Iberstar Dominicana Punta Cana pictures are up

[JohnnyCastaway]

heres a sample of some of the images, the url will take you to the album for the rest.

http://www.7daysinparadise.com/gallery/v/domrepub/IBDOM-PC/

[travelchick]

Thanks so much for sharing your fantastic photos, JC!  What a beautiful resort it is.  The grounds look so lush!  How many rooms does the resort have?  TC 

[JohnnyCastaway]

I think the Dominicana and PC have 320 rooms, not sure about the bavaro.  the bavaro looks to be all suites, the other two have the big building, and the dominicana adds a few suites.

[Pacific State 808]

Great pics....Dressels dive boat looks pretty cool, plenty of room for kitting up etc !!

[flopnfly]

The dive boats were really nice with easy access to the water from a side door. 

Have you ever seen the movie Castaway with Tom Hanks?  There is a part there where he is trying to get off the island and over the reef but the waves are too fierce and keep pushing him back.  He eventually builds a boat that will surf right over the waves.

That is exactly what it is like in Punta Cana.  They motor up to the outside of the reef, sit and wait for an opening and then gun it.  They made sure we all had life vests on and were holding on for dear life.  It was wild      
Coming back across it you just surf on top of the big waves. 

Safe to say we won't be back to that beach, but it was a nice short break at a lovely resort. 

[Milli]

Believe it or not there are days when the waves are not that strong!  I do prefer the water off Varadero and off Cayo Ensenachos though.

PC is the only area where I can find some decent prices for the one week we can get away in March.  The Iberostar Dominicana is one resort, The Grand Palladium another and a couple of days later the Punta Cana Princess is available. Those seem to be our choices if indeed we still book.    The Dominicana looks very nice and if the atmosphere is anything like the Iberostar Varadero I am sure it would be a fun place to stay.  Thanks for the great pics Flopnfly and JC.  Many of the beach scenes look very familiar.  We walked past the ID several times.  Did you visit the vendors on the beach?

[flopnfly]

We didn't visit the little vendor village, but I saw many people walking back with goods in hand. 

The couple of days we were there was a lot of fun.  Lots of games etc going on, and all of the staff are just wonderful.  I find the staff at all iberostars go above and beyond.

[Gambitt]

Great Pictures!  

[Pacific State 808]

I dived in this area in 2008, the waves where pretty wild then too. I remember a few people decided to stay on the boat instead of diving, I also remember one guy smashed his face badly on the side of the boat doing a backwards roll into the water, he was panicking and swallowing water, he was not in a good way at all. The terrible thing was they made the guy stay in the water and wouldn't get him back out, he was in no state to dive.

The diving was very disorganised, lots of messing about on the surface which is not the best thing when you have strong currents and a swell, it's easier to just get in with no air in your BCD and go straight down. There was no instruction of any kind, no briefing, just get in and go !

The icing on the cake was that when I surfaced the bloody boat had gone, it had cleared off. There was no instruction when getting in the water so I came up after an hour and I was just bobbing about in the Ocean. After 20 minutes a small boat came by and picked me up. Apparently some of the other divers had surfaced earlier, they had been picked up and then the boat had to be somewhere else, so it just left.

I wouldn't of minded but the reefs where very poor, nothing to see, the worst diving I have had in the Caribbean.

I would of been better if we had a decent dive boat like the Dressels boat in your pictures. We where crammed in a what you could only call a large motorised rowing boat with about 20 other divers, very little room and with the swell rocking the boat, it put a lot of peole off from diving.