The Dominican Republic

A group of us ventured down to LGO to escape the Boston cold during our time off in January.  It was a pretty uneventful vacation (on purpose) with a lot of relaxing by the pool and football in the ocean.

We took a van from the airport to our resort, caught the sunset, and enjoyed tasty beverages.

A couple of nights we cooked out dinner on a grill and I tapped into my inner chef as Jeremy Stewart and I became the Grill Masters.

We did take one day trip on a boat that took us snorkeling and to a remote island for eating and drinking.

• Bottom right: The boys decided to swim to the deserted island instead of waiting for the transport boat.  Some of us were not yet in triathlon shape and had to resort to doggy paddle.
• Top right: The DR is my kind of place...they've never heard of sustainability!

Four of us took another day trip to a cave while everyone else sat around the pool.  The day was awesome.  We rode horses to the rain forest, hiked through the rain forest, repelled into a cave, trekked through the cave (having to swim through part of it), and twice we were fed authentic food from the farm (which had some friendly animals on it).

The resort made the mistake of hosting a karaoke night in the clubhouse.  Since we were the only people on the resort during the week, we took over the event.  We just had them put the 4 English CD's in and went through every song...twice...then we switched to Spanish music and turned it into a dance club.

On the last day we went into the major city (and former capital of the Spanish Caribbean empire) Santo Domingo.

I've also included some panoramic pictures I took.  I've started using Microsoft ICE to patch together my panoramic pictures and the results were very impressive (see below).