hello everyone and welcome to the channel if you happen to be new around here my name is
trevor and this is anna we are the delightful travelers make sure to click on that subscribe
button and the little bell to follow along on our dominican republic adventures today
we're going to be answering one of the biggest questions we've been getting since we arrived
here in the dominican republic it's basically why did we choose the dominican republic and
especially up here in the north coast in cabaret so after a year and a half of being stuck stuck
at home in nova scotia canada we did a whole lot of research we had lots of time to do
research and we decided on the dominican republic that we'd stay here for the winter and throughout
the video we're going to tell you all the reasons because there are a lot of reasons
of why we picked this country i mean take a look at how beautiful this place is today is a bit of
an overcast day but it's kind of nice it is kind of nice because usually it's quite sunny most days
have been really really sunny and when the sun comes out it's so hot not complaining it's really
lovely but it is kind of a little refreshing to not have the sun beating down on us especially
while we're filming so it's kind of funny because this is not our first time in the dominican
republic we came here like six years ago and years ago online like an all-inclusive free package
thing and honestly we didn't really like it and we kind of formed an opinion of the dominican
republic based on the opinion of or our opinion of the resort that we stayed at and the experience
that we had there i feel like a lot of people do that they go they stay at it all inclusive
they only stay at the resort they maybe do an excursion or two but it really isn't experiencing
the country and then they leave with an opinion of what they think the country is like so you're
gonna have to let us how many of you are guilty of doing that we know you are we know some of
you are we've heard it from friends we've heard it from family this time we decided to come back and
properly explore the island and let me tell you this place is quite special okay
let's have a bit of story time here and just talk about how we ended up here why did we choose the
dominican republic now originally we were going to go to europe jump around a little bit every
few weeks the way we used to travel and then all this coveted stuff variants well that didn't seem
like the best idea and the rules just kept changing too when we were worried about like
getting somewhere and not having the proper tests because they just changed the rules or you know
just like having to jump through a lot of hoops to get from one place to the next we're not being
able to enter a country that we wanted to stuff like that so we were a little bit nervous about
that and then we kind of decided since we had been stuck at home in canada for so long we really just
wanted some hot hot or some beaches and obviously if we were traveling in the fall or autumn uh to
europe it'd be eventually getting cold so yeah they just wanted something really really hot so
that led us to the caribbean yeah and what we did is we decided okay in the dominican republic they
have some big distractions for i'll just call them like touristic resort travelers punta cana makes
for a nice distraction we found this out in the past when we go to the kind of the east of mexico
cancun makes for a great distraction from all the other areas around there like holbox tulum
tulum is getting busy now but bakula so we figured here because of puerto plata and punta cana there
would be some kind of hidden gems and here we are just about 40 minutes outside puerto plata
20 minutes from the airport in cabaret and we had looked at going to other caribbean countries but
so many of them are very very very expensive the british virgin islands and you know all of those
well you know all of them every single one of those islands all of them are really really
expensive and we couldn't stay for a while you know maybe go for two weeks and then we'd be
out of money our budget would be spent so we were like what country can we go to that's not too too
expensive and that brought us to thinking about the dominican republic so here we are in cabo reta
on the north coast of the dominican republic for all of winter at least four or five months like
canadian winter let's call it that and i was just trying to remember how we even chose this place
i know one of the things is we just went on a map looked at what was in proximity to the airport and
then started doing a lot of research this town is a little digital nomad kitesurfing town we'll show
you a lot more as we go today but that was one of the key factors one of the main reasons that
we chose this little place so before we get into all the details about cabaret and why it was so
appealing to us and why we moved here let's talk a little bit more about the dr and why we picked it
and some of the things we learned when we were doing research that we were a little surprised
about i mean obviously there are some amazing beaches here the dr is very well known for the
beaches you can have beaches like this which is long and walkable you can walk for hours there's
kite surfing there's lots of waves but then you can have these beautiful serene empty beaches
that are have gorgeous turquoise water we're going to see some of them in future videos because we're
going to do so much stuff while we're here but also there's mountains there's rivers there's
waterfalls there's some really cool accommodations that hopefully we'll get to do as well
in so many videos that we're going to do in the in the future we're also gonna do a video on cost of
living because i know a lot of you guys are asking us about that so we've already said subscribe but
please guys hit that subscribe button i know a lot of you guys maybe even think you're
subscribed but you're not so please double check that we're really really really trying to get to
100k sorry if we sound repetitive throughout the videos but it's our goal it's our next big goal
