Dominican Honeymoon

Viva Wyndham Dominicus Palace is all hotel rooms and apartments. For awesome cabanas, make your reservation at Viva Wyndham Domincus Beach. They are one property and you don't even know when you are going from one to the other.
If you speak English, don't forget your spanish dictionary or take a class.
Be prepared to wait for a room at check-in. The property is massive and it may take a while for your room to be finished.
Also be prepared to get hit up constantly by sales pitchers trying to show you other Viva destinations. We found that telling them we already did it sent them away. The best way to avoid their pitch was to ask them to take a picture of you. They are just about the only people who speak English and it was a great way to get a lot of pics together.

We already had a few dive sites in mind (St George Wreck and Catalina Wall)before arriving. When we went to reserve our dives, we were told that the two sites were restricted to Advanced Open Water certified divers. The Advanced OW course was only about $100 more than 5 dives, so we decided I would take the course. It worked out great because we dove at some great sites and I got my Advanced certification. I picked up my book Monday morning and read over the chapter for my Naturalist dive that afternoon. Reading the chapters was easy because I was able to do it while laying out on the beautiful caribbean coast and enjoying endless Pina Coladas.

This is one of the dives we looked forward to after we researched our destination. It counted as Craig's "Deep Dive" for his Advanced Open Water course and the first of a two tank dive.
Max Depth: 95 ft
Bottom Time: 44 minutes
Craig did his deep dive tasks at the base of the ship's stern while Rachel went with another group inside the main cabin and other smaller rooms. Craig had his first taste of Nitrogen Narcosis and thought he did so well on a math problem that he got wrong twice. Craig's group circled the ship and swam through the outside corrodor before meeting up with Rachel's group at the stern and surfacing.

Our second dive of the day was a short distance from the first. It was Craig's "Wreck Dive" for the Advanced OW course, but wasn't much of a wreck. The wreck was not much more than a pile of wood with fish all around. As soon as all the divers were equalized and signaled "OK" to the dive master, we moved on to explore the surrounding reef. We used the underwater camera Rachel's dad let us borrow to take several pictures of aquatic life and each other.

Designated as Craig's "Boat Dive" for the Advanced OW course. We were excited to go out to Catalina Island to see the wall.
Max Depth: 66 ft
Bottom Time: 38 minutes
This was the another dive site we were anticipating before the trip. The boat ride was about 30 minutes, but well worth the trip. Rachel volunteered to ride on a separate boat. One boat was less powerful than the other so the drivers wanted less people on the boat with smaller engines.
We entered the water and swam along the reef at a depth of 10-15 ft for about 3-5 minutes before the wall dropped to what looked to be about 120 ft. We had a Jr Advanced diver with us, an Italian girl who was only 13-15, so we couldn't go deeper than 60 ft. The wall, itself, was pretty impressive, but there weren't many fish or other animals. Plenty of coral and sponge with a few large schools of reef fish. A safety stop wasn't necessary because the trip back to the boat was about 3-5 minutes over the reef which was only 12-15 ft.

We beached onto Catalina Island for a bit to take a break. Most everyone swam in the beach, while others rested on shore. After our rest, we boarded the boat for a short ride along the island to the Garden.
Max Depth: 36 ft
Bottom Time: 45 minutes
Fifth and final dive for Craig's Advance OW course. This was his "Navigation Dive" so he descended with another student and the instructor before the rest of the group to complete a square using his compass. Meanwhile, Rachel started along the reef with the rest of the group taking some great pics, one of a large ray. Craig and the other student joined the group with the instructor and we paired up with our buddies. The garden was absolutely beautiful with colorful corals, sponges, and fish. Towards the end of the dive, Craig became excited with he spotted at black & white urchin and tried to show others in the group. As we swam along, he found another one. A moment later, we come upon a large plain covered with groups of urchins as far as you could see. Small patches of urchins littered the ocean floor and we took it all in as the dive master inflated the signal for the boats to come pick us up for the 30 minute boat ride back to the resort.

We made our reservation for the Thursday night cruise. However, the cruise was cancelled due to poor weather conditions caused by Tropical Storm Chris. We were given a refund by the resort.

Since our flight wasn't until mid-afternoon, we decided to spend an hour or so in the morning snorkling. We were told that there was a small reef located within the swimming markers infront of the resort, so we thought we check it out. We didn't want to get our booties wet, so we asked Viva Diving if we could borrow some fins and they were nice enough to let us (of course, we had gone on 7 dives with them already). There wasn't much to it, but it was still fun to watch the parrot fish and other tropical fish chase each other amidst the fan corals. As we were about to go in, we swam over half a dozen canons and a few canon balls on the ocean floor. Although it wasn't impressive, it was definately worth the short swim out to get our final look at the underwater world of the Dominican.

We anticipated taking a horseback ride along the beach in Bayahibe. I even went to the ranch where no one speaks any English to take a test ride. We chose to do another day of two-tank dives on Friday instead.