The Meringue Maneuver and “The King of the Pop”

While we’re all waiting for the buffet lunch, our Host decided it was time for a Meringue dance contest. It wasn’t so much a contest as it was a lesson. The lessons were pretty funny as our host was having some trouble remembering since he was was already 3 sheets to the wind when we got on the Catamaran in La Romana.

This truly was a bad dance recital number. AM had fun though…

AM was griping that I was taking pictures of her next to the blonde chick in the picture to the left. My answer? Then don’t stand next to her!

It was THIS big! I swear!

After what took way too long to teach 4 Meringue steps, it was finally time for lunch.

While on the buffet line, we saw a sign that I can’t believe I didn’t get a picture of. It had the tour’s name on it with the quote underneath that read: “Hire is a Paradise.” Hire? Well, I guess it could be paradise for a nation that has a horrendous unemployment rate. Back to lunch. What did they serve? A surprisingly nice lunch. Lots of fruit, some salads, and some kind of spiced barbecued pork and barbecued lobster. After those disaster dogs, this was a pleasant surprise.

They even had entertainment for us while we dined. If you recall from my Monday post, we went to a really bad MJ tribute show that I didn’t take pictures of because I left the camera in the room. Well, he’s apparently on tour and made an appearance at our lunch. And here he is: “The King of the Pop!” as he was introduced to us.

He only did 1 song, Billie Jean. We were all given the opportunity to have our photo taken with him. After only 1 person wanted to have their photo taken with the fake “King of the Pop,” off he went to his next gig. I mean, seriously, why would you even want to? That’s like traveling to the DR to go mall shopping…oh…wait…moving right along…

There was a traditional “Dominican Dance” during lunch as well. The really do make the skanky-hots work it for their pay.

There was one final activity before going off for afternoon activities, a balloon popping contest. It was for couples only. AM & I and Jayme & Jason took part as we thought it was for a cash prize. We didn’t win. The winner got a bottle of rum.

The whole point of the game was to pop 3 balloons on your partner in the shortest amount of time. One, belly to belly, one with the man sitting in a chair and the woman jumping in his lap, and the third with the woman bent over the chair and the man popping in on her ass. Piece of cake, right? Well, not so much. The give you 2 big balloons for the first 2. The last? A balloon about the size of a softball to pop on her ass. It was funny as hell watching this go on and to have to do it myself. No pictures of this as all four of us participated in the contest.

With that out of the way, it was time for some more outside stuff. Jayme, AM & Alex went snorkeling. I couldn’t as they don’t make flippers in Saquatch size. Plus, I swim like sailors from the “Age of Sail” did. Jason & Zachary hung out on the beach while the ladies snorkeled. I went down there with my camera and even ventured out into the water to try to take some pictures of ocean life. This is as close as I got to seeing ocean life. One thing I meant to buy before coming here was this waterproof camera case. There was a guy down LBI last summer that had it was out in the ocean snapping pictures. If I had the bag, I would have gone out as far as AM & Jayme were and just stuck the camera in the water and started snapping photos. Ah well, maybe next time.

One of the peddlers

On the motorboat back to the catamaran

1430 rolled around and sadly, we had to leave Catalina and had to head back to the mainland. There wasn’t much partying going on on the way back to La Romana. The ride back was pretty subdued. There was music and the rum was still flowing, but it wasn’t the party atmosphere that we had on the way out. Once back on the big island, from the little island, we lugged ourselves back up those old, steep and hazardous stone stairs (drinking rum all day doesn’t help this) only to be accosted by peddlers with cigars and other trinkets while heading back to the bus. They were very aggressive. And really annoying. But the cigars were cheap and if I believed for one second that the Cohibas they had were real, I might have bought some.

Here’s some more pics…