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!

The day of our departure is finally here and early morning Mandy drove us to the airport. The flight wasn't very long and watching couple of movies helped to pass it faster. You can see a beautiful view from the airplane window when we were leaving sunny, snowy Alberta.

NOTE: I will be out of the country for the next two weeks.
I'm very excited! Tomorrow morning I will be on the airplane to the Dominican Republic. I'm not sure what Internet access I will have but I will try to post updates on my blog as often as I can. Right now I have to go and pack!

Today I had some more very bad news about my car, but I'm not going to go into the details.
In the evening we had a great surprise dinner with a bunch of our friends. Tracy and I are getting married on February 29th in the Dominican Republic and we are leaving next monday on the 18th. Couple of our friends organized a dinner for us in a Vietnamese restaurant and surprised us by inviting many more of our friends. It was great to see everyone, some of them I didn't see for a very long time.
Food was good and we had a great time! We also received a wonderful gift, that I'm sure soon will hold one of our wedding photographs. Thank you very much for everyone who was able to make it, and thank you for the spending money, we will use it not very wisely in the Dominican!

We were planning to drive to the Banff National park with our photo club this weekend but because of the pretty cold weather on Saturday, many people couldn't make it and the trip was postponed.
I'm a little sore this morning. Yesterday evening we had some friends over for supper and after we played some Wii games. The boxing is actually a pretty good work out :)

My baby is back! I finally got my car back from the shop and I gave it a big hug when I first saw it. I have been very frustrated for the last couple of days. Because of the extreme temperatures we been having lately (-48C with the wind) some things got frozen on my car. Air suspension was frozen and my car looked like a lowrider sitting very low on its back tires. Plus PCV valve had frozen and caused oil leaks from PCV system and valve cover gaskets. So I lost 8 liters of oil, most of it in my garage :( Also they found that I had to replace my alternator (very expensive).. Anyway after close to $5000 spent in repairs I have my car back.

During this time I was frustrated and even thought I would have to sell my car and buy something else. After doing all the research I ended up with two other choices that I liked, but probably couldn't afford anyway. After getting back into my car and driving it for a little I remembered how much I loved it and I really hope I won't have to sell it anytime soon!

Two photos above are used from www.carwalls.com, my favorite site for car wallpapers.

Our cat Georgie. He really loves laying with the shooes. You can still see his shaved front leg from having an IV after his surgery. I'm doing another hockey tournament this weekend and I'm starting to get ready tomorrow.

Yesterday couple of my friends and I had a little trip, close to 800 km in total. Early morning we met up at a gas station just outside of Calgary, loaded all our stuff into my car and headed West to the mountains. We decided that it would be nice to go take some photographs and visit some Hot Springs on the way. We ended up not taking many photographs at all. There was not very much snow on the ground and we didn't really see very many things that were worth taking photos of.

When we got to the Fairmont Hot Springs Resort, located in the Canadian Rockies in southeast British Columbia, we decided not to pay for the pool and go on a little hike and swim in the natural Hot Springs waterfall. Alex and I jumped right in. The water wasn't very hot but it was nice and warm and I had a blast under the waterfall and running naked through the snow.

On our way home we stopped at Radium Hot Springs. We didn't really anticipate to spend much time there but we stayed for 4 hours :)

PS. For people who were worried about our cat going though the surgery: he is doing much better and he is back home! He is shaved in some places and I'm sure still sore but he is being much more active and I'm sure will be back in shape in no time :)