Good thinking. 
Paging @purplehorseshoe …
They also had an albino Burmese python. Thing had to be 10, maaybe 12 feet long. Bright ivory color with subdued and subtle white to light gray but still intricate markings. Very pretty. Most of the body was the diameter of my (slender adult male) mid thigh. The head alone was a good handful. They are rumored to be rather ill-tempered. Close to my home, they are slowly conquering the Everglades as an introduced invasive species. Nothing can eat them and they kill alligators for entertainment. And eat the alligator eggs en masse for nourishment. Fierce critters.
Sadly, we did not get to feed the monkeys to the python. Nor that one annoying person you meet on every tour with the screechy cackling laugh Who. Will. Not. Shut. Up. Would’ve been great to watch if we could’ve. Sigh. Another missed adventure. So close …
I know of several of those. As the saying goes: “They spent more time and effort planning the wedding than they did planning the marriage.” Sux to be them. As you said, but I did not snip, sux even more to be their kids if that happens.
In a weird sort of way I got similarly railroaded into marrying wife #2. By the time it was time to do the deed, she had moved in and burned her logistical bridges behind her (with my support / urging, so no attempt now to shift blame; from my POV that was all a self-inflicted wound by me, not an ambush by her. Really.) By then backing out seemed to me a lot harder than pressing ahead despite my many misgivings. Which all turned out to be well-founded; hence the divorce.
So it’s not just young people who make these kinds of dumb-ass mistakes. D’oh!!
Mine has come and gone several times. Presently it’s neat and trim, but it resembled ZZ Top in an earlier incarnation. But yeah, the longer it’s there, the less plausible getting rid of it becomes.
Once after a few years of it I had to shave it for a job change. Late wife’s comment: “I liked you better the other way; it hid so much more of your face.” She was kidding. I think.
Currently the ladies in and around my life seem to prefer with to without. And whatever the ladies want, the ladies get. Men, or at least this man, is simple that way.
Mucho laughter.
I’ve told this story before …
Once decades ago I came home from work after ~30 hours awake and a hellish commute home from halfway across the USA during the overnight hours. Drove home in a mental fog arriving just a bit pre-dawn. Stripped in the living room, groggily crawled into bed in the blackout-curtain dark, stuck out my hand towards her sleeping head and encountered a giant mass of Afro-like curls. My wife has voluminous long utterly straight Italian hair; never a curl in sight.
I was sure I’d gotten into the wrong house in my sleep-deprived dazed state and was as good as dead. Then she made those familiar umph mumph noises we all know and love and my heart rate began to recover.
There was a brief fad you might recall from ~1990 for white chix to wear semi-afros. She’d gotten a perm to surprise me. First time in the ~8 years I’d known her and the ~3 years we’d been married she’d ever gotten her hair “done” as opposed to just “cut”.
I was in fact surprised. :eek: 
Just not in a good way. She did not renew the perm once it had grown / washed out. She damn near got to collect on my life insurance; good thing as a mere stripling of 33-ish I had a strong heart that could survive going from 60 to 300 BPM and back no-notice.
Crap!! Ouch!, you poor thing!!! Major sympathy!!
But at least you got to see a forest. So totally worth it!!1! 
My late mother fell at age ~70; looking the other way, spun an ankle on the raised edge of a sidewalk and down she went, having spiral-fractured her femur. Definitely a case of “fell then broke”, not “broke then fell”. The joints at each end of the femur were fine, it was the shaft in the middle that had failed in gross overload. She recovered, but it took a lot out of her.
Please use due care. The difference between the people who are dead at 75 or walking around hale and sorta hearty at 85 is usually how careful they were, not how healthful they were.
I would not go that far, at least as to this place. This is all above OK. Just not as high end as the rest of the advertising and facilities seem to promise. Like a mid-range Vegas hotel (or cruise) when you’re expecting a high-end Vegas hotel or cruise. Not bad, not great.
I have had fantastic meals at local or famous restaurants around the DR, just not at resorts. The capital, Santo Domingo, has plenty of nice budget dining and also pretty affordable wretched excess for the ruling class. The countryside can fix you up with yummies at most any roadside eatery. Though you’ll probably be the first gringo they fed that year. Very nice people overall. I could readily live in the DR if future life circumstances drove me out of the USA.
But yeah, resorts are all about catering to the budget crowd. Like Carnival cruise lines (AKA K-Mart of the Caribbean), quantity beats quality every time.
As to me, I now am finishing a 3-hour Italian gourmet dinner that totally makes up for the other two OK-not-noteworthy dinners here. One steak house meh and one fish / seafood B+ experience. But this makes me take back everything negative I’ve said. Pumpkin gorgonzola cream soup, a fine antipasti, a vegetable lasagna with housemade pasta topped with béchamel & Pomodoro sauces, and finally filet mignon medallions marsala with a wild mushroom risotto. Superb flavors and great presentation. The bottle of vintage Nebbiolo isn’t hurting either. The dessert & digestif course yet remains. All cooked with skill from good ingredients.
Thus winds down the trip here.
As to tomorrow, it should (famous last words) be a simple ride to the airport & flight home.
I’ve confirmed a date w proto-GF #1 for tomorrow night at a time and location on my way home from the airport that’s sorta equi-inconvenient for both of our residences. We’ve had a few dates in that eatin’ / drinkin’ / touristin’ fun zone already What happens after dinner is TBD, but it’s usually crazy.
Probably time to introduce her to the MMP as she’ll probably be a feature for a few months at least. Still thinking about an MMP-name for her. Any ideas?
She’s a few months older than I, so retired. Has darn good looks / in good shape for her age. Overall small and trim. Not unlike wife 1 & 2. But clearly an older woman; nobody would mistake her for well-preserved 50. Well-preserved 60, sure. She’s got a very pleasant personality overall. And is a lusty wench to boot.
After 30+ years as a country club SAHM, she’s separated a few months from a hubby who, in her version of events, has ignored her and their joint children for the whole 30 years while monomaniacally building his business into a darn tidy earner. They share a 25 & almost 30yo kid; one married, the other going steady. Both successes in their fields and seemingly very stable characters.
Her divorce is just getting underway and she’s in massive need of male affection & honest caring-for. While dealing with the logistical mess of her moving into one of their other residences that was completing a renovation before hostilities commenced. Assuming hubby doesn’t throw all his their money away on lawyers trying to prevent the inevitable 50/50 split of assets, she will be my SES or better once the dust settles. Right now she’s on an informal short leash financially that he loves to yank. Within a month or so the formal divorce process should stop the yanking. Contempt of court findings have a way of concentrating minds.
As a young woman she had been a staffer for an airline and has the travel bug bad; her husband hasn’t traveled except for work in decades. Like me, she has a need to her very core to make of up for decades of lost time spent not traveling and not having a normal affectionate marriage. Our problems stemmed from very different causes, but ended up leaving us in very similar spots of long-term deprivation and now late in life with little and uncertain time to make up that gross deficit. I’m just a couple years ahead of her on her journey to freedom and happiness. Which sets me up to lead the way. :evil leer:
If this works out, we’re both looking at a joint life of truly wretched excess without a care, monster affection w limitless in-private recreation, and worldwide first class travel until we’re too weak to walk. Then we hire matching wheelchair pushers and keep going.
In other words, we’re utterly screwed. Something has to rear its ugly head to destroy this rosy scenario before it gets much off the ground. I think most of us here can guess who /what that demon of doom is.
Here’s hoping!