Remember that lovely wedding and honeymoon that you had in the Dominican Republic. Remember how the whole thing came off without a hitch. Well.. that’s the problem… if you are one of more than 200 British and Canadian couples it may in fact have come off without a real marriage.

Investigators have uncovered what they suspect is a wedding scam involving more than 200 British and Canadian couples who paid hundreds of dollars for Dominican marriages that were never officially recorded.

Four people have been detained — all employees of the Central Electoral Board that oversees civil marriages, but no charges have been filed. CBC News reports:

In a preliminary report sent to the board last week, the National Department of Investigations said uncertified officiants are suspected of colluding with hotels to swindle foreign couples.

The Tourism Ministry’s website says registration fees of about $455 are required for Dominican weddings, though the fees can be higher if a resort plans the ceremony.

The allegedly fraudulent ceremonies took place from July 2007 to present at resorts in the eastern Dominican Republic, where foreign couples frequently travel for weddings and honeymoons.

Look at it this way, it may have been one of the most elaborate wedding rehearsals ever.

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Last year I wrote about my favorite beach in the world in an article title Favorite Beach - The Baths in Virgin Gorda. I found this video from an episode of the The Map which goes to Virgin Gorda. Skip the first 2 minutes if you must but the trail to the baths is one of those things that words alone don’t do justice. Getting there really is half the fun.

Hotels in British Virgin Islands

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The Daily Mail had this picture showing the airport at St Bart’s in the West Indies. I have had some interesting landings on short island runways but nothing like this where passersby actually felt the need to duck as the planes came in.

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This journal covers a cruise to Panama on Holland America through Insight / Geek Cruises. The cruise was a Shakespeare cruise done in conjunction with the Oregon Shakespeare Festival and a Mac cruise done in conjunction with MacWorld.

Friday November 2, San Jose to Florida

The alarm goes off very early when you are trying to be at the airport before 6am for a 6:50am flight. A close friend Brad volunteered to take us to the airport… a very close friend indeed. Although in reality it was his wife Janice who actually woke up when their alarm went off so very early in the morning.

Our flights to Atlanta and then on to Fort Lauderdale were both happily uneventful and we used the time to sleep, read magazines ( I brought 2-3 inches of my backlog for this leg of the trip), or do homework (Joan). We took a shuttle ($15 a person) to the Westin Fort Lauderdale where I was surprised to find that I had apparently reserved a suite.

Almost immediately after our arrival we went to a party put on by the Shakespeare at Sea / Insight Cruises program that we were joining for this trip. By the time that the evening was done we had met more people on this cruise without setting foot on the boat than we had in a week at sea on our previous cruise. Most of the crowd was older than us, some by a margin. They also were more regular or more recent patrons of the Oregon Shakespeare festival than Joan and I. I had gone to Ashland, where OSF resides, in 2006 with our kids and their high school drama group but we had not been to the festival for a few years before that. Before the birth of our kids Joan and I had gone more regularly. I had gone to Ashland with a group from my high school 4 years in a row in the 1970s. The vast majority of the people at the party were from the west coast and the majority were from the San Francisco bay area. We very quickly found interesting people to talk to. We even found some Mac people who ventured in from the Mac party and some others like myself who were fans of both Mac and Shakespeare.

Before going to bed I recorded a new introduction to an old episode of the Amateur Traveler podcast for publication on November 10th.

Read the rest of this entry »

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Visit Curacao (Curaçao) with the Amateur Traveler: This video is from a snorkeling excursion with a snorkeling trip with Bounty Adventures and their sailing sloop the Bounty.

CHEAP CARIBBEAN VACATIONS

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