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Dominican Republic - Samana (Mar 2003)
This time we booked our vacation 'last Minute' at the travel agency at . According to the official hotel description a "small road with light traffic" seperated the hotel from the wonderful beach. When we reached the hotel it turned out that this small road was a frequently used communication route - the noise was corresponding. Occasionally we had difficulties in crossing the road to get to the beach which was in sight but out of reach. The beach here is not as broad as for example in Punta Cana. We talk about a band of sand app. 10-15 yards broad. At times we walked along the beach to reach a section without being annoyed by car noise and accordant odours.
The hotel garden was arranged like a park with many palms and other trees and lots of beautiful and exotic flowers. Narrow footpaths which were partly illuminated with coloured lampions, at other parts pitch-black, trailed through the garden. Sundry exotic fauna like huge paddocks (which jumped onto our feet during our vespertine promenade) populated the underwood!
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The hotel offered two pools which were cleaned regularly. Nevertheless we did not use them.
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After all, swimming in the ocean is more what we really like. The water was clean and warm and everything, but if you had come here to snorkel you would have been frustrated. There was nothing to see but sand. The paradise for snorkeling is elsewhere.
Our first night in this hotel complex was like horror. In retrospect we couldn't tell what was more annoying: the street noise or the disco noise from the weekly show lasting until 1 a.m. Luckily we took along some earplugs in our first-aid kit :-)
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 Our room (downstairs) |
Fortunately we sampled the following anecdote only on our penultimate vacation day: a big cockroach crawled over the chef's toque while he prepared the omelettes for the breakfast buffet. Although the food was quite nice at hotel Aligio Beach we wouldn't have eaten much if we had seen this on our first day.
Despite the occasional noise pollution and the narrow beach we had a relaxing and refreshing vacation with lots of fun and sun.
