Punta Cana with Mara

Four nights at the Hard Rock Hotel Punta Cana in mid-May. G was still on her Europe trip, so this was a getaway with my friend Mara. Sometimes you need a pool and a beach and someone who doesn't want to talk about work for four days. Mara is that person.

The Hard Rock Punta Cana is an all-inclusive on a stretch of beach that's wide and white and lined with palm trees that look like they were placed by a set designer. The resort is massive. Multiple pools, a casino, a golf course, a spa, more restaurants than you can hit in four nights. The rooms have hydro-tubs on the balconies, which is excessive and also exactly right when you're on vacation and have stopped pretending you're not the kind of person who enjoys a balcony hot tub at 9 AM.

All-inclusive resorts operate on their own logic. Once you stop thinking about cost per meal, your brain relaxes in a way it doesn't at normal hotels. You eat when you're hungry, drink when you're thirsty, order dessert because why not, and the only currency that matters is time. We settled into a rhythm by day two: beach in the morning, pool after lunch, dinner at whichever restaurant we hadn't tried yet, drinks at the swim-up bar until it closed.

The beach is the draw. The Dominican Republic's east coast has some of the best beach in the Caribbean: calm turquoise water, sand that's fine enough to feel like powder, and a warmth that lets you sit in the shallows for an hour without getting cold. We'd set up chairs around 9 AM and not move until noon. The resort beach staff would bring towels and drinks without you asking, which is the all-inclusive move that gets you every time. You didn't want another pina colada. But it's there. And it's free. And the sun is out. So you take it. Mara reads faster than anyone I know. She went through three books in four days. I managed one and a half and felt accomplished. She'd look up occasionally to comment on whatever she was reading and then disappear back into the pages. I'd look at the water and think about nothing, which sounds easy and is actually a skill that takes practice when your default setting is to think about everything.

The food at the Hard Rock was better than I expected for an all-inclusive. The Japanese restaurant did a teppanyaki dinner that was half food, half theater: the chef flipping shrimp into his hat, building an onion volcano, the whole routine that's been the same at every teppanyaki restaurant since 1985 and is still entertaining every time. The Italian was standard but the wood-fired pizza was legitimately good. We ate at the steakhouse one night and the ribeye was better than it had any right to be in a resort that's also serving free burgers by the pool. The breakfast buffet was the daily anchor: omelette station, fresh tropical fruit, pastries, and a juice bar with combinations that ranged from sensible to adventurous. I tried a beet-ginger-pineapple thing on the third morning that the bartender said was popular. It was. It was also purple. My shirt has evidence.

The evenings at the Hard Rock have their own energy. The main pool area lights up after dark and the music shifts from daytime pop to something with a beat. The swim-up bar stays open until 11 and the crowd shifts from families to couples and friend groups. Mara and I spent most evenings there, drinks in the water, talking about nothing important. That's the luxury of a friendship that's been running long enough that you don't need to fill the silence or steer the conversation. It goes where it goes. One night we talked about where we'd be in ten years. Another night we talked about the worst meals we'd ever had (mine was a gas station sushi in Orlando, hers was a Michelin-starred place in London that served foam on everything and tasted like nothing). One night we didn't talk much at all and that was fine too.

One afternoon we left the resort and drove into the town of Punta Cana, which most tourists never see because the resort bubble is designed to keep you inside it. The town is small, dusty, and real in a way the resort isn't. Motorcycles outnumber cars. Dogs sleep in the middle of the road and nobody honks. We ate lunch at a roadside spot that served mofongo (mashed plantains with garlic and pork) and fried fish with tostones and a cold Presidente beer. The woman cooking worked over a single gas burner with the efficiency of someone who's made the same ten dishes every day for 20 years. The fish was seasoned with something I couldn't identify and was better than anything at the resort. The bill was about $8 each. The contrast between the $8 roadside lunch and the free resort dinner three hours later was its own kind of education. Mara said "we should eat here every day" and she was right, but the pool pulled us back. The pool always pulls you back.

The spa at the Hard Rock is included with certain room categories and worth using. Mara and I did the hydrotherapy circuit one morning: hot pool, cold plunge, steam room, repeat. The cold plunge after the steam room resets something in your body that a regular shower can't touch. We sat in the relaxation room afterward with herbal tea and didn't speak for about 20 minutes. That's the test of a good spa and also a good friendship. Mara eventually said "I could live here" and I said "in the spa or in the Dominican Republic" and she said "yes."

Four nights. Read, swam, ate, napped, repeated. Flew back to Miami tanned and rested and ready to do absolutely nothing for another three days.