Puerto Plata
You’ll find much about Puerto Plata to enjoy, particularly its nightlife. Its core, the Old City, or Zona Colonial, borders the port to the east, a narrow grid of streets that was once the most stylish neighbourhood in the country. Around the original town sprawls a patchwork maze of industrial zones and concrete barrios known as the New City, formed over the past century with the growth of the town’s main industries apart from tourism, namely tobacco, sugar and rum. More relaxing than either the city or Playa Dorada is Costambar, a quiet gated maze of townhouses and condos just a short RD$50 motoconcho or taxi ride away from the Parque Central while a little further west you’ll find the huge and much-advertised Ocean World, an aquamarine park home to dolphins, seals, sharks and more, whose new marina is one of the largest in the Caribbean and a major stop on the cruise-ship circuit.
The city’s Fortaleza San Felipe is the only impressive vestige of colonial times in one of the oldest European settlements of the New World. More prominent, if not quite as atmospheric, are the scores of often rather dilapidated Victorian gingerbread mansions that make an outdoor museum of the Old City. Along the Atlantic Ocean is its famous Malecón, a 2km promenade best experienced on a weekend evening when its discos, outdoor bars and bonfire beach parties spring to life. Other sights of interest include the Museo de Ámbar, with an impressive display of prehistoric insects trapped in the translucent sap, and the cable-car ride to the summit of Mount Isabela de Torres, the flat-topped behemoth that lords over the city from the south.
Climbing Mount Isabela
Climbing Mount Isabela de Torres is a challenge that some can’t resist. Iguana Mama (t 571-0908, w www.iguanamama.com), an adventure outfit based in Cabarete, runs twice-weekly (Mon & Fri) hiking excursions to the top that take off from Puerto Plata (US$88); you then take the cable car back down. If you want to make the trek on your own, there’s a well-marked path on the opposite side of the mountain, starting at the pueblo El Cupey. Head east on the C-5 to the junction of the Carretera Turística and turn right. Just beyond the intersection is a marked dirt road leading to the pueblo – an isolated outpost tucked between two mountains. It has few facilities, though a couple of local farmers rent out horses and guides for the ascent. The Isabela hike is an arduous 4hr trek up the 820m mountain through a canopy of rainforest; start early to maximise your chance of a clear view from the summit. If lucky you may catch sight of the endangered Hispaniola parrot or the red-tailed hawk. There’s also a small system of Taino caves with petroglyphs near the summit, an hour’s hike west off the main path. Look for a guide in El Cupey if you want to see them.
Another great hike from the town is the trail that leads away from Mount Isabela up to the Río Camú and La Cueva del Gallo, an underground river cave several hundred metres long that traverses the side of the mountain to the south of El Cupey. Just 3km from the pueblo, it’s a less rugged hike than the Isabela trek and can be done in half a day.
Isabela de Torres Cable Car
Puerto Plata’s crowning attraction is the suspended cable-car ride (daily 8.30am–5pm; adults RD$350, children under 10 RD$200; t 970-0501) that goes to the top of Mount Isabela de Torres. The entrance is at the far western end of town past the port, just off the Circunvalación Sur on Camino de los Dominguez, a RD$50 motoconcho- or US$15 taxi-ride away. It’s definitely not to be missed; the views of the city on this 25-minute trip to the top of the 800m peak are stupendous. At the summit a statue of Christ the Redeemer, a slightly downsized version of the Río de Janeiro landmark with its arms spread out over the city, crowns a manicured lawn. Also on the grounds are a botanical garden, a pricey café (Tues–Sun) and a souvenir shop. The mountain is now a protected national park, covered by rainforest on its far side and inhabited by 32 species of indigenous bird. Don’t wander too far beyond the area marked off for tourists, as Mount Isabela is in the process of splitting in two. The brown splotch along its face, visible from the city, is a landslide created by the split, and there are a number of deep fissures at the summit.
Puerto Plata expats
The worst questions you can ask an expat in Puerto Plata are often “Where are you from?” and “Why did you move here?” Milling among the tour operators, itinerant sailors, timeshare salesmen and retirees are a number of questionable characters, colourful in the extreme, many on the run from the law for tax evasion, insurance fraud and various other white-collar offences. The Caribbean adjuster for Lloyd’s of London claims that at any given time you’ll find some of Interpol’s most-wanted wandering the streets, and a British crew filming a documentary on English expats said that every time they turned on the camera inside one popular watering-hole, a half-dozen people ran for cover. The fugitives tend to attract a bewildering variety of law enforcement officials, including undercover FBI agents, Canadian Mounted Police, international spies and insurance detectives. It lends an eerie film-noir feel to the town, augmented by the narrow streets lined with slowly decaying nineteenth-century warehouses.