so please hit that subscribe button okay we're now back up in the town and you can see it's
well a little busier up here there's lots of noise it is not right in the like center of town either
so it's not really sidewalks or anything so just be prepared for that it can be a little bit scary
it's definitely easier to walk on the beach it's kind of a typical uh caribbean town and driving
you can see lots of different cars here the reason we are in town now is because we wanted to come to
this coffee shop called vagamondo and take a look at this place is this not bali vibe super chill
here there's lots of digital nomads people working we also got some fantastic looking food down here
take a look at this this is a toast it's like avocado eggs some other goodies and then we have
a waffle it looks like it's just smothered in i believe that's bacon so we've actually eaten here
a couple of times so far they've got some good avocado toast which trevor's about to try they
also have some bowls and things like that but the name of their the full name of the coffee
shop is vegamando coffee and waffles so i decided i really should try one of the waffles because
i think they're supposed to be amazing they have tons of different types but this one has so it's a
waffle with maple syrup bacon and i think jalapeno as well sounds very interesting i don't know if
i've ever had a waffle with bacon on it this might be too big of a bite but i'm going to do it anyway
okay that is supremely supremely delicious the waffle itself is just really really nice but i
don't get a whole lot of the waffle flavor just because there's so many other things happening
right now the bacon is the predominant flavor for sure nice and smoky lots of sweetness from i think
that's real maple syrup i haven't got too much of the uh jalapeno yet but i'm gonna guess there's
some spice in there as well so one thing we didn't mention yet is our drinks and i got a chanola
basically passion fruit juice looks incredible and i got an iced coffee but what i also got
is this beautiful thing right here this is called the malibu on this pouched egg tomato i think
there's some arugula and also feta and let's not let's see egg test huh oh yeah it's coming
out right here on the other side perfectly pouched egg oh yeah look at that one i left
out one important part there's avocado on here as well it's avocado toast of course let's go for it
that is just pure heaven it's sitting on incredibly fresh french bread as well
and just the combo of everything one thing that stands out is the feta cheese it's nice and salty
it cuts through all the rest the egg is perfect with the tomato makes it even more fresh really
good the coffee as well is something else here i mean they're known for that of course
you just cannot beat an iced coffee in 30 degree weather so you might notice we just switched
tables because the sun started to come out we were not in the shade so we found a shadier one i'm
still sweating like crazy it's funny how we were talking about it being a bit of a cooler day today
but it's still really really hot so trevor sort of already alluded to it but something we discovered
when we started researching this town was that it's kind of a digital nomad place something we
always tend to look for and there's a couple of reasons for that one is that you get coffee shops
like this great places to work out of really great vibes good food good coffee and typically good
internet this town has relatively good internet we haven't come across any that's really really slow
in our apartment it's pretty good and we'll maybe run a speed test here so you can see
what the internet's like so you'll probably see the speeds running here now it's pretty
fast internet one thing we noticed as well is before we got here we contacted a lot of different
condos and apartments we're trying to figure out where to rent and we asked them about the internet
and they all answered really fast and they also said if we want to pay a little bit more we can up
it to the top speed around here so that's great for people like us now back to the location of
this where we are right now in cabaret it is about 20 minutes from the puerta plata airport which
to get back to canada is only like four and a half hours for us to get to montreal then
it's an hour to get back to halifax so that is incredibly convenient now you guys might remember
last year or a year and a half ago i should say we got stuck in the philippines when cove
it happened yes if you're new around here that actually happened we filmed the whole thing it's
on our channel but when we were there we couldn't get back we couldn't get a flight we couldn't get
off the island so it was difficult to get home we don't want that to happen again this time
we're closer also it is the same time zone it's atlantic standard time uh has halifax in nova
scotia so it's very convenient for us right now another really appealing thing about being in the
dr for us is the opportunity to just practice our spanish is probably the language that we encounter
the most when we travel just because we've been around south america a lot of caribbean countries
spain obviously so you encounter it a lot and we never really you know we spend two weeks in one
country you don't really get the opportunity to really start practicing it you might pick up some
things but then you're somewhere else and you kind of forget them so it's a good chunk of time to
like really practice our spanish it's coming along ever so slowly we're picking up some things here
we got a long way to go we do i don't think we'll be able to speak of fluent but we're gonna try
so it's now a few hours later we're approaching golden hour and we're
back down here on the beach honestly this is one of our favorite things about this town
this beach is absolutely beautiful and it's just minutes from the town at any point you can get
right back yeah you're always super close i don't think you could ever be more than like
a five minute walk off the beach you really went really really far in town yeah so far
we're just finding this place has everything we could possibly ask for in a destination
