The rest of the people arrived yesterday evening. Our flower girl, Toni, is finally here with her family, Jerry, Tracy's Dad, and his wife Yvonne.

Another day in the sun! Its great to be here! Here are some photos of us.
Today is a national holiday here in the Dominican Republic; Independence Day. Its all great but we couldn't buy any Internet time because of it.

I'm not sure if I will have a good night sleep tonight. I'm so sunburned its not even funny! We are still waiting for 3 more people to arrive tomorrow but 8 of us are finally here and loving it! We spent most of the day playing in the ocean and I had a vacation day away from my camera. Well I took couple of shots when a group of us went for a dinner.

It was a very long day for us. Today Tracy and I did some engagement photographs. All photographs I took myself on the tripod, using Pocket Wizards. Of course it didn't come out as good as it could if I were to photograph someone else, where I would be able to hold the camera and see and compose the shot, but it worked out pretty good anyway. I tried to hide it but if you look closer you can probably see the pocket wizard in my hand on some of the photos. For the photographs we drove out to a small town about 40 minutes away from our resort and my sister was able to come out with us to keep us company. By the end of the day we all were pretty tired but had a great time!

Today we went sea kayaking. It was very cool. The water was great and I'm sure I will be very sore tomorrow after all the kayaking and than swimming afterwards.
Today my sister arrived to the resort. Tracy and I went to the lobby to meet her and we were waiting for a little more than 30 minutes. When my sister still didn't show up, Tracy asked and it turned out that my sister arrived 5 minutes before we showed up at the lobby and she was in her room this whole time. Our parents and Tracy's sister with her boyfriend will arrive tomorrow evening so hopefully we will not miss them :)

This morning we stopped at the spa so Tracy can book some time there for the morning on the day of the wedding and it started to rain. It lasted only a couple of minutes but it rained a lot.
I did a little more snorkeling in a different spot today and it was very good. I was able to see many fish and different corals. Other than that we didn't really do very much, just hung out around the resort.
Eating chocolate covered sausages and cakes is great but I think I should take advantage of some fruit selection available here around the resort.

Some of you who know me better knew it was coming... A Naked Run II. If you would be interested you can see the Naked Run I in one of my posts from August 26.
Tracy and I went snorkeling today and it wasn't very exciting. We didn't see very much so we didn't swim for very long. On the way back to the hotel I decided that it was time for a Naked Run II. As you can see, I started with some stretches, got naked, and than ran for a bit on a beach :)

We just came back from one of the restaurants here at the resort and it was great! I'm very impressed, by my fast calculation our dinner would be about $150 in one of the restaurants in Calgary and the food was much better than many restaurants we tried in Calgary. I am very happy with some of the food here!

Today we went for a little hike on the beach to another direction from our resort. It was a pretty short walk, about 20 - 30 min one way, but it was pretty cool. On this side of the resort, the ocean had much bigger waves and we had fun jumping in them. I really like the beach at our resort its probably the best one we been to so far! To the left the ocean is very calm and great for snorkeling (I'm assuming, we didn't go snorkeling yet but will hopefully try today). In front of the resort we have some waves to play around, and to the right we have bigger waves if you are looking for some more fun :)

We are staying in the Dreams Punta Cana Resort and Spa, about an hour drive from the Punta Cana airport. As you know, I'm here to get married. We were planing to get some engagement photographs done in a little village called Altos de Chavon. But today we found out that it would cost us $280 US to take a taxi to go there. That is a little more than we can afford so we are coming up with a different plan for our engagement photographs. I'm planing on doing our photographs myself, just having a tripod and some remote camera action, and hopefully we will have some photos done on Monday. It will be interesting to see how they will turn out, being the photographer and an object at the same time. Some more bad news. I wanted to visit a lake here in the Dominican Republic located on an other side of the country and we found out that it cost $570 US to get there :( pretty expensive so we will not be going. Too bad; I don't know very much about that lake so I am not that disappointed, but it would be nice to photograph some flamingos and crocodiles.

We have 6 a-la-cart restaurants here at the resort, and so far 3 of them that we visited were pretty good. So far Mexican is my favorite, and I don't usually like Mexican food. The resort puts on a different show every night and this evening we went to see one of them.

Another day in Paradise! We have some live wild birds around the resort, some turtles, and lizards.

We had a very nice walk on the beach. About an hour and a half one way so we walked for about 3 hours plus did some swimming on the way. We walked only one direction from our resort and it took us this long to see an other resort. I love it! In Mexico they had one resort on top of another, not very good for romantic walk on the beach :)
If you are like me and think you will not sunburn your legs because they are hairy, well its not true, after this long walk I can see that I did burn my feet and some parts of my legs. Oh well, what kind of a vacation this would be without getting some sunburn.

I was walking around the resort, looking for some nice spots to take photos at and than I saw some local men fishing at the sunset in the ocean. My photojournalistic instincts took over and I tried to get some shots of them. I had my backpack on my back and was about knee deep in the water when a big wave came and covered half of my backpack. Luckily my laptop, that was on the bottom of my backpack is still working :)

Our first day in paradise! We didn't do very much our first day here. Just walked around, got familiar with the resort and what is available to us. They have a great area with tennis, table tennis, air hockey, billiards, darts, etc. The beach is very beautiful. The water in the morning was a little colder than I like it but after lunch it was much warmer and we had a great time playing in the ocean.
As you can tell, we will not have problems with the Internet, for a price they have wireless Internet available in the lobby and its great for my laptop, so I will be posting some updates for sure!