Puerto Plata festivals
Puerto Plata holds the usual Dominican festivals, a fiesta patronal – this one in honour of patron San Felipe on July 5, featuring large crowds drinking and dancing along the Malecón – and Carnival, in February, when hundreds of townspeople parade around in full regalia and thwack passers-by with inflated balloons. Perhaps better than either of these, however, is the renowned Merengue Festival – which typically sees parties right along the Malecón – usually held during the third week of October, though the exact timing varies slightly from year to year. A cultural festival, involving all sorts of music and dancing alongside art and craft exhibitions, takes place annually in the third week of June round the fort and central plaza.
The Río Damajagua waterfalls
Just outside the town of Imbert, around 15km southwest of Puerto Plata, you can visit and climb (and sometimes even slide down) a stunning series of waterfalls along the high, early course of the Río Damajagua (daily 8.00am–3pm; RD$280–$490, including guide; w www.27charcos.com). The 27 natural, boulder-strewn cascades snake down the side of a mountain wilderness, the water crashing down at breakneck speed. It’s a wet, challenging and extremely rewarding hike up, with a great hilltop view at the end. If not part of an organized tour – most of the operators in Puerto Plata, Sosúa and Cabarete offer the trip – pack your swimsuit and make sure you’re wearing robust footwear before heading southwest from Puerto Plata along the C-5 until you see the Damajagua sign 3km south of the Imbert Texaco station. From here a road leads east for 500m to a visitor centre where you pay the admission fee, meet your guide and pick up the life-jackets and mandatory safety helmets. From here, it’s a 20min hike to the falls. Each individual cascade has its own feature. Some have pools for swimming or ladders for climbing up, while others have natural chutes waiting to be slid down. The climbs can be pretty steep and the flow of water fierce at times, particularly after heavy rains, and you should exercise extreme caution at all times. Children under 8 eight are only allowed to tackle the first cascade.
The visitor centre, which has an attached restaurant, is a sign of the site’s growing popularity and importance to the local tourist industry. Now designated a national monument, the falls have become an almost obligatory stop-off for the region’s all-inclusive tour operators. The revenue generated has allowed the authorities to upgrade the paths linking the falls, several of which have been turned into nature trails. The surrounding community has also benefited with a percentage of each admission fee set aside for local development projects.
You can easily do the cascades as a day-trip from Puerto Plata – take one of the frequent Javilla Tours buses to Imbert then hop on the back of a motoconcho; alternatively a taxi will set you back US$60, including wait time.
Río San Juan
The small, friendly fishing village of RÍO SAN JUAN, 5km east of La Yagua, borders a large mangrove lagoon, Laguna Gri-Gri, as well as being in reach of several great beaches, including Playa Caletón, Playa Grande and Playa Preciosa. Although development has taken place around the village over the past decade, it has remained little changed; its tree-lined streets, easy-going atmosphere and simple reliance on boat building, fishing and dairy farming come as a welcome change from the resort bustle to the west.
Laguna Gri-Gri
Río San Juan’s main attraction is Laguna Gri-Gri, at the northernmost end of Duarte, and it comes as a wonderful surprise, a magnificent mangrove reserve traversed by organized boat tours that you can arrange and board from a small quay at the road’s end (589-2277). The 2hr tours, which cost RD$1200 per person (for 3 to 6; thereafter, RD$200 per person) head out of the lagoon through the mangroves; go early in the morning if you want to catch more of the birdlife. The boat then enters nearby Cueva de la Golondrina (Swallow’s Cave) to admire the stalactites and stalagmites, before heading along the coast to Playa Caletón, where you get to swim. You can also arrange to go snorkelling or fishing for an extra sum. To see the lagoon’s birdlife on foot, walk east from the Hotel Bahía Blanca to the peninsular bird sanctuary that the tour skirts, which is at its most active just before dusk when hundreds of egrets return to roost. Alternatively take the dirt footpath to the left of the tours office.
Campo Tours is the lone tour operator in town, but you’ll find better-quality tours, and operators, down the road in Cabarete.
