Dominican Republic

Last updated on December 19, 2022

The Dominican Republic (or DR) is a country located on the island of Hispaniola, which it shares with Haiti, making Hispaniola one of only two Caribbean islands that is shared by two sovereign states (the other is Saint Martin). It is the most populous island and the second largest island in the Caribbean by area after Cuba at 18,792 sq mi. It has over 10 million people of whom approximately 3.3 million live in the metropolitan area of Santo Domingo, the capital city. The official language of the country is Spanish.

Christopher Columbus explored and claimed the island of Hispaniola for Spain after landing there on his first voyage in 1492. The indigenous population, the Taíno, were an Arawak-speaking people who began arriving by canoe from Belize and the Yucatan peninsula between 6000 and 4000 BC. The Spanish colony of Santo Domingo became the site of the first permanent European settlement in the Americas and the first seat of Spanish colonial rule in the New World. In 1697, Spain recognized French dominion over the western third of the island, which became the independent state of Haiti in 1804. After more than three hundred years of Spanish rule, the Dominican people declared independence in November 1821.

The Dominican Republic has the largest economy in the Caribbean and, over the last 25 years, it has had the fastest-growing economy in the Western Hemisphere. Recent growth has been driven by construction, manufacturing, tourism, and mining. The Dominican Republic is the most visited destination in the Caribbean.

To reach the Dominican Republic we flew out of Lima, Peru at 11:50 PM on an American Airlines overnight flight. We couldn’t find any direct flights, so we had to go through Miami to Puerto Plata. There are actually several airports in the DR that you can fly into. We chose the one closest to our lodging where we were going to be spending the next 4 weeks. It was an abrupt Covid-culture change. As soon as we got on the plane they announced that we did not have to wear masks. About 50% of the people were not wearing them. Every place we have been since December (except Tanzania where no one wore masks as we were almost exclusively outside) has had more compliance, less complaining and stricter mask rules, especially on airplanes, so it was a bit disconcerting. We had a super turbulent flight to Miami in the dark which was very stressful for the adults. I think we flew through a thunderstorm as there were multiple episodes of flashing lights outside that seemed to be lightening. The kids slept through it all.

For the Miami layover, we booked the AA Admirals Club for the day for 2 adults (kids go free) and spent the next 5 hours eating, drinking, dozing and playing on the iPads. The flight to the Dominican Republic was only 1 1/2 hours over beautiful bright blue ocean, islands, and sand bars. We had prearranged a minivan pickup and our Spanish speaking driver met us at the airport to take us to Cabrera, a town about 2 hours from Puerto Plato (POP). It is located in the middle of the country’s north coast, 80 miles north of Santo Domingo. The population is over 39,000, and, unlike most towns located on the coasts, does not depend so much on tourism. Cabrera’s main source of income is cattle, meat, and milk.

Everyone promptly fell asleep in the car for the majority of the ride. We turned down a bumpy gravel shared driveway and went down a very steep hill to Villa Cabo Fino, our lodging for the next 4 weeks. We arrived around 4:30 PM and settled into our 2 rooms, the Tower and the Tennis Room. They are at the top of the property overlooking the old grass tennis court, now turned soccer field, pool and the ocean.

Villa Cabo Fino is a huge, old estate that is rented by families who attend school at The Hive, a local alternative school that offers 6 week sessions built around one of the seventeen United Nations Sustainable Development Goals, commonly known as SDGs. These are a collection of 17 interlinked global goals designed to be a “blueprint to achieve a better and more sustainable future for all.” The goals were posted in 2015 and are intended to be achieved by 2030. They include ideals such as ending poverty and hunger, improving general health and education, gender equality, clean water, affordable energy, sustainability, and actions on climate change. The goal this session was “Sustainable Consumption and Production.”

We rented our place at Cabo Fino through a central rental manager named Ryann who lives in Cabrera. Cabo Fino has 10 en suite bedrooms, an old grass tennis court that is now a fantastic soccer field (with 2 metal poles to avoid where the net used to be), a pool and a large common space with a pool table, eating and seating areas. There is laundry service twice a week, chefs that cook 5 breakfasts a week and 4 dinners and housekeeping that comes daily to sweep up and make the beds. In its prime, when it used to rent for $2000 per night, the grounds/rooms must have been amazing. The views from pretty much anywhere on the property are gorgeous. We are up on a cliff overlooking the ocean. You can hear the waves crashing on the reef and shore below. The wind blows off the ocean constantly so even on hot days you get a cooling breeze. There are mature flowering gardens and tall palm trees. It has fallen into disrepair and needs a lot of work to give it a full makeover. We mostly spend time outside so it has been a nice place to stay for 4 weeks. Additionally, there are 10 kids here and opportunities to play soccer many times a day. The field is adjacent to the pool so if they get hot they jump out of the game, into the pool and then back into the game on the fly. Trey bought a huge flotador (pool float) the first week that we were here and had to drive it home on the roof of our rental car with duct tape and rocks to hold it down.

