The Right Way to Visit the Dominican’s Sexiest Peninsula
Samaná’s bike-happy residents keeping it wheel. (Photo: rights manged stock)
By Chris Bunting
There’s something not quite right about the gentleman traipsing about the gas station we pass by in our taxi, en route to the Moon Club in the small Dominican town of Las Terrenas.
Is it his clothes? No, they’re normal and plain. Maybe it’s his demeanor? Nope, that’s not it, he seems stoic enough.
Oh right, it’s the fact that he’s the only person there, he’s got no car, and he’s carrying a shotgun at his side.
Maybe they just really take reducing our dependency on fossil fuels seriously here in the DR’s mountainous northeastern province of Samaná.
Is this is a good enough beach scene for you?
Whatever the situation (we quickly decide against exploring it further), as with most everywhere else in the Caribbean, complementing the Dominican Republic’s main course of beachy good looks and glorious pampering is a little side dish of danger and edginess in the air. Those skinny, snaking roads leading into blind curves driven on by speeding and constantly beeping cars. Mangy, heartbreakingly hungry dogs prowling those very same streets. The constant faint smell of something burning in the air. The ubiquitous lotto shacks. The nonchalant carrying/usage of machetes.
Which is why luxury resorts exist.
Purists hate them — gated and taking tremendous steps to hide the jungly Third World beyond their walls, as they do. Take the group of five young women and one dude (they denied being a sex cult) we ended up drinking and dancing with at the Moon Club. They went the Airbnb route. Daring. Cheaper. Admirable.
However, they were stationed way up on a remote hill, almost got stuck in the mud driving their rental van up to it, cooked their own food and slept on questionably aseptic mattresses.
Related: 5 Adventures in Punta Cana — No Resort Required
Whereas we were camped out at the sprawling, seven-acre Sublime Samana Hotel — one of the most elegant (and Small Luxury Hotels of the World-membered) on the peninsula — where we got massages on the beach, day-drank in the ocean, and played barefoot tennis until the point of blistered-toe gimp-limpery.
Long story short, here are six reasons to go the impure, inauthentic route like us next time you’re in the these parts.
Hey, tubby
Photo: Sublime Samana
Not every one of Sublime’s 27 one-, two- and three-bedroom units are created equally. There are 18 suites in the main building and nine private casitas. While all are ridiculously spacious, enjoy floor-to-ceiling windows, have balconies with either beach or pool views, and feature fully teched-out kitchens, only some have their own outdoor Jacuzzis. Which do you prefer? (Psst: That was a trick question, of course you want one with a hot tub.)
Spouting off
First rule of whale-watching club: don’t go to whale-watching club hung over; there will be retch. That said, the nearby Puerto Bahia Marina, where sits the luxe Bannister Hotel, offers the best humpback tours on the island — no fat shaming, por favor!
Related: Top 20 Beach Bars in the Caribbean
Home and a wade
Photo: Sublime Samana
If you’re looking for a more current-less hydration experience than what the very body-surfing-friendly sea o’er yonder provides, the pools — “canals,” in their words — at Sublime are really the property’s centerpiece, providing nearly 500 feet of shallow dunkage, end to end (and we spotted few if any kids, if that’s a selling point).
Spiked coconuts
If every fruit/vegetable were filled with rum, the world would be overrun by vegetarians. At this particular drupe-cupped beach bar, Lo de Luis — a quick walk down the beach from Sublime — they hack open a coconut, pump it full of some booze or another and send you on your way. Which way? Happiness. Soon after: Nappiness.
How touching
Photo: Sublime Samana
Beaches: what can’t they do? Hosting spas is certainly one of their most under-utilized jams, but Sublime’s spa team has set up curtained shop on Coson Beach, where their signature “Caribbean Holistic” and “Energizing Blue Sea” (not two, but four hands on duty) rituals come in 50- and 80-minute flavors. Between the rhythm of the ebbing, flowing tide, and said hands, if you don’t fall asleep by treatment’s end, someone slipped you a bath-salt-laced piña colada.
Plane and simple
The two-hour drive north from Santo Domingo’s airport is not ideal (and that’s on a newish road; the old way was twice that). Instead, fly JetBlue into Samaná’s El Catey airport, only about 20 easy-breezy minutes away (as a much less-trafficked strip, you’ll have to be more flexible with which days you get in and out: Wednesdays and Saturdays).
Info: From $195; sublimesamana.com
More from New York Post:
It’s never been cheaper to fly to the Caribbean
15 reasons why Puerto Rico should be our next state
The 12 most over-the-top hotel perks
Related: Going Full Local in Puerto Rico
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