The perfect work-away in the Dominican Republic

#dominicanrepublic

Hello readers and happy 2022!

I am currently lucky enough to be able to work remotely and therefore, my nephew and I came up with a plan to see some world after such a long time. Both of us had covid at the beginning of the year so our choices were somewhat limited. I actually googled places where you could enter with just an antigen test and the Dominican Republic was the first one to pop up. I had never been to Latin America because flying there from Finland is rather expensive and I've always felt like when I go I want to see everything and take some proper time to explore. Our fabulous trip was planned for six weeks!

Our first visit to the beach

Everyone constantly thought we were married but that was part of the fun. At least it saved me from a lot of bad flirting at times. Though, he said that I was quick to call him hermano as soon as I saw a cute man haha.

Our extensive flight was to Punta Cana on the east coast. We were heading out at the end of February when the main tourist season in DR ends because spring break ends so most of the tourists will be gone. It's also independence month which meant lots of carnivals and events.

For independence day, you should dress in red, white and blue.

This was our route

Punta Cana is a beautiful beach city, but sadly, it's packed with these all-inclusive hotels that own parts of the public beachfront that you are allowed to walk through but not enjoy. Further, it means that the main beach has fewer restaurants you can enter. However, at the northern end of the beach, there is a cute flamingo bar and a couple of nice restaurants that are decently priced.

When you order a pina colada and it comes in a whole pineapple, you made some good choices

One day, we decided to go exploring further and headed out to Macao beach. Uber works well in DR so you can get around safely and easily. Macao beach was perfect, remote, less-known and very beautiful. From the main beach, we saw this little strip of sand on the side that looked completely inaccessible. We decided to wade over and ended up having the whole beach to ourselves. It was a fantastic day! We even hitchhiked back.

The main Macao beach where you can do all sorts of water sports

Our little private beach

Not a care in the world

Lots of blogs advised against renting cars and the traffic is a little crazy to be fair. People drive a little erratically, but apparently, while they have lots of car accidents, due to the slow speeds they are very rarely fatal. We tried to rent a car for our final week but I must say the prices were significantly higher than even in Europe. But because of this and because we wanted to get the authentic experience, we decided to travel the country by bus. There's a bus station in Veron, Punta Cana that takes you to the capital Santo Domingo for 400 pesos (around 8 euros) in 3 hours. Our main reason to visit Santo Domingo was to see the final carnival progression which was absolutely amazing. There are huge groups gathering from around the country to show off their costumes and masks and play music.

A lot of the groups had great performances to go with the costumes.

Everyone carried around these balloons and if they hit you with them, you should have good luck for the year. I was hit once so let's see!

Santo Domingo is a huge city and especially after the carnival, it was rather dirty and busy. Our hotel was on the beach row and cars were honking and speeding outside the whole night, it sort of felt like sleeping at a railway station. We visited the Three eyes national park which had these amazing underground turquoise pools.

There were three pools in a huge rainforest cave

And one separate pool that was accessible only through secret tunnels

We soon headed back east a little bit to visit a beach town called Bayahibe where we wanted to get the open water scuba diving licences. To get there, you have to take a bus first to La Romana (210 pesos/ 4 euros, 2 hours) and then take a small local minibus to Bayahibe (85 pesos/ under 2 euros plus luggage fees, under an hour). Getting the Expreso Romana bus to La Romana is super easy and the locals will advise you to the bus station easily and with pleasure. However, around La Romana and Bayahibe, Uber drivers will never drive you at the cost quoted in the app. Apparently, the towns are so small that they say the trips are not worth it for the money so be prepared to haggle. We thought that we could easily grab an Uber for the rest of the journey but it turned out to be a massive hassle. Luckily, near the big Jumbo store, we found the local bus stop and managed to get onto the local bus which worked out very well. At first, we stayed a few days in Playa Dominicus which is a rather touristic but a nice place. The area around Bayahibe is very different from the bigger cities, it's very clean, quiet and very walkable.

This is Boca, she likes to sleep and follow your motorbike around.

All the cities have these cute signs to attract these touristic photos

We got our licenses at the Coral Point Diving that I would highly recommend. Comparatively, it was one of the cheapest options (370 dollars), perfectly located on the beach and offered a very personable plan for your diving. Diving was a great experience. To get your licence, you must first practice in a confined pool to learn some essential skills about your equipment and breathing. Since there aren't really any pools but plenty of beaches, this is done on a quiet side beach in Bayahibe. The course is quite fast-paced and the skills can overwhelm you a little, but I promise you, anyone can learn how to dive if you really want to. I personally struggled at first, I find myself a little claustrophobic just by having the mask on my face and having to rely on some random equipment to keep me alive but even I learned how to relax and enjoy the experience. There are some fantastic basic youtube videos so you can see what the content will be like but don't look too deeply to psyche yourself out of trying.

After you have learned the basics, you get to go on four dives to explore and test your skills. Sadly, our GoPro could only take the pressure at 10 metres so we didn't take it along. With an open water diver licence, you can go down to 18 metres. It was also amazing just to enjoy the marine life (which is plenty). We saw some really cool things; a carb bigger than my head, some rays, eels and all sorts of fish and coral you can imagine.

Bayahibe also has more to offer: nice restaurants, lively nightlife and a lovely heart-shaped pond by the beach. But the best part is located in the Cueva Padre Nuestro national park. After a small hike, you'll reach a site that has these fantastic deep caves that have beautiful, cool, all turquoise freshwater pools at the bottom. After the hike, it felt amazing to dip into them. If you are a licensed cave diver, you are able to dive between the caves. This was one of the most amazing experiences on our trip.