Playa Grande
The area’s most spectacular beach is Playa Grande, a gorgeous and gently sloping stretch of golden sand lapped by deceptively tranquil-looking green-blue waters and overlooked by swaying palms and cliffs. It’s become increasingly popular in recent years, forming a stage on many local tour operators’ itineraries, and the parking area is now home to several shack restaurants as well as vendor stalls selling souvenirs and rum drinks from coconuts. The cliffs to the west are topped by the Playa Grande golf course – neatly symbolizing encroaching development along this coast – while those to the east protect the pristine Playa Preciosa, which, should you manage to negotiate the steep climb down, you will probably have to yourself. Be warned, both beaches are renowned for ferocious rip-tides, so take extra special care when swimming. Playa Grande often has a lifeguard (at its western end); Playa Preciosa does not.
Río San Juan scuba diving
Río San Juan offers some of the best dive spots on the north coast, including: Crab Canyon, a 26m dive through underwater stone arches; Natural Pool, a 15m dive along a great coral reef and into a large cave that looks like a church sanctuary; and Seven Hills, a trip that goes 30m down an underwater mountain and makes you feel as if you were flying. Northern Coast Divers in Sosúa runs dive trips to Río San Juan.
Rip-tides
Common on beaches with high surf, rip-tides are dangerous ocean conveyor belts that funnel the water being smashed against the coast back to sea. Surfers and windsurfers actually find them desirable, as they pull you effortlessly out to the big waves, but they can pose a life-threatening problem for less experienced swimmers; indeed, at Playa Grande, a couple of people die each year in the tides. If you’re not a strong swimmer, it’s best to keep off beaches with high, crashing surf altogether. You can sometimes – but not always – identify rip-tides by sight as ribbons of sea that don’t have any large waves travelling across their surface. At times they’ll also have a different colour from the rest of the water. If you’re caught in a rip-tide, do not attempt to swim against the powerful current. Instead, swim to the right or the left – and not directly back to the shore – until you are out of its grip.
Sosúa
Set along a sheltered horseshoe inlet impressed into the eastern end of Bahía de Sosúa, the large resort town of SOSÚA has a bit of a bumpy history, now somewhat hard to detect as few visitors make it past the inviting beaches. It was created in the late nineteenth century by the United Fruit Company, which used it as a port for their extensive banana plantations along today’s El Choco Road. In 1916, following a pattern that would be repeated throughout the Americas in the twentieth century, United Fruit abruptly abandoned their operations in the Dominican Republic, and Sosúa lay mostly derelict until the early 1940s, when Trujillo provided refuge for several hundred Jews fleeing from Nazi Germany, who settled just east of Playa Sosúa and created the barrio known as El Batey. Here, they formed a successful dairy cooperative – Productos Sosúa – which operates to this day.
The first stirrings of tourism came in the 1970s as wealthy Dominicans and retiring foreigners began building winter beach homes in the area. The explosion of sex tourism in the 1980s brought on the real boom, however, as young Dominican women from the outlying rural districts supported families back home by catering to the desires of tens of thousands of travellers. Large-scale hotel development ensued, and much of the traditional fishing and agriculture was abandoned. The wealthy retirees petitioned against this unsavoury atmosphere and, in 1996, finally convinced the government to act; over the course of a year, the national police closed every bar in Sosúa. With its controversial lifeblood squeezed dry, the local economy promptly collapsed, leaving an abundance of empty hotels and restaurants. Slowly but surely the town has risen from its ashes, helped in no small part by low prices but also because it really is a pleasant little town with a great beach. Nonetheless, although no longer the town’s main attraction, the sex trade is still much more noticeable here than in any other Dominican resort along this stretch.
Diving from Sosúa
Sosúa is the best place on the north coast for diving and home to one of the best diving outfits on the island, Northern Coast Divers, Pedro Clisante 8 (t 571-1028, w www.northerncoastdiving.com). The multilingual staff run daily boat trips to several local hotspots, including the Airport Wall, a 33m wall dive with tunnels, and the Canyon, two walls formed by the splitting of the reef only 2m apart. They also head further afield to the mangroves of Río San Juan and the Caverns of Cabrera (otherwise known as El Lago Dudú). The further away from Sosúa you go the better, since the local area has been sadly stripped of its reefs and there are few signs of nearby sea life. First-time dives start from US$60, with PADI Open Water courses from US$325. The shop can also arrange snorkelling trips as well as pick-ups from nearby resorts and now have affordable self-catering apartments (see Mary Rose). Merlin Dive Centre (t 571-2963, w phuket-diving-thailand.net/) and Big Blue Swiss Dive Centre (t 571-2916, w www.big-blue-diving-sosua.com), both on the beach road, also enjoy good reputations.
Rough Guides tip: Learn about the best ways to get to the Dominican Republic.