Trip Report – for those of you who want more detail.

We had an amazing time. D3 helped me pick the resort, we checked out a number of sites that had travel reviews and this resort got good reviews and seemed to be a winner.


The resort was the adults only side of a much larger resort. The nice thing about the adults only side was that it was quite quiet and the beach area was identified as for our side of the resort. The adult side of the resort also has a 5 star rating. Adult side identified as the Royal, other side just the Bavarro. One of the perks of the Royal is not having to make reservations for the a la carte restaurants, and you could go multiple times, the Bavarro had Japanese, Mexican, American, and Italian, on the Royal side Thalassa a Mediterranean restaurant and Cata Tapa, which we didn’t try. We could have gone to a different a la carte every night or the same one every night. Usually, at most resorts you have two chances for an a la carte and finito. We usually headed to the buffet on the Bavarro side because we really enjoyed the variety available and the food was very good.
We had also purchased snorkels and fins, and so were anxious to test them out, snorkeling was fun but the beach was shallow for quite a distance out, we found that the fins weren't that much of a help because you could always stand up. Deeper waters would have been a better test of the fins. D3 and S2, lent us their underwater camera, and we had a blast trying to get some pictures of the fish. I’d try to feed them bread and LifeWife would snap madly away at them, we got a few good shots, nothing for National Geographic, but we were happy with them. Concrete tubes of what looked to me like drainage piping had been laid down about 25 yards out from shore, they had been placed there as a sort of a artificial reef, holes had been drilled in the concrete tubes and they weren’t placed right end to end, each section was about 3 feet long and the gaps between sections and the holes made it very fish friendly.
Towards the end of our week there, the waves got quite large as we were getting the tail end wave action from hurricane Igor. We didn't experience anything other than increased winds, (noticeable but not threatening in any way) and the waves generated by the hurricane hundreds of miles away.

We wouldn't have any qualms about going there again.

Click on the following pictures for larger size...

This is the whole resort, nice that it isn't crammed in with resorts packed in on either side, good for long walks on the beach.

At the extreme left is the entrance to the resort, you drive in and there is this long driveway lined with majestic royal palms, on either side is a golf course. Beautiful entrance.

 The black line is the dividing line between the two sides to the resort, the adult side is to the right..

 X marks the spot. That is the building we were in. 2 minute walk to the beach.

Two things about this picture, from building in the bottom left draw a straight line following the edge of the building to the beach everything on the right is for the adult side, to the left is the main resort, (we had better loungers!). The other thing, in the water outlined by the square the diagonal line that you see are the concrete tubes I described above.

If you know us, LifeWife has lots of pics on FB.