this video is sponsored by wanderlog stay tuned to later in the video for all the details
coming up in this video we're leaving our current home in cabarete dominican republic for our first
road trip and getaway we rented a car and will take a daunting two to three hour drive west to
the small village of punta rucia we arrived to a beautiful untouched fishing village with the most
incredible beaches i think it's safe to say we found another happy place
we can't wait to explore the stunning area i'm
okay i think i have everything it's so weird to pack for a trip while on a trip but today we
were going off on our little road trip through the dominican republic here on the north coast
it's kind of our first little getaway since we've been here so there's a lot of new folks that have
subscribed to the channel recently so if you are new welcome trevor anna delightful travelers we
are spending the entire winter the canadian winter here in the north shore in cabaret specifically in
the dominican republic but today we are as i already said going on our very first road
trip we're heading across the north coast to a little little town called punta rucia
and while we're at it we're going to talk a little bit about uh safety here in the dominican republic
because it seems to be a big question that you guys always seem to have for us so my bag is
pretty much packed here we're not taking suitcases for this little mini trip because we're only going
for four days so the backpacks are gonna be all we have now we have rented a car so we're gonna find
out if driving here in the dominican republic is safe we've heard it's the complete wild wild west
out there we have seen it firsthand a little bit the roads themselves aren't too bad but it just
everyone kind of just does what they want driving so let's uh let's see how this goes so something
very very exciting happened last night we hit 90 000 subscribers overnight i was actually asleep
for it unfortunately but we wanted to thank you guys who got us here we love you we appreciate you
we also really really really really want to get to a hundred thousand so hopefully that happens
in the next couple of months but if you haven't already hit that subscribe button by the way let's
go back to our road trip so we're off to maybe a bit of a rocky start i don't know we asked the uh
car rental place to drop off our car here at our apartment at 10 a.m and he showed up on time
everything good but we came outside and he said so i've got some good news and some bad news and
we're like oh no what does that mean he couldn't actually get our car so he brought us his own car
i think i mean it's an suv it's an suv it's a big like kia sportage or something like that
we'll see it when he gets back but anyway it wasn't clean because it is his own car so he went
to go get it cleaned we were like we really got to get going he's like oh i'm going to be super fast
we are in the dominican republic dominican time i don't know we'll see hopefully he'll be back
really soon our ride has arrived he was actually on time it's a kia sorento not a sport as i think
i maybe said before but it's here we're ready to go all right well this is it let's check it out
all right not too bad huh are you ready
now we're off to a bit of a rocky start the car was dropped off to us with no gas in it i mean
absolutely no gasoline the gas light was on so we had to find a gas station before we ran out
of gas did that now we can't get the music going but we'll there's radio stations so we're gonna be
listening to some spanish music but uh yeah the traffic is pretty pretty hectic it's just the
biggest thing is the scooters you have to watch when they come like in and out so while we're here
driving along it's going well so far let's talk a little bit more about safety and specifically
driving we get a lot of advice from people about the best way to do it things to be careful of
things to be aware of while you're driving one everybody basically told us do not do not drive
at night time so basically if you have you know a five or six hour drive leave early enough that
you're gonna get there before dark i think there's various reasons one seems to be that people
uh have like really high beams and that kind of thing and they don't turn them up and down so it
can be really hard to see at times another thing is just drunk drivers at night time you have to
be really aware of that there aren't that many rules or laws here um another thing is everyone
just sort of said like go your own pace go slow and be very very very aware of what's happening
around you that's what we're doing right now all right so right here we have a casual conversation
happening on the road just not even looking back i mean i do wonder what they're talking about
we're at a standstill in traffic right now we're in puerto plata we're just driving through
the city it's one of the bigger cities here in the country and yeah i don't know how they
do this it's just like organized chaos i mean everybody gets to where they're going
but it just takes a little longer than you think right now we're completely stopped
that's why i'm talking to the camera hopefully we can get through whatever's happening up
here have no idea take the first exit on road five avenida manolo tobares houston
but we survived puerto plata i'm pretty sure we're on like the older farther edge now so that's great
it looks a little bit more highway-like here way fewer cars way fewer motorbikes so that's nice
i don't think there's any like really big towns at least as far as i know from here
to puerto rico so hopefully it's like easy going from here on out well that was easy
i mean sort of it was a long drive about two and a half hours give or take park the car here on
the side of the road in the little town of punta ruchia because well you see what's behind me o m
t holy moly that is insane uh so what do we think is this the most turquoise water ever maybe not
ever but it's up there this is gorgeous oh this is like this is what i come to the caribbean for
it's just so incredible wow so that honestly was totally worth the two and a half to three hour
