Birth control pills cause brain damage

After a really good mojito, a Cuba Libre tastes like crap. I guess fresh mint is in short supply!- Damn.   Interesting to watch the population around the pool:  A Japanese couple roughly the same as age as yours truly- the wife wearing a life jacket in the one meter end of the pool while the hubby walks around wearing swim goggles while never immersing his face in the water,  A few feet over a scrawny 65 year old wearing a Harley Davidson T has clearly never ridden anything bigger than a two wheel bicycle in many years, if ever.  There are more boobs hanging out here than at a topless show in Paris . Sadly most of them are attached to the male segment of the crowd. The mix of visitors to the resort seems to be evenly divided between English and French Canadians and various Europeans.   Loudest by far seem to be the French, but embarrassingly, the most obnoxiously intoxicated seem to be the English Canucks. Perhaps fearing that the resort might actually run out o...

The last time I visited the D.R. was in 1993 ( + or -) I swore that I would never return.   Never is quite a long time. Almost 3 times as long as the Hollywood term “forever”  [Forever being the average length of a Tom Cruise marriage] Approaching the midpoint of day 3, I am feeling somewhat more positive about this trip compared to the last [ when my family spent more time in the bathroom than in the sun] My first exposure to “all inclusives” probably dates back to my childhood and weeks spent at Butlin’s  Holiday Camps [ A slight upgrade from a minimum security prison!]   Ten pounds a week per person bought you seaside lodgings, "entertainment" and meals. I can still taste in my mind the grilled burgers that they offered, smothered with grilled onions and a dash of Heinz- a flavour that I have never been able to recapture after more than fifty years.  Fast forward to today. 5 stars, all the food and booze one can possibly shove into your face, but sadly t...

While it is hardly worth adding to my travel blog, it is worth a couple of lines on Facebook, but wont actually fit the normal wallpost!   Departed Toronto (-6 and dry) at 8am and arrived in the DR at 11:45 (12:45 local time (29 degrees and somewhat damp.) A 45 minute bus ride along decent roads brought us to The Gran Bahia Principe El Portillo. One of 4 major resorts in the Samana area ( roughly half way between Puerto Plata and Punta Cana, it consists of about 10 low rises and villas housing about 400 rooms surrounding a complex of 4 restaurants, a similar number of bars and a couple of pools. Arriving a bit too late for the lunch buffet, a well stocked snack bar provided a filling and varied selection of snacks, burgers and seafood, nicely washed down with a couple of Cuba Libres. In the distance, kite boarders rode distant whitecaps, while occasional gusts of rain washed winds tried to sneak under the shelter of our palapa in a futile attempt to water down our drinks.   A...