The water was cool, fresh and stunning. 10/10

We swapped into a hotel closer to Bayahibe centre and got our licenses. We did an extra dive to a shipwreck which was a fantastic experience. All the cool fish gather around the wreck and you can see them really clearly. They aren't scared of you so they will swim all around you. You'll also be able to dive into the wreck which was great. It was one of those dives where you already know everything so you can just enjoy yourself and the views. Though I did have the wrong fins with which we only noticed jumping off the boat so remember to make sure that you personally checked your equipment. If you wish to see some of the cool things we did check out here: https://www.instagram.com/coralpointdiving

All in all, Bayahibe was definitely one of the highlights of the trip and I would recommend going there.

This is the great heart pool. You can even swim in it but only for a photo

It was time to head north because we wanted to see more of the country so we took a bus back to Santo Domingo and proceeded north directly. The bus from Santo Domingo to Puerta Plata takes 4 hours and cost 550 pesos (10 euros). We hadn't decided where we were going to stay yet so we booked one on the bus located in Rio San Juan. Once we arrived in Puerta Plata, we realised that hotel was farther out than we thought and that there were no buses running that way anymore so we ended up taking an Uber for an hour and a half for 2200 pesos (just over 20 euros). The night drive was fun and the little cottage we had booked was amazing so we were still happy with our choice.

We sat on this terrace for hours playing cards and drinking wine

We had this little cottage on a remote hill that was simply brilliant. Best views of sunsets the whole trip.

There are a lot of murals and great street art in DR!

After a couple of days, we continued on the north coast to Samana. To get to Samana, we had to take Caribe Tours bus to Nagua first and then another to Samana (together 150 pesos/3 euros, 2 hours). Samana is a lively city famous for whale watching and Caya Vigia, an island that you can walk to via a high walking bridge.

By the way, you can always find some adorable puppy to follow you around.

We continued on to Las Galerias on a small tuk-tuk that nicely fit 15 people. The journey took under an hour and cost 150 pesos (3 euros). It was a great experience. We got off the car and were immediately recommended a place to say which was great since we didn't book one. Las Galeras has a large French population which is clearly reflected in the food culture. Las Galeras is surrounded by a bunch of nice, calm beaches and great rainforests.

This was one of our local food experiences. Bananas with scampi and onions. Interesting...

We rented a motorbike (1000 pesos/ 20 euros a day) to La Boca Del Diablo from where we hiked 45 minutes to Playa Fronton, a remote beach where you can also go rock climbing. I would recommend this! Went quickly to the top three things we did on our trip.

Banana and coconut trees mixed, Like a fruit salad on a stick

The hike in the rainforest and the beach views were incredible

We had the whole beach to ourselves

I went to the beach to read and watch the sunset. Ended put playing with puppies again.

The next day, we got the bike again and drove to El Limon waterfall. It would have been significantly shorter to go from Samana but sadly, we hadn't properly checked the map before. It was amazing. You can drive rather close to it but when the proper road ends, you should stop trying to drive (you'll see) and walk. The hike is around 3 km and very nice. There is an option to ride a horse to the waterfall instead and I want to appeal to you not to opt for that one. While the hike is nice, the route is very difficult for a horse, filled with rocks and hills that they struggle in. We saw this first-hand walking side-by-side with a group going on horseback and saw the guide pushing the horse downhill while the animal was visibly uneasy. It's 30 degrees out, the tourists were not the smallest and the route is very tough on the animal. Plus, when we arrived, we took our time, had a lovely picnic by the waterfall and a good, fresh swim while all the tourist groups were bundled in together, escorted by yelling locals rushing them along and they had just enough time to take their photo with the waterfall in the back. We, on the other hand, had another top-three experience.

We had the whole waterfall to ourselves

Not a single person in those tourist groups got a crowdless photo

After Las Galeras, we headed backwards to Cabarete, another beach town on the northern coast that was recommended by all the locals. We again took a tuk-tuk to Samana and from there a minibus (Papagallo company runs at 8 am, 11 am and 2 pm from Samana centre 250 pesos/5 euros) to Cabarete. Cabarete was the one place in DR where you didn't struggle at all to get super healthy, colourful, vegetarian food. However, being modern and touristic was clearly reflected in the prices and services offered. I would recommend a cute beach restaurant called Front Loop and Fresh Fresh Cafe. Cabarete is famous for windsurfing but unfortunately, we were there on the least windy days and it wasn't possible.

Sunsets on the north coast were amazing

Sometimes I get very excited over vegetables

Since our flight was leaving from Punta Cana, we wanted to head back down to the south so we wouldn't have such a long journey on our final days. Thanks to our little excursion trying to rent a car, it took us ten hours to get back to La Romana where we stayed for the night before heading back to Bayahibe for our last few days. It was nice to be back on familiar ground and to spend some more time on the beach.

La Romana had some cute turtles, there were also some on our dives

We spent our final night in Punta Cana and visited our usual beach spot for one last gorgeous sunset.

Turned out that all flights out of DR were delayed due to a storm and we missed our connecting flight from New York to Helsinki. We ended up spending the night and the next day in New York which wasn't the worst solution of all.

Hello Times Square

All in all, the trip was absolutely amazing. I didn't necessarily know what I was expecting but I think it exceeded all my possible expectations. I also think I'm completely hooked on working remotely because while I was doing all of these amazing things, I was working near full-time the whole time and it worked out very well, also taught me to wake up at 6 am and to make the most out of my time.

Till next time,

Mira

Ps. Accurately a 1000 pesos was 18 euros at the time, but we decided to calculate with 20 to make the math easier and to make sure we stuck to a budget. So take the euro calculations with a grain of salt.

#dominicanrepublic #bayahibe #puntacana #travelblog #coralpointdiving #tipstodominicanrepublic #travelcaribbean