Monday was a school holiday as the government decided just a week earlier that this would be the Monday to celebrate their Labor Day. This was great for us as we needed another day to relax and play after our overnight journey here. We quickly realized that you need a lot of cash here as most people don’t take credit cards. We didn’t have our rental car yet so Trey ran 5 miles to the nearest ATM to get cash so we could pay for the food service here and for some roach bait (see the above polite description of the condition of the housing).

Tuesday morning at 8:10 AM, we packed up our backpacks with water, sunscreen, a journal, some pens, and a snack. We walked up the long steep hill to the bus stop where all 5 of us got on to go to The Hive. Trey and I stayed for 2 hours to get logistics information, schedule soccer for them on Tuesdays and Thursdays and get them settled in. The Hive is divided into The Big Hive (generally 7 years old and over) and the Little Hive (usually 6 years old and younger). The Big Hive is then divided into the older kids and the younger kids. The students in this session apparently skewed young so Griffin was moved to the younger group of the Big Hive even though he is still 6. Marin and Sy are with the “big kids”. The boys were both nervous and a bit shy after 5 months of no formal school and 24 x 7 with Mom and Dad. Marin found the library and immediately stacked up 5 books she wanted to read. Griffin’s group is 8 kids, 7 of which are girls. He adjusted quite well and was happily drawing a pineapple, his favorite fruit, when I left. Sy took a little longer to be comfortable and was glued to Marin’s side for most of the day. When we left, they were busily cutting up plastic bottles to up-cycle them into something useful. There is a lot of self-directed learning, hands on experiences and interactive exercises. The kids learned the 3 R’s of waste management…Reduce, Reuse, and Recycle. They visited a local beach the first week to see these R’s in action.

It was an adjustment from being on the move for the past 4 months to parking ourselves in one location. I think I had the biggest adjustment to sitting and just relaxing. I felt antsy and restless for the first 2 weeks and even considered heading home early. After 2 weeks, things settled into a routine and we all were content to enjoy our last few weeks in the DR.

It was also an adjustment to living in a tropical climate full time. Cabo Fino was basically open air living so the kitchen and and dining room occasionally had evening visitors like large insects, crabs and rats. When it rains in the DR…it rains. The clouds ferociously dump buckets of water as fast as possible. The result is the pipes are overwhelmed with run off and for 1/2 a day your tap water may look like mud. After a while this becomes normal and you move on with your life. 🙂

We decided to rent a car for the week to give us more freedom to explore. We met the school bus driver, Alexis, at The Hive to pick up the car. He speaks mostly Spanish, but I think it is a Korean car that runs on natural gas…imagine a car with a propane tank in the trunk. The only instructions that we were given were to wait a few seconds after turning on the car before starting it. It was all a little sketchy. We had to find a gas station that carried natural gas. It was, apparently, somewhere in the area. We drove around and found a small supermercado where we bought a few snacks. It was a little strange to have half a day to ourselves with no kids. Trey worked on the blog while I swam some laps and fell asleep on the deck chair. When I woke up, I saw 18 (I counted) vultures circling overhead! I think they thought I was a dead body ready for them to scavenge. I waved my arms so they knew I was alive and they slowly circled away down the coast. Whoops.

After school, we signed all three kids up for soccer club so they went on the bus to a grass/dirt field about 10 minutes from school. We met Coach Katie who led them through some footwork and passing drills. Her 2 boys showed up for a small game for the last half of practice. Marin was invited to come to the over-13 year old soccer practice on Thursdays at a local school and Sy and Griffin can go to the under-13 division on Mondays. We played more barefoot soccer after dinner at home and had a quick swim in the pool and then an early bedtime as everyone was really tired after their first official day of school.

The next day a group of the parents did a workout on our lovely deck. Trey, Emily, Christy, Sam and I ran/walked the giant hill up to the road and did some core work. It was a hot sunny day. We also found out that there is a soccer community, tennis courts at a nearby condo place, and a longer pool. The local condo place is called Catalina Topical Lodge and it has a lovely breakfast spot where we often chose the yogurt parfait with quinoa and fruit. Delicious!

