Miches
MICHES is a little town on the Bahía de Samaná notorious for being the setting-off point for illegal immigration to Puerto Rico (and from there to the US mainland). Dominicans have been known to pay their life savings to local boat captains to be smuggled in small fishing vessels across the shark-infested Mona Passage. For visitors, the lone attraction is Costa Esmeralda, a series of near-deserted sandy beaches extending for several kilometres east of town. Miches provides a good base for exploring the Costa Esmeralda, including Laguna Limón.
Parque Nacional del Este
Bayahibe sits on the northwest edge of expansive PARQUE NACIONAL DEL ESTE, a peninsula jutting south into the Caribbean and also encompassing Isla Saona, just across a small bay and easily accessible by boat. The national park features a maze of forests, mangroves, trails, caves and cliffs, an impressive array of birdlife and, on the cultural side, some signs of early Taino activity. Not much of the park, however, is conveniently accessible; in fact, no roads lead directly into its interior, and the best method of approach is to hire boats from Bayahibe to hit specific points along the rim, from where you can hike inland. Wherever you go in the park, wear plenty of insect repellent against the ubiquitous mosquitoes and a sizeable population of wasps. Watch out, too, for tarantulas, though they won’t bother you unless they’re antagonized.
The most popular part of the park – and rightfully so – is Isla Saona, an island off the southern coast lined with alternating stretches of idyllic, coconut tree-backed beachfront and mangrove swamp, unpopulated except for one fishing hamlet of around three hundred families. That said, the tourist traffic on Saona has increased exponentially in recent years and it has begun to feel more like high season at Miami’s South Beach in parts, prompting the more discerning operators to look for alternative spots, such as Isla Catalinita.
Cueva del Puente and Peñon Gordo
The park’s limestone landscape is riddled with caves, many of which bear evidence of ceremonial use by the Tainos and are adorned with Taino rock art. At the present time, the only cave system that is relatively straightforward to visit is the Cueva del Puente, which lies around 3km south of the national park entrance. You’ll need to hire a guide at the entrance who will accompany you on the fairly easy 30min hike down to the caves (see p.000). The system consists of three separate levels of caverns (the first has been caved in and thus gets some sunlight) with thousands of stalagmites and stalactites along with hundreds of bats and sparkling seams of bright, crystallized minerals. There are also Taino pictographs on the third level, though they’re not accessible to tourists: if your park ranger knows their stuff, though, they’ll be able to show you a Taino picture of a small- eared owl on the first level of caves – a bird that was thought by the Tainos to ferry dead souls to the afterlife.
The easiest way to reach the next set of caves, Peñon Gordo, on the park’s west coast, is to hire a boat (2hr each way). There’s a nice isolated beach from where it’s a 2km walk inland to the cave, where you’ll find scattered Taino glyphs on its second level. Be sure to bring a torch and boots if you want to get the most out of your visit. Also watch your step at the entrance, which is basically a large, slippery hole in the ground.
Isla Saona
Most boats pull in to Isla Saona at the tiny village of Mano Juan, a picturesque strip of pastel wooden huts with a 4km hiking trail that leads inland, an expensive restaurant run by Viva Wyndham Dominicus Beach and a long line of beach chairs and umbrellas; or Piscina Natural (known locally as Laguna Canto de la Playa), a sand bar with a clear lagoon behind it that makes a good snorkelling spot (you’ll see lots of giant starfish trundling along the sea bed, but resist the urge to pick them up). If you visit with an independent boat, avoid the hordes and head to one of the more isolated stretches of beach that dot the entire island, such as Canto de la Playa, where you’re more likely to get the white sand and transparent water to yourself, though in high season that’s not guaranteed even here. Another option is to have your boat captain skip Saona altogether, head into the Catuano Canal that separates Saona from the mainland, and stop off at the small island of Catalinita (not to be confused with Isla Catalina, see p.000), which gets less tourist traffic and has some excellent reefs for diving (less so for snorkelling). Its beaches are littered with large conch shells and during the winter months you may be able to spot humpback whales and dolphins and even, if you’re really lucky, an elusive manatee.
La Aleta
On a 1988 expedition deep in the heart of Parque Nacional del Este, a team of archeologists from Indiana University discovered the most significant and extensive Taino excavation yet on record, four ceremonial plazas surrounding a cenote; (a natural well) – a site referred to as La Aleta. Evidence shows that natives came to this well to worship during pre-Columbian times from across the countryside, even as far away as the Tetero valley near Pico Duarte.
In his History of the Indies, Spanish priest Bartolomé de Las Casas recorded a journey to La Aleta in the late fifteenth century, noting that the natives lowered bowls into the well via a piece of rattan rope to pull up water, which was sweet at the surface and salty at the bottom – a stratification that still exists. He also described the slaughter of seven hundred people at La Aleta in 1503, the culmination of Nicolás de Ovando’s campaign of Taino extermination, which he started after the Tainos killed three Spaniards on Isla Saona, itself a retaliation for an attack by a Spanish soldier. Bones from the mass killing have been found scattered throughout the site and within the well.
