The Rough Guide to the Dominican Republic 4 (Rough Guide Travel Guides)

420 Pages·2008·22.21 MB·English

by  Rough Guides, Sean Harvey

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Dom Rep Inside cover.indd 1 8/29/08 11:24:02 AM
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The Rough Guide to
The Dominican
Republic
written and researched by
Sean Harvey
with additional contributions by
Joe Fullman
NEW YORK • LONDON • DELHI
www.roughguides.com
8/28/08 11:57:50 AM
Contents
Colour section 1
Barahona and the
southwest ......................... 311
Introduction ............................... 1
Where to go ............................... 9 Contexts 331
When to go .............................. 12
Things not to miss ................... 15 History ................................... 333
Environment and wildlife ....... . 354
Basics 25 Merengue, bachata and
Dominican music ................ 361
Getting there............................ 27 Baseball ................................. 370
Getting around......................... 30 Books .................................... 374
Accommodatio n....................... 34
Food and drink ........................ 36 Language 381
The media ................................ 38
Festivals................................... 39 Spanish................................. 383
Sports and outdoor activities ... 42 Glossary .............................. . 388
National parks and
nature reserve s .................... 46 Travel store 393
Culture and etiquette .............. 4 9
Shopping ................................ 49
Travel essential s ..................... 5 0 Small print & Index 397
Guide 57 Adventures from sea to
Santo Domingo and sfoklylo cwoinlogu pr .s1e2c0tion
around................................. 59
The southeast ................... 115
Samaná Peninsula ............ 155

