This house belongs to who?

So here are these lovely houses along the coast of La Republica Dominicana. Our Host starts declaring that these houses belong to many rich and famous people.

“This house belong to Antonio Banderas. Yah, yah. Antonio Banderas house!” ”This house belong to Ricky Martin. Yah, yah. Ricky Martin house!”

This went on for maybe 10 minutes. We apparently saw houses that belonged to:

Antonio Banderas
Ricky Martin
Angelina Jolie & Brad Pitt
Alex Rodriguez
Shakira
Madonna
Some rich Venezuelan politician (didn’t say who)

I know I was born, just not yesterday.

The only one of those names I possibly believe is Alex Rodriguez, as he is Dominican and has family in the country. Ricky Martin? Really? Where were the cabana boys? Angelina? I would have expected it to be next to an orphanage. With Madonna’s house on the other side of the same orphanage. Actually, I’m not sure that the DR is poor enough (or an exotic enough locale) for them to adopt kids from there. Random rich politician from Venezuela? I didn’t see a CITGO sign anywhere. Shakira? Man, her hips don’t lie, but I think our host is full of shit (or lots of rum at the very least)…

Here’s the pictures of the rich and famous houses…

Some of these houses are stunning though.

Catalina from the boat

Once we’re done looking at the “famous” houses, after some more booze and dancing, we finally arrive at Catalina Island. Now, to get to the island, you have to get off the Catamaran about 100 yards off shore and get into a small motorboat that brings you to shore. They gave us the option to stay on the Catamaran for a bit to go fishing, but none of us were interested, so we got on the boat to hit the beach.

On the beach

The first order of business was to get indoors, as it started raining right after we made landfall. It rained on and off all day. Never for more than 20 or 30 minutes at a time.

The second order of business, was to get something to eat. They were serving hot dogs. At least that’s what they said they were. They were pretty nasty. No Sabrett or Nathan’s here. Gods only know what they were made of. They were eaten out of necessity as none of us had a chance to get breakfast before getting to the bus.

After we staked out a table with all of our gear and ate our dubious dogs, it was time to have some fun.

First up was the banana boat ride. The line was long, but people managed to keep themselves entertained while we waited. I took a pass on the banana boat. I thought the “boat” looked a little questionable and I just wasn’t feeling it. Not to mention, you could only go 5 at a time on it and there were 6 of us.

They had a second inflatable ride, which I did with AM & Alex. It was fun, but the boat drivers get a little carried away with the speed they zip you around in the water. Let me tell you, my ass got some shiatsu massage from the ocean.

It was getting close to lunchtime and we were all still hungry, so after one more turn on the banana boat, we headed back into the picnic area to see what was going on there. AM got suckered into a dance show that can only be called…The Meringue Maneuver.

But first, more pics from the first part of our day on Isla Catalina…