The Russian Wedding

    Well, they say that if you are going down you should do it in style, so that is why Arseniy, my Russian friend and classmate, not hearing any of my warnings decided to get married with his life sweetheart in Punta Cana, in the Dominican Republic . You can't do anything more stylish than getting married in the beach of a exotic Caribbean island, so he definitely wanted to go down in style.
    As I love the beach and the hot weather I was elated to participate of course, but Dani was too eager to miss it so we finally bought a pair of tickets with an all-inclusive package and we left to Punta Cana, escaping from the hot and humid weather of New York to get the even hotter and more humid weather of Dominican Republic... but with all you can eat, just like the IEOR lounge.
    In order to get the most out of our first day there we took the earliest flight to Punta Cana. Regretfully that meant to wake up at 3:30 am, which is not bad per se, but if you went to bed at 3:00 am after cleaning and arranging the house after so many days out, basically you just have enough braincells awake not to drool while seating on the subway on the way to the airport. Of course our friends from the MTA had all the subways in weird schedules and detours, but we were able to make it on time. At least you are tired enough to sleep in those wonderful and spacious economy class seats, so I had a nice 4 hour nap. Nah.. it wasn't that bad as the nice lady on the counter gave us one of those emergency exit seats, so although you still can only recline the seat 1.3 degrees as usual (which I guess it is enough so your head doesn't fall forward while you are sleeping) you can at least stretch your legs all you want (disclaimer: as long as you don't want too much of course).
    Anyway, after those awesome 4 hours of sleep Dani woke me up and gave me the camera to see if I could take some pictures of our landing. In general I seldom take the window seat but this time I had, so I gave it a shot. Here are a couple of pictures of the Dominican Republic from 5,000 feet above or something like that.

 

    By the way, if you click on any of the pictures you will be able to see a much larger version. You can also go to the Picasa Web Album (linked at the end of this post) to see all the images.
    The airport is rather rustic, which means that you only get a staircase outside the plane and you walk to the airport building. Now the change from the AC at full throttle inside the plane (I guess they don't want to spend too much refrigerating the food) to the humid air outside was quite a shock. I tried to get a couple of pictures before entering the airport building but it was impossible as even my eyes got tarnished due to the humidity, so  I will have to wait for when we come back.
    Everything worked quite fast: our luggage was one of the first to come out and a bus was already waiting for us outside, ready to take us to our resort. The only thing that was not so "dreamy Caribbean Island" was the weather, as it was really cloudy, but as the weather was so hot, you could be wearing just your bathing suit and be fine.
    After visiting one of the buffet dinners, which was next to the pool, we took a walk around the beach while we waited for our room to be ready. It doesn't look as cool as when you have a clear blue sky, but I still think that it looked quite nice:

    After walking for a couple of minutes we arrived to a set of shops, which were selling anything and everything, from Mama Juana (a mixture of Rum and some local spices) to cigars and seashells. As we look rally Latin of course, we were approached by every single shop owner to go and see what they had inside. Maybe next time I should come with a t-shirt saying I'm Latin... anyway, after zigzagging around insistent shop owners we finally came back to the hotel.

    We only saw Olga, Berk, Carlos and Allison during that afternoon, as Arsenyi and the rest of the Russian folks were visiting Santo Domingo, but were supposed to come back soon in the afternoon. Of course "soon" in here has a completely different meaning, as it can mean 1 minute (which never happens) or several hours, hence we were not surprised when "soon" meant that they arrived after dinner.
    Although we had to go to bed early that day, as Arseniy and Olga had already prepared activities for the next morning, the whole wedding gang got together to keep on enjoying the "all-included" resort and ended up in the disco.

    The activity for the guys the next day was a fishing trip, while the girls went for a swimming, snorkelling, and sightseeing trip around the island. Apparently fishes know that we humans are extremely lazy so they only go out early in the morning, where none of us is around (at least concious). That meant that we needed to wake up at 6:30 to be ready to leave at 7:30 on our fishing expedition, which was awesome considering I had slept only 4 hours on a plane the "day" before. Anyhow... we were all up early that day (even the Groom), and ready for our boat trip.

    No, this was not our fishing boat... I think it was actually the third from left to right, which was the tallest one out there. Off to the sea!

    Well, it actually turns out that fishing for Mahi-Mahi and King Fish in open waters if very similar to proctoring a test when you have a CA with you. Basically the captain and his assistant (the CA equivalent) will prepare all the rods and leave them ready at the sides of the boats. Meanwhile we would just sit and look dumb (not that we can do much better) and wait for a fish to get caught (undergrad equivalent in this proctoring comparison?).

    It turns out that even fish are kind of lazy over here, so instead of going out early in the morning they started appearing around 11:00! Not that I wouldn't do the same, but if we only knew I would have loved those extra hours of sleep.

    We were actually losing hopes to get something that day when we got our first hit, actually two hits, as two Mahi-Mahi's decided the bait looked tasty at the same time. On top you see the guys fighting to get those fishes on board.

    They say that every time you tell the story of your fishing trip the fishes grow more and more, so by the time I'm writing this we should have caught two blue whales, but regretfully I have the pictures so you can see they are only moderately sized fishes. Two Mahi-Mahi and two King Fishes. Well, that is better than go back empty handed so the crew was happy and didn't engage in mutiny, but instead decided to pillage and plunder the bars of the resort.

    On top you see the whole "fishing" team and below apparently it would be Captian Davy Jones, although I am not sure who was Jack Sparrow in that trip, as several of our crew members became a "little light of stomach" due to all the rocking of the boat, but we will not mention any names in here...

