Puerto Plata March 18th to 26th, 2007

We were supposed to leave Toronto Sunday March 18th at 4:15 PM, but the Air Transit Airbus hit a vehicle while approaching the gate and was grounded. The vehicle was a special truck that is used to move the planes around. It was parked in a red zone and the flag man guiding the plane in didn't see how close the right engine was to the truck. The bottom shell around the engine was dented and a tire was slashed.

Air Transit had to bring a new plane in from Montreal because what they had here was not big enough to replace the damaged one. All passengers were given a choice of going home and returning at 4 AM Monday morning or staying in a hotel. In addition, we were told we would receive a CDN $100.00 cheque as compensation.

Pat was wearing her air cast on her left leg for protection and I had got her a wheelchair because it was quite a bit more walking than we had expected. This worked to our advantage as Air Transat staff looked after us and 2 other couples with wheelchairs. We took vouchers for a limo ride home and back rather than stay at a local hotel. This turned out ro be a better choice for us as we were back home around 5 PM. We heard later that some people were standing in line up to 8 PM to get hotel and meal vouchers.

The Breezes Puerto Plata SuperClub covers 25 hectares on the beach along the north shore of the Dominican Republic. It is one of the closest resorts to the airport with only a 10 minute bus ride away. There are 27 separate buildings with 4 apartments each and 8 3-storey buildings for accommodation; however, I think 2 of the 3-storey buildings were time share units. We were warned by the Air Transit Rep. at our welcome meeting about the "V.I.P." people who were soliciting newly arrived guests and their sales tactics.




We were in one of the smaller buildings which contained 4 one bedroom units. The taller buildings had more bedrooms.


The pool area was cool as it had an outside ring shaped like a horseshoe with cross sections into a centre rectangular pool. There were swim up and walk up bars.


The Italian. Japanese, Mexican and French eating areas required resevations.


The Mexican restaurant on the beach was the only one open 24 hours.


The buffet was huge with each night featuring some of the meals of the specialty restaurants (Italian, Japanese, Mexican and French).


Artistic desserts accompanied the dinner hour in the buffet area.


Lobby and main bar area where we spent most of our time. Under the larger thatched roof area there was always some kind of entertainment.


The beach was red flagged every day with white caps but the beach activities continued.


Would you believe there was a hockey rink? Well, not really. It had white plastic instead of ice to skate on, but real ice skates had to be used.


Some of the attractions besides the bars and restaurants close by were a trapeeze, trampoline, pool tables, pinball machines, table tennis, volley ball on the beach, free scuba diving lessons in the pool, dance lessons by the pool, golf, tennis, free shuttle bus into the 2 closest towns and more. For an extra charge there were dune buggy rides, helicopter rides and paintball.


A roving Photographer had various pets for visitors to pose with.


Rain and lots of it. Monday was the only day it didn't rain during the day. Saturday was the earliest it started raining, around 4 PM. We thought we would wait for it to let up since dinner didn't start until 6:30 PM. As you can see we were surrounded by water in a couple of hours. The next morning they were sweeping water out of some of the units that were flooded. You can see the water line on the side of the building next to ours.


An electrical inspector would have a field day here. They use 110 volts but there is no ground wire and most wires are buried in 1" plastic conduit, but sometimes they seemed to run out of conduit and bury the wires anyway. Digging and cement work was mostly manual labour as you can see a crew mixing cement for new light post bases.