Silver Coast ...................... 189 Live and loud from the
barrios colour section
The Cibao ......................... 245 following p.248
Haitian border ................... 285
3
왗왗 Coconut farmer 왗 Cayo Levantado
| CONTENTS |
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| INTRODUCTION | WHERE TO GO | WHEN TO GO
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| INTRODUCTION | WHERE TO GO | WHEN TO GO
Introduction to
The Dominican
Republic
Occupying the eastern half of the island of Hispaniola, the
Dominican Republic (or the DR, as it’s often known) is the
most visited tourist destination in the Caribbean. What
traditionally attracts visitors are the parts of the country
that resemble the image of a Caribbean playland, the
crystal-clear waters and sandy beaches lined with palm
trees, of which the DR has plenty. This vision of leisurely
days spent by the sea and romantic nights filled with
merengue and dark rum is supported by the largest all-
inclusive resort industry in the world; if you’re looking to
pay a set rate for airfare, hotel, food and drinks – and have
a carefree Caribbean vacation behind the protection of a
fenced-off compound – you can’t do much better than here.
Such a “perfect” vacation, however, would
mean missing out on much of what makes
the country so s pecial. Set on the most
geographically diverse Caribbean island, the
Dominican Republic boasts alpine wilder-
ness, tropical rainforests and mangrove swamps,
cultivated savannas, vast desert expanses and everything in between within
its relatively small confnes – slightly smaller than the US states of New
Hampshire and Vermont combined. The opportunities for eco-tourism and
adventure travel are staggering: if you were so inclined, in a single week you
could scale a 150-metre waterfall on a rope, mountain bike along remote
dirt tracks, ride the best windsurfng waves in the hemisphere, trek to the
6 top of a 3000-metre mountain, and head out in a fshing boat to see dozens
of humpback whales crashing about a scenic bay.
| INTRODUCTION | WHERE TO GO | WHEN TO GO
The Dominican Republic also
Fact file
lays claim to some of the more
intriguing culture and history in • The Dominican Republic shares
the area, dating back to its ear ly the island of Hispaniola with the
cave-dwellin g groups, the Tainos, Republic of Haiti. Its 48, 734 square
kilometres encompass tropical
who recorded much of their activ-
rainforests, soarin g mountain
ities in the form of rock art – it’s
ranges, mangrove swamps and
quite possible you’ll fnd yourself several hundred kilometres of
clambering through a cave to view Caribbean coast .
some of these preserved paintings • Despite the existence of large
during your stay. In addition, as stretches of wilderness, the
Dominican Republic is a densely
Dominicans are often quick to
populated nation, with close to nine
point out, their land was the setting
million residents.
for Christopher Columbus’s frst
• Ethnically, the population is
colony, La Isabela, and Spain’s frst
of mixed African and European
New World city, Santo Domin go, ancestry. The Tainos who inha b-
at the end of the ffteenth century. ited the island before Columbus
Though the island quickly lost were mostly wiped out, but some
limited Taino ancestry still does
this foothold, the events that took
exist within the Dominican people
place during its brief heyday did
today. Individuals of mixed African
much to defne the Americas as and European descent are typically
we know them, an d examples referred to as Indio, in part to
of period architecture – both obscure their African heritage.
preserved and in ruins – remain • Until the 1980s, the Dominican
economy was centred almost exclu-
scattered across the countr y, most
sively around agriculture, including
notably in the colonial heart of
export crops like sugar and tobacco.
Santo Domingo, today the nation’s Today, however, agricultural exports
capital and centre of industry. are dwarfed by tourism and free zone
During the intervening centu - manufacturing, which each bring in
approximately $2 billion annually.
ries the Dominican people have
endured much hardship – intermi- • Around ninety percent of Domini-
cans identify themselves as Roman
nable civil strife in the nineteenth
Catholics, though the great
majority of these do not activel y
participate in the Catholic church.
Some Dominicans, particularl y in
rural areas and the poorer barrios
within the cities, practice vodú
dominicana, a syncretic religion
that combines Catholicism with
African spiritual practices, and
an ever-increasing minority have
converted to various denominations 7
of evangelical Protestantism .
| INTRODUCTION | WHERE TO GO | WHEN TO GO
왖 Sign in Las Terrenas
The Zone
The Dominican Republic boasts the hemisphere’s oldest European ruins
from the era of conquistadors. The most impressive relics are contained
within Santo Domingo’s compact Zona Colonial – known by the growing
community of expats who live here as simply “The Zone”. Contained
within the Zone’s
old crumbling city
walls are the hem-
isphere’s first
university,
cathedral,
monastery,
hospital, nunnery
and more, including
the 500-year-old
palace of the
Columbus family.
Wandering past
one colonial relic after another can certainly transport you back to the
time when Santo Domingo was Spain’s one tentative toehold in what
was known then as the Cannibal Sea, but the thousands of people who
live and work in these buildings make it more than just an atmospheric
outdoor museum. By day old men smoke cigars and argue politics in the
park, sharp-dressed businesspeople hustle to bank jobs and vendors sell
split coconuts from horse-drawn carts. At night the narrow streets are
lined with outdoor cafés and restaurants, local families shoot the breeze
(and pass the bottle) from front stoops and the city’s young and wealthy
hit the neighbourhood clubs – among the hottest in the city. It would be
easy to get lost here for your entire stay, without lon ging for the beach.
Our comprehensive coverage of the city centre begins on p.62.
century, an oppressive dictatorship in the twentieth, intermittent occupation
by Haiti, Spain and the United States, and a boom-and-bust economy centred
frst on tobacco, later on sugar, that never allowed the country to stand on frm
economic footing. Even today, the DR remains a nation in transition. Depsite
its enviable all-inclusive tourism industry, eighty percent of its people live in
poverty. Santo Domingo has grown into a heaving industrial metropolis, fve
times larger than the next biggest city, and much of the rest of the countyr is
made up of rural tobacco towns or tiny fshing villages often held at the mercy
of tropical rainstorms, hurricanes and occasional power outages.
The Dominican people have dealt with these tough circumstances in
ever-resourceful ways: extended families maintain close ties and pool
their assets, most village homes are built one brick at a time (sometimes
8 taking two generations to complete), and informal shoestring transporta-
tion systems connect nearly every city and village in the country. Another
| INTRODUCTION | WHERE TO GO | WHEN TO GO