drive here and it wasn't that bad i mean there were some points you know in the city that it was
a little bit i'm not gonna say scary but it wasn't really that bad we want to thank our sponsor for
helping us get here today let's find out a little bit more about them right now so let's talk about
wanderlog wanderlog is a free travel planning app where you can easily create organize share and
plan your adventures this app has been perfect for us to easily plan our road trip from cabaret to
here in punta rucia the app allows you to put in your confirmations itineraries maps and everything
else you need to plan your trip in one place including flight bookings and hotel reservations
we were able to import our airbnb confirmation by simply emailing our confirmation and it
immediately integrated into our itinerary but even better than this is that we can add extra
notes like check-in times instructions and codes our car rental didn't even come with an official
confirmation but wanderlog was able to find the company we booked through and then we very easily
manually added our pickup and drop-off time and any other information we thought we might need
to confirm the booking we were also able to share the itinerary with each other so that we're both
able to access all the important information we need for us the very best thing is having all the
information in one place not having to worry about having one confirmation saved in files
and another somewhere in random email all the information we require for this trip is all saved
in one very convenient place on top of that the app is clean intuitive and very easy to use and
is available on ios android and desktop you can click the link below in the description to go to
wonderlog.com or you can download the wanderlog app in the app store also a very big thank you to
wanderlog for sponsoring this video and supporting creators like us so we're now at our hotel it's
called blue island juntaruchia and as you can see this is absolutely gorgeous first thing i did here
is just stepped out on the beach and still in the room at the moment just kind of unpacking quickly
i believe we're going to grab some lunch because we're hungry after that drive but oh my word
take a look at this we pretty much have this empty unreal caribbean tropical turquoise beach
all to ourselves i can't get over what i'm looking at right now ah yeah guys this is amazing i got
unpacked came downstairs trevor was chilling on the beach we ordered some food it's got a beer
priorities this is very important it's gonna make a little beer cozy too to keep it keep it
nice and cool what kind of beer is it though it's of course the president's light most refreshing
thing for the beach but for now i think both of us are really really hungry we barely ate anything
all day and then we did that drive so we're gonna eat i think maybe we'll just pick you up tomorrow
well welcome to the next day we thought we'd start things out with a good old-fashioned drone flight
in oh my did you guys see that can you believe it it's crazy i can't get over this place i know when
we told a few people that we were coming here some people that had been here before like it's
really quiet there's not much to do and we thought that sounds like our kind of place and i can say
after being here for just maybe just really one full evening i love this place it's quiet it's
quaint it's lovely it's beautiful and yeah see it's super safe so anytime we go to a new place
new area we're always a little hesitant you know like you're like is it safe to walk around can we
leave our stuff especially when when you get here later in the day yeah it's like that but
we were like can we walk the beach home at night that's always our probably our biggest concern
when we get to a new place was right on the beach everybody that we talked to was like it's so safe
here everybody it's so small that everybody knows each other we started to ask many different people
we didn't even just ask our hotel or anything like that we went around a couple different
restaurants talked to some locals talked to some expats and basically it's like one community here
yeah i still don't know how to say the name properly i think it's punta rucia i keep
i think that's incorrect people can let us know in the comments if we're both completely saying it
wrong but the way people around here seem to say it is punta rucia i feel like we're the only ones
here at the moment there's no one on this beach you can see there's kind of a mix of some
boutique hotels with not many people in them and then there's also more rustic places that
have clearly been here for a long time i really like that it feels authentic it feels like a real
dominican republic village so i know a bunch of you guys had already recommended to us that
we stay at the punta rucia lodge um we did look it up it's so expensive i know some people had
mentioned that in the low season it's not too bad but even this isn't isn't busy at all here
and it was like double or triple the price of the place we're staying at right now and i would say
the place we're staying at right now isn't even cheap so it was like i can't even tell you how
expensive it was we would have loved to stay there but not on our budget i think you're gonna find us
sounding like a bunch of broken records here but there's gonna be a lot of dusting there's a lot
of gushing this is basically a postcard for the caribbean i mean or the dominican republic this is
absolutely insane the postcard that says paradise and has like crystal clear water and palm trees
it's basically this place with not many people on it i feel like we have a little village to
ourselves that said there is a town just kind of well village steps away there's like a little
road we'll take you up there because it's like pretty real and raw yeah all right we're now up
in the town and this reminds me a little bit of the philippines actually the whole place kind of
brings me back to the philippines and for those of you that are just tuning in for the very first
time we actually got stuck in the philippines at the beginning of the pandemic and we were there
for like four months in this small little town on an island so it kind of reminds me of that