We fell into a rewarding routine of breakfast, putting the kids on the bus, working out with our workout group, exploring the area, reading, swimming, and relaxing. Trey started playing tennis with Colin, one of the parents here, and got himself into the nightly local basketball pickup games a few times a week.

We get the kids off the bus around 2:30 PM and then swim or play soccer here at the house or drive the short distance to soccer practice at the local school. The boys play Mondays from 330-530PM and Marin plays Thursday from 330-530 PM. They play co-ed games the whole time which they all love. It is 5 vs 5, and usually enough for 3 or 4 teams, so the loser rotates out each time. The field is fenced in and smaller than a normal field so foot work and quick passing is valuable. The kids are feisty so it is a battle each time, resulting in a few Band-Aids on the scraped up areas. They are all so excited to play with a team again.

Weekends we are free to explore the area. We found a local waterfall called Monumento Natural El Saltadero, and have now been there 3 times to swim, get a facial with clay from the walls, and climb the wall to jump off of the various rock ledges. There are always local Dominicans who do flips and dives off the higher perches and procure the mud from cave-like outcrops in the wall in exchange for admiration and tips. Our first time there, our weird rental car got a dead battery at the falls and luckily some local guys that Trey knew from basketball also serve as cliff divers so they helped us jump the car. They initially sent one of the guys out on a moped for what we thought were jumper cables, but turned out to be just some loose wires that he picked up somewhere. It was then that we found actual jumper cables in the trunk and realized that this probably wasn’t the first time that this car had this issue.

Several of the families have gone away on the weekends to explore other areas of the country which we may consider in a few weeks. We are on our own for food on the weekends so we ate a lot of the leftovers from the previous week and ordered take out on Sunday night.

Marin was feeling the lack of kids her age at The Hive so we discussed it over the weekend and made a change. We met a few ex-pat families that send their older kids to Esperanza, a local school in Cabrera that was started by a British couple. The Esperanza Project is a non-profit organization working to enrich the lives and futures of children and teens in Cabrera through community-focused education. It’s educational programs are run by a group of energetic and highly qualified educators from around the world, who are focused on providing an affordable (in some cases free), yet very high quality, English-based education. They have recently started taking on children of ex-pats for short and longer periods of time. We spoke to Fiona who is in charge of the school and she agreed to take Marin on for the duration of our stay here. I was really proud of Marin as she advocated for herself and joined a new school in a foreign country without knowing anyone. She is really loving it there. It definitely helped that she met some people on the soccer pitch, including Fiona’s husband Anthony, prior to making the switch.

Sy and Griffin are enjoying The Hive and are now in the same group. They were excited to learn how to sing happy birthday in Chinese today. Our Cabo Fino friend, Emily, went in to teach it to them. They are also learning Spanish songs, caring for animals, climbing tire swings in trees, eating school lunch (local foods), and swimming in the school pool. Griffin and Sy are doing an equine class at The Hive where they learn to take care of horses (Bella and Snow are their favorites), read the horse’s body language and ride bareback around the yard. They have also been working on a project about sustainability and up-cycling. Sy is making a plastic and cardboard washing machine with his friend Olivet, and Griffin is making an airplane and firetruck out of plastic and bottle caps.

After dropping the kids at school, we took a grown up day road trip to Cabarete with Emily, Sam, and Christy. On the way we stopped at a fantastic French bakery to pickup some pan de chocolate and baguettes in a small town called Río San Juan. A little over an hour later, we were in Cabarete which is a slightly larger town than Cabrera. It is more touristy and has a lot of water sports like surfing and kite surfing, and many more hotels. We wandered through a few nice shops, walked down to the beach and chatted with Stefan, the owner of Restaurant Le Bistro, an adorable French bistro. There seem to be a lot of French people who have relocated here and are running small businesses like the bakery, a higher-end clothing shop. a bistro and a restaurant. We ate lunch at a local restaurant called Friends, and had great smoothies. The food is fresh and there is a bakery here as well. They also have a large library and it seems like a place that you can just hang for a few hours. We drove home in time for bus pick up at 2:45 PM. We arranged to go back to Cabarete with the kids the next weekend to take a surf lesson and hit the local water park in Sosua.

Cabarete weekend with the kids was a hit. We stayed at the Velero Beach Resort. It was a great hotel right in the heart of the town, near a grocery store with a big pool for swim workouts and the usual family races which I somehow never win these days. We found out that our friend Christy was a college swimmer so Marin hit her up for some stroke tips.

