Punta Cana, Dominican Republic

Punta Cana’s resorts allure throngs of bounce breakers to the Dominican Republic’s easternmost Caribbean and Atlantic beaches. To escape the crowds and acquaintance a added accustomed ancillary to the country, arch instead to the 15,000-acre Puntacana Resort and Club. The upscale, planned association is focused on sustainability in areas big—such as the onsite 1,500-acre Indigenous Eyes Ecological Park and Reserve—and small, including the acquaintance amoebic vegetables and honey served in the resort’s restaurants. Through the Puntacana Ecological Foundation, resort guests can participate in a array of accustomed and cultural excursions, including Segway ecotours, freshwater lagoon swims, and opportunities to apprentice about bounded sugarcane production, bastard composting, and amoebic beekeeping. Visitors can aswell advice Peregrine Fund biologists monitor, feed, and clue the Ridgway’s hawk, a attenuate and threatened breed begin alone on the island of Hispaniola.
How to Get Around: Punta Cana International Airport is calmly amid beneath than ten account from the Puntacana Resort and Club. Prebook airport transfers (via clandestine car or accumulation shuttle) through your hotel.
Where to Stay: Lodging options aural the Puntacana Resort and Club acreage ambit from the budget-friendly Four Points By Sheraton Puntacana Apple (starting at about $99 per night) to the chic and clandestine Tortuga Bay, an absolute beachfront ascendancy advised by the backward Dominican-born appearance artist Oscar de la Renta. Tortuga Bay has 30 abundant suites (one-, two-, three-, and four-bedrooms) in 13 villas. Guest accommodating begins at the airport with a alley greeting and expedited community and includes clandestine use of a golf barrow to biking aural the resort.
What to Eat or Drink: The Puntacana Ecological Foundation’s Lionfish Ascendancy Program pays bounded fishermen to bolt lionfish, an invasive breed aggressive the biodiversity of Dominican apricot reefs. The circadian lionfish bolt makes its way assimilate bounded restaurant menus, including Bamboo, at Tortuga Bay. Eating lionfish helps ascendancy its citizenry and assure the reefs. The sweet, white meat is tasty, decidedly if commutual with a Sea Grape Mojito, Tortuga Bay’s signature cocktail.
What to Buy: Handmade purses, necklaces, and added items crafted from recycled abstracts such as artificial accoutrements and towels are accessible at the Brisas del Caribe allowance shops in the airport. Bounded women aftermath and advertise the acceptable souvenirs as allotment of the Nuestra Señora de Punta Cana workshop, an bread-and-butter development action sponsored by the Puntacana Foundation.
What to Read Before You Go: The abundant footnotes and Dominican argot in Junot Diaz’s agreeable Pulitzer Prize-winning atypical The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao (Riverhead Books, album edition, 2008) body a foundation for compassionate the historical, cultural, and airy armament that accept shaped the Dominican-American immigrant experience.
Helpful Links: Puntacana Resort and Club and Go Dominican Republic
Fun Fact: The threatened rhinoceros iguana (Cyclura cornuta), a aged bastard called for the hornlike growths on the tip of its nose, was already accepted throughout the Dominican Republic. The Iguana Conservation Project launched by the Puntacana Ecological Foundation helps assure and adviser absolute populations and absolution captive-bred iguanas into the bounded area. See and apprentice about the ample reptiles (adults can be two to four anxiety long) at the Indigenous Eyes Ecological Park and Reserve.Punta Cana is allotment of the Punta Cana-Bávaro-Veron-Macao borough district, in the city-limits of Higüey, in La Altagracia Arena (the easternmost arena of the Dominican Republic). The breadth has beaches and balnearios which face both the Caribbean and Atlantic, and it has been a accepted day-tripper destination back the 1970s. The name Punta Cana refers to the pikestaff award in the region, and actually agency "Tip of the White Pikestaff Palms".
The Punta Cana breadth has an estimated citizenry of 100,000, with a advance amount of six percent.[4] To the north, it borders the apple and bank of Cabeza de Toro, and again the Bávaro and El Cortecito beaches. The abutting city, the 500-year-old Higüey, is 45 kilometres (28 mi) away, and it takes about an hour to drive there. Europeans, decidedly Spanish auberge chains, own all but two of the 50+ megaresorts of the Punta Cana tourism destination.
The province’s 100-kilometre (62 mi) bank tends to be agilely windy. The ocean amnion are mainly shallows, with several accustomed abyssal pools in which visitors can bath after any danger. From arctic to south, the basic beaches are Uvero Alto, Macao, Arena Gorda, Bávaro, El Cortecito, Las Corales and Cabeza de Toro, all arctic of the cape; and Cabo Engaño, Punta Cana and Juanillo south of the cape.
Bávaro is an breadth starting from Cabeza de Toro until Macao Beach. As the hotels started to acceleration forth the East coast, Bavaro itself became a centermost of casework with arcade malls, fast-food stores, biologic stores, accomplished restaurants, banks, clinics, workshops, supermarkets, and schools. The above boondocks in the commune is Veron, now bigger than Higüey in territory, a ad-lib – and poor – burghal development active forth the aboriginal alley from the west. Verón, endure name of the French freeholder of a timberline business in the aboriginal 1930s, is now the base-city for auberge workers and related. It has, besides Bávaro, one of the alone four gas stations in Punta Cana. The actual next is amid 48 kilometres (30 mi) west in Higüey, at the Fruisa crossroads, with a new Texaco gas base opened April 2010, 3 kilometres (1.9 mi) south of Macao beach, and the new Shell gas base abutting to the airport (on the artery Coral) opened at the end of 2010.
The breadth offers baptize attractions, such as antagonism speedboats, baiter sailing, affair boats, abysmal sea action fishing, analysis cruises, amphibian spas, clandestine yachts, pond with dolphins, snorkeling cruises, pond with sharks and stingrays, bang watching, beach exploring and visiting baby islands like Catalina and Saona.
The basic city-limits Santo Domingo, and Los Haitises National Park, Samaná, are nearby. The Basilica Catholic Monument, congenital in 1962 and advised by two French architects, is in adjacent Higüey, the 500-year-old basic of the Province.
There are several resort developments, including the Puntacana Resort and Club and Cap Cana.