a little bit and there were lives now we're on another island for maybe four months or longer
the village actually has quite a few restaurants for how small it is i mean i wouldn't say there's
dozens and dozens but there is a good pizza place we had pizza last night there's a french place
there's a few little dominican places there's some little huts with some things to go yeah it's it's
really a really special place i think any of you that followed us for a while you'd probably tell
that every now and then we find these kind of what do we come happy places this is one this is one
so you'll notice it's really really really quiet here there's not that many people around there's a
few motorbikes here and there during the day i think especially i mean we haven't really spent
that much time here so probably after a couple days we'll get a better idea for what it's like
but a lot of people only come here for day trips they come on a bus they get on a boat
come back and i'm assuming they just get shipped out again you'll find out a little bit more about
that in the next video because we're actually going to do what it is i'm alluding to let's
go back to safety again for a second because again we do feel very very very safe here but
we always tell people to follow basic there's tools that you would anywhere it's like don't
be so offy about money or jewelry or that kind of thing um and don't just leave stuff out like
don't leave your phone on the table and go to the bathroom because it's just tempting for someone to
you never know who's gonna come around and just grab something but that applies to basically any
country you would ever go to the other thing i want to quickly touch on is crime rates now
when we travel we do not look up crime rates i know some of you right now are going to be like
you have to look that stuff up but then others are going to say no we don't look up crime rates
either because usually the crime is happening domestically it can happen to tourist shore but
usually when you're travel like a tourist you're in touristic destinations you don't have to worry
about crime as much again always be cautious like anna just said a minute ago about anything you do
but we don't go out late at night we kind of play it kind of easy and we do our research before we
do anything so crime rates don't always apply to us or to anyone just look where we are right now
thing is safe we feel very safe all right well looks like we found what is this maybe the
village square the public square i guess there's usually people in here it's actually the first
time we've walked by and there's not but what do we think this is i'm really not sure if this
is gonna come through on the camera but there are um what is like a it's like a string or something
did they start setting up their christmas tree i know you guys could be watching this at any time
but as we film this it's only a few weeks before christmas and maybe they're gonna do something
with it or maybe that's just a weird decoration i think that is the start of the christmas tree
there's a little stand here on the side of the road i'm not sure what it is
it really doesn't get better than this we just came down to this little like open-air kind of
shack slash restaurant right on the beach we found some chairs we got some presidente light
i love that it just comes it comes in a bag and you can drink it right out of the bottle
we also got a cheese empanada i'm gonna try this thing out right now look at that
it's all crispy it's got those kind of bubbles and pops of greasy goodness
oh that was good a little street food right there i'm sure this is not the best empanada i've ever
had but given the location and the setting and the day we've been having i'm going to
say this is the best empanada i have ever had in my life listen to behind me right now
what a place all the people are hanging out basically right behind me but
so so good what a day and what a day yesterday was we got in a car we drove about two and a
half hours across the north shore of the dominican republic through a major city
the major city of puerto plata down some windy roads to a little village here and we felt pretty
safe we feel very very safe we'd love to know what you guys think but because i know a lot
of people ask about safety and how do we feel and we honestly feel very very comfortable we always
like to talk to people and ask lots of questions and we've never heard really anything bad now so
far we felt very safe here but of course as we've kept on saying throughout the course of the video
always do your research do your homework be careful out there of course but we can tell
you we felt perfectly a-okay being here it's been an amazing few days i'm so glad we did this i was
a little nervous to drive honestly but once you get going you just you get comfortable pretty
quick yeah you just have to be very very careful i guess that's just the be careful is the moral
of every story wherever you go wherever you are even the country you live in yeah so we're so
excited to be spending a few days here in the next video we're going to be doing something
else sort of around this area it might involve a boat might involve some islands hopefully
weather depending but if you are new around here trevor anna delightful travelers we're
here in the dominican republic for at least four or five months maybe longer we don't even know so
if you want to see what that's like to come down to the caribbean and avoid
canadian winter american winter winter in the in europe this is the time to subscribe you guys if
you're not new it's always great to see each and every one of you again click on the like button if
you haven't already that really helps us get the video out there yeah we are on the road to 100k
so please hit that subscribe button if you haven't already i don't remember if we said
we're at 90k already like that's a huge milestone we just hit that recently but
we are 10 000 off from 100k we got a long way to go but we think we can get there with the help of
each and every one of you alright guys that's it from punta rucia wishing you delightful travels
see you soon