For the Tainos, caves served as the gateways to an underground spirit world. The well was apparently a site for subterranean ceremonies; fragments believed to have been parts of rafts lowered into the well have also been discovered. Other artefacts recovered from the site include clay pots and one straw basket, thought to contain offerings of food; a cassava cooking pan; axes and clubs; and an intact wooden duho (the seat from which the caciques prophesied to their people). In addition to the cenote, there is a series of four ceremonial plazas at the site – bounded by monumental limestone pillars – where a ball game similar to modern-day soccer was played by those who attended the rituals.
The government hopes one day to blaze a trail here from Peñon Gordo and open La Aleta to the public, but for now archeologists have to use a helicopter to get in, and no one else is supposedly allowed admittance. Still, the place has been ransacked twice by treasure hunters, and Dominican soldiers have been posted to prevent further looting.
Parque Nacional Los Haitises
PARQUE NACIONAL LOS HAITISES, a massive expanse of mangrove swamp that protects several Taino caves, 92 plant species, 112 bird species and a wide variety of marine life, spreads west of Sabana de la Mar around the coastal curve of Bahía de Samaná. Though it covers twelve hundred square kilometres in total, only a small portion is open to the public, most of which is accessible by organized tour.
Along the coast it holds the country’s largest unblemished expanse of red and white mangroves; in the near-impenetrable interior, dense, trail-less rainforest predominates, punctuated by the ruins of long-abandoned sugar plantations and numerous cave systems. What you’ll see on the boat tours is a series of virtually untouched mangrove rivers along with small islands and coastal caves that provide habitat for untold numbers of tropical birds; some of the caves, too, bear Taino petroglyphs.
The 2hr 30min standard boat trip hits two main areas of interest within the park. Heading out through the mangroves the boat’s first stop is Cueva Arena, a large grotto that has numerous Taino drawings of families, men hunting, supernatural beings, whales and sharks. Some tours stop briefly at the beach cove here offering the opportunity to get a good look at Cayo Willy Simons – once a hideout for the infamous pirate – recognizable by the dozens of birds circling around: pelicans, herons, terns, frigates, even an occasional falcon. To reach the second cave, you pass the ruins of a hundred-year-old banana wharf, with pelicans and terns perched on the remaining wooden pilings, before pulling up at Cueva de la Linea, once intended to hold a railroad station for the sugar cane that was grown in the area. In pre-Columbian times, the cave was a Taino temple; look for the guardian face carved at the entrance, and residues of ancient campfire smoke and innumerable pictographs along the inside walls. Some tours include a short forest walk, and longer trips costing slightly more also take in the grottoes San Gabriel and Remington, both with Taino faces carved into their walls. The two caves were also known as temporary homes of various pirates, including Cofresí, Jack Banister and John Rackham.
Punta Cana, Bávaro and around
From Higüey, a paved road winds 40km east to the tropical playlands of PUNTA CANA and BÁVARO. At one time, Punta Cana and Bávaro were two distinct areas lying at either end of a long curve of coconut-tree-lined beach. However, an extraordinary spate of construction over the past 25 years has blurred the boundaries between them. Nowadays, “Punta Cana” is more of a marketing brand than a specific location, incorporated liberally into the title of most of the hotels in the region, even those 40km north of the regional airport. There are actually very few services in what might be termed Punta Cana proper; most of the action occurs round the plazas in Bávaro, and the dusty urban area surrounding the busy traffic intersection, to the west, known as Friusa. It’s here you’ll find the bus station and most banks, shops, restaurants and bars as well as the hospital and police station.
Go elsewhere if you want to explore the country, as the individual resorts here tend to be cities unto themselves, encompassing vast swathes of beachside territory, expansive tropical gardens and several separate hotels. And, given the size of the Punta Cana area, development is far from complete. New hotels continue to go up along the coast, malls are erected inland and to the south the vast Cap Cana project is well under way.
Despite its growth, Punta Cana has not yet reached the tipping point, where the pace and size of construction begin to impinge on the holiday experience. With such an abundance of coast to play on, it has been possible to make sure that no hotel intrudes too greatly on any other. And you can still find, with enough fortitude, glorious stretches of relatively uninterrupted sand, particularly in the north at El Macao and Uvero Alto. At points where resorts have cropped up, you’ll find the requisite concentration of umbrellas, watersports outfitters and beach bars, with occasional souvenir shacks set up in between. Aside from the glass-bottom-boat operators trying to drum up business here and there, though, there’s relatively little hassle – and the all-inclusives here are the nicest on the island. Budget travellers will have to head to the village of Cortecito – scarcely more than a cul-de-sac of tourist amenities on a tiny stretch of beach squeezed between the large resorts – for the cheapest (but still fairly pricey) accommodation, or to one of the business hotels in Bávaro, which would inevitably be away from the glorious beach.
Cap Cana
The southern end of the resort zone, past the Punta Cana hotels, is occupied by the brooding presence of Cap Cana (www.capcana.com), the would-be resort to end all resorts, which, when complete, aims to be filled with mega-hotels, multimillion-dollar condominiums and Jack Nicklaus-designed golf courses. The precise number and scale of each development is still, however, a matter of debate, with the whole project not due for completion for a good few years yet.
Sabana de la Mar
Sabana de la Mar is a dusty little port unremarkable but for its use as a setting-off point for the highly recommended boat tours of Parque Nacional Los Haitises. It also happens to be fairly convenient for the Samaná Peninsula; tatty passenger ferries depart three times daily (11am, 3pm & 5pm; RD$200) from the wharf at the northern end of town to Samaná itself.