We spent Saturday at Laguna SOV, a family adventure park located in Sosua, a few miles down from Cabarete. This was an amazing place for families with several areas of pools, arm-powered paddle boats, rock climbing walls, ropes courses, splash pads, playgrounds, misters, snack bars with fresh fruit juices and popcorn, and 3 bigger water slides which did not look impressive, but curve up at the end and send you flying farther than expected into the pools below. The kids, and Trey, had a blast on these while I practiced my action photo taking.

Saturday night Trey, Emily and I went to dinner at Restaurant Le Bistro, owned and run by Stefan, who we met a few days prior during our reconnaissance trip. Stefan is a fantastic host and his restaurant has a lovely, small-street ambiance with outside seating and white lights above. The food was excellent with a nice variety of French staples. After dinner we walked to the beach at the end of the street and listened to a band playing tropical-themed music. It was an amazing night. Marin babysat for the 4 boys back at the hotel. She was split between two nearby rooms which was not the easiest experience for her, but she muscled through it and when we got home at 10:30 PM they were all safe and asleep.

Sunday we went surfing at Playa Encuentro. This place is a cool place to hang for the day. There were shady big palm trees, places to sit and watch the surfers, a coffee shop and a place to get lunch, several surf shops to get equipment and lessons, and lots of kids. Trey, Marin and Sy went surfing with the Chino Surf School. The instructors were patient and excited when anyone got up on the board. Marin as usual did great. Trey improved over the Sri Lanka surfing and was able to get up more. Sy and Griffin did a few runs and then decided it was too cold and their numerous scrapes and wounds from island living were stinging in the salt water. They played on the beach in the sand.

Later that week Trey and I went to Laguna Dudu to explore on a weekday. This is a family-owned attraction about 10 minutes east of Cabrera that has two large natural pools surrounded by cliffs similar to cenotes found on the Yucatán Peninsula of Mexico. They also have a zipline, restaurant, snack bar, volleyball and soccer fields, and an impressive cave with stalactites and stalagmites. Trey did the zipline that runs over one of the pools and then sends you on a 10 meter drop for several seconds into the water. Trey befriended a woman that went after him and I videotaped her. You are supposed to let go of the zipline when the worker blows a horn, but she didn’t let go at the right time and hit a blocker on the line, fell, went horizontal and completely face-planted into the water. We were worried that she might have been injured, but she rallied. The second pool goes into a cave and has ledges that you can jump off into the water. There are fish in the water and some kind of swallows that live in small nests on the cave walls that are constantly swooping around. This is a good spot to grab a drink and hang out in the water. There is also a very cool extension of this pool that goes into the surrounding jungle that is serene and beautiful, but you can’t swim here.

Most of our Cabo Fino parent group went horse back riding which was super fun. It was a 90 minute trail ride through the hills above Cabrera with some gorgeous views of the ocean. We found many different kids of fruit trees and stopped to pick some. We also saw some cool seed pods which create what they call Dominican cotton (locals use this fluff in their pillows apparently). It was nice to be riding again!

The next weekend we went with Emily and her boys to Las Terrenas to explore another town. It is a 90 minute drive east of Cabrera. We stayed at Hotel Alisei where we had a fabulous suite with a second floor loft and 2 bathrooms. I think many of the rooms are condos that are rented out when the owners are not using them. Our room was nicely furnished with some cool art and lots of books. Trey ran into the owner of the hotel while searching for the gym. She was teaching an exotic pole dancing class to a group of women. Huh. She is an odd bird who speaks seven languages, is German/Dutch/Italian/Israeli, and wiry, yoga-strong where you can see every individual muscle. The vibe that she has created at her hotel is awesome…inclusive, pet-friendly, and chill. A giant pool was right outside our room and comes with a well stocked swim up bar. Many a fresh fruity tropical drink was ordered by all to enjoy in the warm pool. They also have a good restaurant with breakfast included with our room and a beach right across the tiny street with another bar and lounge chairs. We spent the morning at the pool and had a pizza lunch on the beach down the road a bit at a small square with a playground. We spent the afternoon at the beach across from the hotel, digging in the sand and swimming out into the Atlantic Ocean with goggles looking for fish.

Marin babysat for us again on Saturday night and Trey and Emily and I went out to dinner at La Ola just down the street. The ambiance was islandy with music and an eclectic menu hand written on chalk boards. There was a family of 9 puppies and the mama hanging around the restaurant that were super cute and entertaining. They were all potcake dogs, a mixed-breed dog type found on several Caribbean islands including the DR.

