We stayed in a very colorful junior suite at Iberostar Bavaro. The grounds are gorgeous, along with the amazing beach and beautiful landscaping. It is situated next to Iberostar Dominicana and Iberostar Punta Cana. I'm not sure of the price per night because we booked a package of hotel, airfare, and transportation to and from the Punta Cana airport through Apple Vacations. The hotel was completely booked during our stay.

The Rooms:

The rooms are arranged in villas of eight junior suites in each, while in Punta Cana and Dominicana the rooms are in large buildings. In each room there is two full beds and two futon/couches that were made up so someone could sleep on them, but they were very small. There is also a TV with about 25 channels, mostly in English, and a mini-fridge that is always stocked with water, soda, and beer (don't drink the tap water!). Air conditioning and a ceiling fan kept the room pleasantly cool, especially at night. There is also a balcony with a small table. One drawback is that there isn't a lot space to store clothes. In the bathroom, the shower is slightly narrow and the curtain is not quite wide enough. The toiletries were very good.

Activities:

There is an activity every half an hour at various parts of the hotel. They range from bingo to dancing, from horseshoes to vollyball. The activities coordinators were very friendly. On the beach, which is gorgeous, there is a place toward Dominicana were you can rent snorkels, ride the banana boat, sign up for diving, and many other things. At the pool, there is a stand were children can pick out an animal and glaze/paint it. They fire it and you can pick it up the next day.

*To get an idea of the dining see my entry "Dining at Iberostar Bavaro"*

At Iberostar Bavaro, the food is all included, so you can get whatever you want whenever you want it (24-hours room service, too).

Breakfast:

We ate at the main buffet everyday for breakfast. There was everything from fresh fruit to bacon, from eggs to doughnuts. My personal favorites were the scrambled eggs, funnel cakes, sausage, and fresh fruit. The coffee was also extremely good! They serve continental breakfast from 5:30 to 7am, and full breakfast until 10. My friend went to play tennis early and missed breakfast. The got breakfast at the pool bar, where I usually ate...


Lunch:

If you want to eat lunch at the main buffet, you can not wear shorts or a swimsuit, which didn't really work for us since we spent most of the day at the pool or the beach. So, we ate at the pool bar. They served burgers, spaghetti, chicken, French fries, and other lunch foods. Everything was pretty good, except that the burgers didn't really taste like beef and the pasta sauce wasn't very good. There were also 3 places to get ice cream around the area.

Dinner:

When it comes to dinner you have some options. For a one week stay you get three guarantied reservations at specialty restaurants. During our stay we went to the sushi, cajin, and French gourmet. At the cajin restaurant. I had scallops with a cajin spicy sauce, which I didn't really like (the sauce that is). I had Japanese style steak and shrimp with stir fried veggies and rice. The steak was very good, but the shrimp lacked some flavor and the vegetables were little mushy. Our favorite was the French gourmet restaurant, everything was good. For an appetizer I got the lobster salad, which had a LOT of lobster. And for the main course, I had the shrimp with risotto. It was very flavorful and tasty. When we didn't eat at a specialty restaurant we usually ate at the main buffet. There was a very wide variety of foods to choose from. One night, my friends went to the Star Rock Cafe. They said the service was terrible and the food wasn't very good either.