Kite Life

Cabarete – it was great.  Plenty of beach space if you can be bothered to walk far enough. Always plenty to see and do. My wife didn’t kitesurf, but was never bored when I was out kiting – for a start, there’s lots of buff men around the place to look at, and loads of kiting going on too of course! 

 

Hotel Carocol was really well positioned – just away from the noise of Cabarete centre, but only a very short walk along the beach to get to. The room was basic, but just about comfortable. Thankfully we had a room at one end of the hotel grounds so didn’t get too disturbed by the occasional late night return from the other guests. The fridge in the room was very useful. The hot water/shower situation was a little bit volatile – could never quite work out how much hot water you would get before it ran out…   Other than this, the hotel has a fantastic restaurant/bar right on the beach which is superb for chilling out with a beer and watching the world go by. 

 

Breakfast time too is really nice to sit and watch people walk along the beach.  However, the breakfasts were a little haphazard – I never did work out if you had to ask for orange juice and croissant or if it just arrived. Seemed to be no pattern to it!  

 

Finally, the hotel shares the beachfront with the Laurel Eastman Kite School. Everyone there was very friendly, particularly the local lads Francis and Lilo – who were very encouraging about my (very poor) kitesurfing skills!  It was nice too, not to have to cart all the kite gear to another school, so having one right on the hotel (although apparently not the cheapest school) was very handy. 

 

We ate out most evenings, and although the food in the restaurants in town was ok, it wasn’t anything to write home about. By the end of the holiday we were looking forward to some home cooked food – there’s only so much pizza and nachos you can eat! 

 

Finally -  a note about credit cards – very few places seemed to accept them, with most deals being done in cash (Domincan Pesos or Dollars).  There’s a cash machine in Cabarete so it’s not the end of the world, but worth remembering that if you are paying for a few hundred dollars of kite lessons, you still need to come up with cash not plastic! 

 

Overall ratings: 

Flights (MyTravel) Staff: 8/10 

Flights (MyTravel) general quality compared to scheduled flights:  2/10 

Flights (MyTravel) cost and ease of taking 20kg of kitesurf gear with me (£40 return): 9/10 

Transfers: 9/10   (no nasty buses with all the other tourists on the plane) 

Hotel location: 9/10 

Hotel room quality: 6/10 

Hotel room bed comfort: 6/10  (mattress was a bit saggy in middle) 

Cabarete bars: 9/10   (we liked Lax!) 

Cabarete restaurants: 5/10   (struggled to find anything authentic and sensibly priced) 

Kitesurf conditions: 7/10  (lots of good wind, but could have been flatter water (although we were warned that it wouldn’t be calm so can’t complain too much)) 

Kite repair (professional job done within a day by a guy who looked like Lenny Kravitz for $20): 10/10 

Beach: 6/10  (nice enough but not always much space for launching and landing kites) 

Weather: 9/10  (perfect – only one day that was a bit grey – sunny all the time the rest of the time) 

Sea: 8/10  (warm, and clear, but a bit churned up by the waves) 

Holiday Overall:  8/10

This entry was posted on Wednesday, December 20th, 2006 at 2:13 pm and is filed under Kite Surfing Domican Republic. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.