    Back to the hotel, basically we just relaxed and wasted our time in the pool and doing some. Nothing else can be said...

    Next was the big day. Although the last two days were awfully clouded, miraculously this day was sunny and only some white and puffy clouds could be seen in the morning. Maybe it was God giving Arseniy a goodbye gift, who knows. Even though we went to bed late, we woke up early with Dani and went to ask for our snorkelling gear to spend the morning swimming around some of the reefs near the shore. It was great! with lots of colourful fishes and sea urchins. Regretfully I have no pictures of that, but if you would like underwater photos, just send me the money for the waterproof case for my camera and I will gladly upload some in my next trip :D.

    After Arseniy got his last meal... being single that is, all the guys got together in one room while the bride and the girls got together in another one. Nothing fancy, just a couple of speeches and a shot of something, and we were off the meet the bride.

    The guys from the hotel had everything ready on the beach, even the clear sky. The only bad thing with clear skies in a Caribbean Island is that that means it is going to be hot as hell, and you will be sweating like a race horse. That is if you are wearing only a bathing suit, but as this was a wedding we all had nice shirts and long pants, which were completely soaked by the end of the ceremony.

    Here is a picture of the Best Man and the Dead Man... sorry Groom (same thing...)

    As you can see, from the red carpet to the chairs, the champagne, and the petals, at the hotel they had everything ready for the ceremony. The best man was not behind, and he got a nice seashell to put the rings. Quite a nice touch!

    Congratulations! Here Arseniy is signing his fate (hopefully, as everything was in Spanish so he could actually be just selling a kidney), while Olga smiles. The ceremony was in Spanish too, as the judge (or whatever name it might have) only spoke Spanish, but a lady from the hotel was giving a short English version to the crowd.

    A toast and the band starts to play for Mr. and Ms. Kukanov.

    After that, and as we were already wet by all the stewing, we took several pictures in the ocean, trying to refresh a bit. There are more pictures in the Web Album if you are interested.

smile!

Forever

    After such a wonderful ceremony, and while the newly-weds had their indoor photo session we went to enjoy the pool bar and escape from the heat. Prost!

    And after that we ended up at the sea as Berk really wanted to go there instead of the pool. We finished that day with a nice "formal" dinner at the Steak House, which included a delicious wedding cake, the disco after that, and after they threw us out because they needed to close the place, we went to swim to the ocean. So dead tired after such a wonderful day we went to bed.

    The next day started cloudy and stormy just as the first couple of days. We had planned a boat trip after lunch, to go around the north east side of the island, next to where there resort was. I though that with the bad weather we basically would not be able to see much, but actually the sky added a lot of dramatism to the photos as you can see here.

    The trip consisted in going for snorkelling in a reef a little to the east of the resort, and then to a calm beach where you could walk several miles into the ocean and still have the water on your waist. The snorkelling was great. The reef was quite larger and with more impressive fauna swimming around than what we saw back next to the resort.

    The water on the beach we went later were so calmed that you could see the reflection of the sky over them. It was really impressive, and as you can see, even though Dani is very far away into the ocean (that little dot on the right of the image is her) she has the water barely on her legs.

    Although the boat left us in the middle of this "pond" we actually walked all the way to the shore, while some of the rest of the guys tried to do some water ski. Dani, who does it splendidly, helped several of them so they could actually do it, as they haven't tried it before. She was an excellent teacher and most of her students were able to do it on the first try.
    In the meantime some of us walked along the beach, as there was another resort there with a couple of parrots at the entrance.

    We were for hours in that place, while almost everyone tried to do some skiing. After that, the boat's captain asked Dani to do it, as he had seen her skiing the day before, so we had quite a nice skiing demonstration.
    Back at the hotel, there was a flea market, with paintings, jewellery, and many other things, like wooden statues and bottles with the special roots used to make Mama Juanas. Berk impressed us with his bargaining abilities, reducing prices ten-fold, while Dani got a pair of necklaces and bracelets just for smiling. It is understandable though... it is impossible to resist that smile and those eyes...

    As usual, we ended the day on one of the fancy restaurants of the resort and then on the disco. This time we had to gather all our patience as Arseniy wanted to play a bunch of music for us, and while the DJ was eager to accept a couple of bucks for doing it, he left soon after leaving the job of actually putting the music to the next DJ. As you can imagine nothing was done until we started complaining, as when they come with their "tranquilo, ya mismo lo hace" ("don't worry, soon he will do it") speech, you know you actually need to worry and start asking for it. In the end they finally did it, I guess in part because nobody wants a bunch of angry Russians in their disco... nor a Latin girl complaining.

    Regretfully, all wonderful stories must end at some point (and I'm not talking here about Arseniy's life as a bachelor, but our vacations), and the next day was the last one for us in this island. We woke up relatively early to get some last minute pictures, pack our stuff and be ready for our bus to take us to the airport.

    At the entrance there was a nice flock of Flamingos, which that morning appeared to be in some sort of Tai-Chi lesson, as they were all contorted.

    Finally, on the airport I was able to take the picture I wanted since we arrived. While waiting to board I left the camera outside so the lens got the same temperature as the air and thus not get any moisture over it. Here is the result.

    Regretfully I must confess that I had, for the first time, to apply some Photoshop over this. Not that the picture was too bad, but there were a couple of panel doors in the middle of the garden. The problem was that in order to blend the doors with the rest of the environment these geniuses decided to paint them bright yellow (I know it was probably for some safety reason, but I still want to make fun about it), and it was impossible to find any angle where those doors didn't appear, so I had to go down the Photoshop road to make them disappear.
    So that's all for now folks!