it's really amazing so as we film this we've been here a few weeks now kind of like getting
into the groove of things definitely starting to get a little bit of a routine today since
we know we're filming this and talking to you guys this may be slightly different but
it's a super productive day but normally we'd get up in the morning do lots of work maybe hang out
with the pool or the beach for a few hours and take it easy we didn't do that today we
actually did get a lot of work done today but then almost every day this doesn't make us sound really
really bad i don't know almost every day we come down to the beach at this time and there are a
lot of really great happy hours there is speaking of just great things in general look at that how
inviting look at our shadows you can tell that sun's going down what a place it's so beautiful
so we've now come over to a place called front loop and you can easily see why this is one of
our favorite places on the beach they're right here in the sand there's all these
cabanas different kinds of chairs there's even a little pool here and we got a bohemia beard now
don't know too much about this it's a dominican republic beer let's give it a quick little try
so the only thing i have to compare this to is a presidente like there's presidente light there's
golden lights but then presidente like a normal beer this i would say is a touch heavier with a
little bit of a punch but it is very refreshing it's also pilsner all the beers here in the
dominican republic so far anyway the domestic ones seem to be pilsters so we've touched on
this a little bit already but let's talk a little bit more about affordability here in
the dominican republic and we will be doing a full cost of living video in the very very near future
so we're just gonna touch upon it right now but things here are quite affordable uh for instance
eating out we find in general we spend about half like for a full meal that we would in canada so i
don't know 30 to 40 dollars for like both of us to eat out have a couple of drinks have an appetizer
a main that kind of thing um drinks themselves especially during happy hour can be very cheap
here at front loop you can get two mojitos for 190 pesos which is like three to four dollars it's so
cheap i don't even know how they can afford i mean i realize that dominican rum is probably pretty
cheap to buy but still that's i don't even know how they make any money off that they must not
another thing that's really affordable here are like cell phone plans you can go with claro which
you have to top up every five days so we ended up not going with them but it's very very very cheap
we ended up going with altis and i think we paid approximately twenty dollars for a 30-day plan
that gives us like 15 gigs so that's really really not bad at all so i'll quickly touch
on the weather because i know some of you are probably wondering about that and the weather
is one of the big reasons we have come here to the dominican republic it's basically 30 degrees every
single day and it barely rains we've been here now for a few weeks it rarely rains in the day it's
kind of typical caribbean it might rain at night like late at night sometimes we only actually had
one full day of rain so far it's unbelievable also on this beach because we're on the north shore of
the dominican republic there's an amazing breeze so when it's 30 degrees you're always cooled off
you won't sweat or anything like that it's perfect it's a perfect beach because the minute you go
into town and there's no breeze at all i mean it's a sweat fest you guys it's so hot in town it
feels like it's another 10 degrees hotter but the weather here is absolutely perfect so we're now
back at our condo you're seeing some nighttime shots of that right at this moment we really
love it here and you're gonna see that soon in an upcoming video we're gonna we're gonna be sure to
give you guys a full tour of where we're staying and while it's gonna do it i know we keep saying
this but you guys keep asking for us a cost of living video it's coming very very soon but i feel
like we keep saying that and then everybody in the comments keeps saying can you tell us how much
things cost so it's the most coming it's the most requested video that we get a cost of living video
we will do that just remember when we do that it's going to be specifically in this area but i think
that reflects a lot of the towns and areas and the dominican republic yeah um i think the one thing
we maybe haven't talked about so far in this video something that's really has been really appealing
to us about being here in the dominican republic is dominican people have been super friendly super
nice i know again a lot of people's preconceived notions are based off of going and staying at in
all-inclusive and you might have a different opinion of what uh dominican people are like
but they're super friendly very very very nice some of the nicest people that we've ever met
on any of our travels yeah we love all the dominicans that we meet not even that even
the expats that live here we've met so many of those folks and everybody is just so friendly and
it's just a lot of fun to hang out i've met a lot of expats that live here but also a lot of people
that are just kind of here like us or they've been coming for a lot of years they don't necessarily
own a place but they keep coming back here again and again it really says something about this area
that people love it it's a really really neat area we hope that you guys will get this over
the upcoming videos there's a lot of videos coming out in the dominican republic here where we're at
and you're going to see especially a lot more of cabarete hopefully you will understand how special
this place is now if you're new around here trevor and a delightful travelers make sure to click on
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if you don't want to because we're always going to be making the videos all right guys that's
it from cabaret day in the dominican republic wishing you all delightful travels see you soon