Dominican Republic trip notes;
Spent about two weeks vacation in August 2006 in Santo Domingo and the north coast. Here are some random notes: The island is in fact relatively safe. The people are accommodating, friendly and bursting with life. When was the last time you saw someone doing an impromptu Merengue in a supermarket checkout line in the United States? Transportation is excellent. The island is huge and basically undeveloped. North of Venezuela you will not find a less expensive travel destination. Everything is about mil pesos (thirty bucks); an excellent meal for two, a taxi to the airport, a nice hotel room, and daily car rental. In other words you don’t need to worry about dropping a lot of cash.
We have lived on the tiny island of Saba and in St. Kitts and presently live on St. Maarten. We have vacationed on, or visited, 15 different islands in the Caribbean chain. The Dominican Republic is our favorite so far.
In Santo Domingo we stayed at the Mercure Hotel for $50/nite including a nice buffet breakfast. Small but adequate rooms but unfortunately no smoke free rooms. You need to book ahead online to get this rate. We also stayed at Hotel La Danae.
www.hoteldanae.com Again the rooms were small but ok. Friendly and helpful staff, near everything and inexpensive, mil pesos.
It is hard to get a bad meal in Santo Domingo but we managed. Stay away from Rey’s Tacos on Winston Churchill. Really bad Mexican food. Good Mexican food in The Dominican Republic is an oxymoron. The small restaurant directly across the street from the Mercure is highly recommended. For a gastronomic delight for a small price the Osteria de Charly y Christian on the malecon just east of the casino the best of the best.
We took a Caribe Tours bus to Puerto Plata and caught a taxi to Costambar. Stayed at the Barlovento Hotel for a few nights – $40 per. Huge rooms with kitchen but no A/C in our room. There is a low profile timeshare operation there that serves an excellent dinner - the pepper steak filet is a must - very inexpensive and includes a lively floor show. Can’t remember the name but maybe Bill will post it, he runs the joint. Also ate at the blue catamaran restaurant at the far west end of the beach. Great food run by an Austrian expat. We rented a car for “mil pesos” from Amado right across the street from Jenny’s grocery store in Costambar. This turned out to be a very good idea. We expected to use it for a day and found it so handy we kept it for three. We drove to Luperon, looked around, had lunch, and went on to El Castllo. We fell in love with the place and took up residence at Hotel Miamar, “mil pesos”. [Cell 809.399.5406, fax 656.0732 – no website] This place is amazing and almost impossible to find. Huge rooms, beautiful pool, and an absolutely mesmerizing view. They only serve food on the weekends, sadly we missed it. There are two excellent options for food, Olivos near the bottom of the hill and Marlyn’s right on the towns lovely beach.
We did visit a couple of “all inclusive” resorts. Our impression was that these were created for people that needed a cocoon to protect them from possible interface with the locals. They had little to do with The Dominican Republic. We will go back and you should too. Next time we will rent a high clearance vehicle and head for the border with Haiti or towards the north east coast or who knows? We don’t have a plan and we’re sticking to it.
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Viva La Republica Dominicana
