La Samaná Peninsula, Dominican Republic
June 15-17, 2018
La Samaná is not on the A list of tourist wish lists.
The first location sun-starved tourists think about when considering the Dominican Republic is Punta Cana.
Most tourists gobble up the features of Punta Cana and it’s hard to argue with that. It’s easily accessible from Santo Domingo, has all-inclusive resorts, scores of hotels, 20 miles of white sand beaches, and the allure of the azure ocean at the eastern tip of the island. Tourist agencies tout Punta Cana vigorously as a world-class attraction. Many fly directly to Punta Cana, never see anything else of the island.
The Dominican Republic is the most popular tourist destination in the Caribbean region, and ranks 6th overall in the Americas. Tourism, through hotels, taxi services, gift shops, independent vendors, employs well over 100,000 people, more than a tenth of the country's population. When tourists leave the Punta Cana region, tanned and relaxed, they depart feeling that they’ve had a Dominican experience. Not quite.
Then there’s the under the radar La Samaná province and the little towns and beaches hidden away there.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Samaná_(town)
http://www.godominicanrepublic.com/samana/
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Samaná_Province
The province, the only peninsula on the Dominican Republic, juts out like a geologic afterthought from the northeastern shore of the island, Samaná Bay on its south coast, the Atlantic on its north coast. It’s a three-hour haul to its main city, Santa Barbara de Samaná, from Santo Domingo, 207 km drive on a recently improved well paved highway. Once you arrive, choices abound from active exploring to laid back touring. It has been called "a paradise of the Dominican Republic", justified even if the source is a tour agency. The scale of tourist development in Santa Barbara de Samaná, Las Galeras, and Las Terrenas is puny compared to the Punta Cana area. For now.
The trek gives you a geography lesson in the topical variety of the island - pastures, palm tree plantations, coconut forests, rice fields, sugar cane fields, a stubby mountain range formed from volcanic activity eons ago, intractable uneven landscape dominated by rocky outcroppings and a handful of blink and you missed them small towns. The steep terrain in the Sierra de Samaná is high enough to have its own micro-climate. It’s not unusual to enter in sunlight, drive through a thunderstorm in the highest elevation of 1000 feet, and return down to planet sunlight several miles later.
The capital city of Santa Barbara de Samaná is smoothed out around the edges, doesn’t have much local flavor but its bay, the second largest in the DR, is reputed to be one of its most beautiful (I have no idea how anyone can rate dozens of beaches on the DR without exhausting scores of synonyms for ‘beautiful’).
For eco-tourists, it’s a point of departure for a daily boat trip to Los Haitises National Park, a spectacular and limited access landscape of geology, flora, and fauna.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Los_Haitises_National_Park
Santa Barbara de Samaná comes to life once a year. From January to March, the waters off the small city are on the migration route of humpback whales. Thousands of tourists take boat rides to witness the whales during mating and calving season. Most whale watchers return home without exploring the coastline that leads east along the coast to the north shore of the peninsula. Too bad for them because that’s where the island culture takes a bow. Considering its beach assets and unassuming rural beauty, it’s the most unspoiled area in the Dominican Republic.
The lay of the land:
http://ontheworldmap.com/dominican-republic/large-detailed-tourist-map-of-dominican-republic.jpg
https://www.google.com/maps/@19.2069664,-70.5750546,346134m/data=!3m1!1e3
http://samanacollege.org/samanaimages/samanapdf/lgsamanastar.pdf
I would never have known about or seen any of this fabulous peninsula without connections my travel companion has in the Dominican Republic. Her Dominican friends seem to know every inch of the island they love and are proud to share it. Oh boy, El Cabito, La Palapa, Playita des Las Galeras, Playa de Rincón, Caño Frio River, D’Víejá Pan, here we come.
To be continued….photos in a day or so!
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