pockets of polly: BUENOS DIAS

I'm back from my one week vacation to Punta Cana. It was one hell of a week and I'm so glad I got to go on this trip right before school started. I've never been to one of these places (Punta Cana, Cancun, Cuba, etc.) so it was the first time I got to experience the resort life: unlimited food & drinks, customer service 24/7 and a handful of events everyday. There's just too many things to cover if I tell you about my entire 8 day trip so I'll just go through random events.

We landed in Punta Cana at about 12 PM. It's a 4 hour flight from Toronto. This is the airport. It's definitely something, eh? It kinda looks like a spa resort instead of an airport.

We booked a van to take us from the airport to Ocean Blue & Sand Resort. I really enjoyed the car trip to the resort because I got to see local residents and what the place actually looks like outside of all the resorts. Some parts reminded me of when I went back to China to visit some relatives.

This is the beach area. It's such a beautiful view. Clear blue skies. Slight warm wind. White Sand. The sound of the waves. It's literally paradise.

This is what the view looks like if you step out my hotel building. There are 10 villas and I stayed at villa 6 which is also the Privilege building. As a privilege member, we got a ton of perks including nicer rooms, the ability to reserve restaurants, a private beach area, private restaurant, etc. It was pretty unbelievable.

I did some archery. That was pretty fun.

So if there are free drinks for 8 days, who wouldn't take advantage of that? I think this trip just told my parents that I drink alcohol without me actually telling them that I do.

Went parasailing. It was actually not the best experience because I got boat sick on the boat while I was waiting for my turn. It was pretty horrible. The actual parasailing part was alright. It's not as fun as it looks because you're literally just sitting in air. I thought it would be more extreme. I thought the boat would go really fast so that we would be flying across the sky... but that doesn't happen apparently.

I'm not that adventurous or active as a person. I really enjoy just sitting by the pool and reading a nice book. So that's what I did. And so now my legs are way darker than the rest of my body. Do you guys like my watermelon bikini bottoms, by the way? They're my favourite!

I think this is my favourite picture I took from the entire trip and I even took it accidentally. I think I was trying to take a selfie but then I didn't realize it was the front camera. Once again, PALM TREES GUYS.

On the day it was pouring the heaviest, we went horseback riding! It was my first time and I think it was one of the best activities we did on the trip. There were about 14 of us and we were just riding our horses through the forest. I felt like we were in some war movie and that we were about to go fight our enemies. I feared for my life because we went through a river (literally) and my horse slipped a bit and I almost fell off. I'm exaggerating but I was so scared.

Since it's the end of August, thunderstorms are very prevalent. There were mini showers throughout the week but it wasn't too bad. It would rain for a few minutes and then sunshines everywhere again. At night, it would thunderstorm but that was actually pretty awesome because the thunder would be super loud (and I love thunder).