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Feasting Away Again in Punta Cana

My kids like escargot. Sushi, too. And fresh tropical fruit.

The kids, especially our twin boys, are always hungry. So our trip to Club Med in Punta Cana late last year was like a trip to paradise for our family of five. We don’t live in an area where we can find all these delicacies right around the corner. But in Punta Cana, we journeyed through each day, sampling the varied and multiple buffets at every meal.

We arrived wanting to escape our workaday lives for a few days. But our first night being Election Day in the States, we settled into our adjoining rooms to watch election returns on that historic evening. Tired from our flight, we turned off the TV before West Coast returns had been tallied. We awoke the next morning to a world full of promise…and a new dawn in a tropical utopia.

It was a short walk to breakfast. On the way, we took in the warm air and the colorful lodging units painted in bright hues of peach, lemon, and pink passion fruit. It had been unseasonably warm back home in southern New Jersey, but there’s a difference between Indian-summer warm and being enveloped in a tropical dawn. We stopped to take photos of the orchids and flowering trees and plants.

Breakfast was served at an open-air pavilion that seemed to jut out into the aqua Atlantic. At this first meal especially, we were all like kids in a candy store. There was a juice bar, with fresh squeezed beverages, including tangerine, watermelon, and pineapple. There were waffles, pancakes, and crepes, with all manner of toppings to make a child’s eyes grow wide. Eggs any way you like, bagels and breads, bacon and sausages…well, you get the picture.

And for Mom, here’s the best part: When finished with our breakfast, we got up and walked away. For the first couple of meals, I may have started stacking dishes, it’s a tough habit to break, but then said to myself, “Hey, I’m on vacation.” There was no bill to check over, no tip to figure out. No begging the kids to clear their dishes. Wow, this really is paradise.

During the day, we worked off our meals by playing in the pool or building sandcastles on the beach. We kayaked and tried snorkeling. The boys went to kids camp, and learned how to fly on a trapeze, they played soccer and ping-pong, they tried archery. For our just-turned-teen daughter, there was a camp with her favorite activity, theatrics and drama.

For lunch, the smorgasbord departed far from our usual lunchtime PB&Js. Mid-day snacks for the kids—remember, they’re always hungry—were beautiful frozen drinks ever within easy reach. From the Sky Bar overlooking the meandering pool, the GOs brought around trays of fresh fruit as we sipped our drinks from the comfort of a chaise lounge beneath a leafy umbrella. These healthy snacks saved Mom from preparing between-meal goodies. Yeah, getting lunches and snacks together every day was a distant memory by the second or third day of paradise.

Soon it was time for dinner. Ahh dinner. The staff was there to greet us. The staff was always at hand if you had a question without being in-your-face intrusive. And just beyond the staff at the doors of the indoor dining hall were visions of cakes and fruit and a towering chocolate fountain. Not visions at all but totally real. Yes, the desserts were strategically arranged up front so that you could plan on saving room for them. A maitre de took us to our table, then a waiter offered wine and invited us to go select our dinner items.

This was no ordinary buffet. There were stations all around the huge room, and in the middle of the hall were two concentric circles of food, much of it being prepared as we stepped up. Still, there was plenty of walking space; we never felt as if we were bumping elbows.

A walk around the room was like a walk around the globe with a cultural array of cuisine each night: French, Mexican, Indian, Thai, Korean…. Here’s a short list of the food stations: antipasta; salad; pasta; seafood; carving stations of roast beef, pork, ham, and/or lamb; even a kids’ station with hot dogs, chicken fingers, and fries. Our little eaters hardly went near the latter as they seized the opportunity to try new foods…and to get their fill of the sushi and escargot. Despite the enticing desserts, our fruit lover bypassed them and piled his plate with fruit, mostly papaya.

The whole family wishes to make Club Med in Punta Cana our annual vacation spot. We were barely home before we started hungering for next year’s trip.

Pass the salt, please!