It’s great how they make them, they make it look so easy but I bet it is not!
The final stop on this trip was a secluded beach, from far away it looked beautiful but as we approached it we noticed however beautiful some of the tops of the trees were missing.  the guide told us there had been a storm the previous week and it had done quite a lot of damage to the area.

 

We thought it was still a beautiful place even with some of the treetops missing.
We had a go at bodyboarding but to be honest, I was not very good at it and I am a little wary of the waves after I got rolled a couple of times and it took my breath.
Want to read more of our trip? pop back tomorrow for the Saona Island Trip, you won’t be disappointed.
As always loving being me……

Love The Go To Girls Blog xxx