Sunday, we played ping pong next to the pool, swam some laps and did some school work before driving back to Cabo Fino in the later afternoon. Soccer, pool time, early dinner and bed tonight. Tomorrow is a school day and Marin has tests in math and geography, fortunately 2 of her best subjects. This is not only our last week at The Hive and Esperanza, but is the last week of our whole trip!

Trey and I drove Christy and Sammy to Las Terrenas for a second time to pick up Marin’s stuffed Ellie and Blankie who were both inadvertently left at the hotel last weekend! The hotel sent us a “proof-of-life” photo and held them in the reception area until we could rescue them. We found a lovely French bakery called Boulangerie Francaise and had coffees (and hot chocolate for Trey) and pastries, did some window shopping and got take out chicken curry from La Opa.

In the afternoon, we played our last Monday soccer games at Esperanza with Sy and Griffin. It was an epic battle as usual with a little more 2 handed shoving than normal which ended in some bloody knees and a scraped hip for Griffin. Sy hit the post about 6 times in the final game and came back to Cabo Fino to shoot lefty on the wall goal for a while after dinner. I ended up doing soccer drills with the boys in the warm rain overlooking the ocean on our last Monday here while Trey played basketball in town with the locals and Marin read her 700th book.

Tuesday, we took the kids to Laguna Dudu after school and where they explored the pools, Marin did the zipline. Sy wasn’t tall enough for the zipline much to his dismay.

Emily and I drove around a bit with Ryann to see all of the real estate opportunities here. The area is up and coming with plenty of land to buy and build on. There are finished homes for sale and others still being built. Something to think about for the future!

Wednesday of our last week, we took the kids to Playa Grande after school. This beach is awesome. The parking is free with a large lot, the sand is clean, the waves are big enough for our adrenaline-junky kids to enjoy, and the water is clear with a nice sandy bottom. There are restaurants and vendors lining the path down to the beach and the beach itself was almost deserted with just a few people swimming. We enjoyed the whole afternoon here.

That afternoon was Marin’s last soccer game with her friends from Esperanza. We said goodbye to all of the people the we met at Esperanza and The Hive. The kids really had a great time in their respective schools. Teachers Anthony and Christophe stood out as people that really took time to get to know our kids. It was sad to leave them.

Our last night at Cabo Fino was Friday night and was the same night as Marin’s school prom. She went with her friend Juliana to the salon in town to have their hair and makeup done. Debbie and I took them to dinner at Hotel Mira Cielo where we enjoyed the gorgeous views. Most of the families from Cabo Fino had dinner here also and all of the little kids swam in the hotel pool. We dropped them off at the prom at 7 PM and picked them up at 9 PM. Marin said the pre-prom was super fun and the prom was fun. She and Juliana took a lot of photos of themselves. 🙂

We said a hasty goodbye to our Cabo Fino friends as it was pouring rain and we were all piling into vans for the day’s activities. We left Cabo Fino for the last time early Saturday morning and headed to Santa Domingo. Santa Domingo is on the southern coast of DR and is it’s capital. It is the largest metropolitan area in the Caribbean with a population over 3.5 million people. It was founded by the Spanish in 1496 making it the oldest continuously inhabited European settlement in the Americas. It is the site of the first university, cathedral, castle, monastery, and fortress in the New World. The city’s Colonial Zone is a UNESCO World Heritage Site. We only had to ask the driver to pull over twice for Sy to vomit on the side of the road from car sickness. Fun ride.

We took a 40-minute train ride with Chu Chu Colonial around La Zona to see the sights. It takes you to all of the highlights and is quite informative and well worth the fee. You pick the train up and pay right on one of the corners of the main square, Parque Colon. This area is super cute with many places to eat outside, helado everywhere, and lots of cool history. There is an easy and short walking tour that you can take as well. While in Santo Domingo we stayed at the Renaissance Santo Domingo. It was a 10 minute ride to the colonial zone and a 30 minute ride to the airport.

The last flight of our trip was Sunday at 8:30 AM from Santa Domingo to Philadelphia! We had an hour delay for our last flight and arrived in Philadelphia in the mid-afternoon.

Super Dawn, our long time nanny and friend, now turned house and chicken sitter, was nice enough to pick us up at the airport and greeted us with fresh Philly soft pretzels and water. She decorated our house with balloons to welcome us home. xoxo. Home sweet home!