Party in the ocean and a sketchy buggy ride

We stick around Punta Cana and Bavaro for two weeks

The next stop on our Dominican Republic tour was Bavaro in the Punta Cana Region. Punta Cana is situated at the eastern tip of the Dominican Republic island. It is comparable to Cancun, Mexico as a massive resort destination, with many large, fancy resorts lining the coast. Just like Cancun, Punta Cana has an airport that is a drive away from the resorts along the coast.

Bavaro is characterized by miles and miles of a beach that is mostly fronted by massive resorts catering to thousands of tourists. We found a cheap AirBnB to stay at, and it turned out to be the best place we could have found outside of an all-exclusive resort. For just $20 CAD ($15 USD) a night, we were located about 60 meters from the beach and had access to the apartment complex’s pool. We made good use of the pool, going in for a dip almost every day. For another $10 USD per night, we got dinners home-cooked for us every night.

The family, originally from Venezuela, was wonderful. The mom (Graciela) cooked us lots of Venezuelan and Dominican dishes. It was interesting to hear how her youngest daughter (Ali) came to the Dominican Republic with just $37 in her pocket, knowing that Venezuela was going downhill and looking to make a better life for her and her family.

Although most people stay in all-inclusive resorts, there are still plenty of cheap hotels around. But none of them comes with a wonderful Venezuelan family or home-cooked dinners!

Even though there are miles and miles of resorts, the beach is open to the public so we were able to take long walks along the shore and find good spots to swim in.

Just in front of the apartment, there is a road leading directly to the beach. That ended up being a pretty good spot and we swam there several times. The beautiful white-sand beach, refreshing pool, relaxing AirBnB, and delicious dinners are what we have been looking for (and more), so we decided to extend our booking not just once, but twice, so that we could enjoy all of it longer. We ended up staying in Bavaro for two weeks, which took up almost all of our remaining time in the Dominican Republic.

While we were exploring the area one evening, we got hustled by a guy called Orel (pronounced “Oreo like the cookie”) to book some tourist excursions. At first we started having a conversation with him just to be polite, but eventually we got pulled into his souvenir shop. The most popular excursion is the one to Saona Island, which is a 2hr bus ride away, but we’d done that already. Orel tried to sell us other popular tours. We were admittedly interested in two of his tours, but we were concerned about the price. He started off at around $50-60 USD per person per tour. When we finally negotiated the cost down to $30 USD per person per tour, we agreed and put down a deposit for two excursions.

The next day, we set out for the first of our two excursions: a dune buggy excursion. To our surprise, our ride arrived half an hour early in an old lorry with missing side panels and wires sticking out of the dash.

The buggies weren’t any better in terms of construction— in fact, they were worse. The men started the engines by squeezing some electrical wires together and told us to tie straps (“seat belts”) to the roll cage. The helmets were one size fits all, which means that they were all XXL. The brakes didn’t work quite properly, and the wheels weren’t straight.

We were in a company of around 16 buggies, each of which carried two people. The trail was a slick muddy path and the tires kicked up a lot of silty mud. We managed to stay relatively clean, but some of the others were almost completely covered in mud by the end.

The tour took us to a little farm to show us how coffee was made. They tried to sell us some of their products including tea, cocoa, coconut oil, and cream, but I don’t think anyone brought money nor did they intend to buy anything. The next stop was a cenote that our AirBnB hosts had told us about. It was a natural swimming hole in a limestone cave. Though it wasn’t lit like the cenote we visited in Mexico, it still felt very refreshing to jump into the cool water for a quick dip, thoroughly cleaning off the mud caked on our bodies in the process.

After our visit to the cave, Yuki decided to drive. At first she was quite hesitant, but once she got going she really enjoyed it. Each buggy is really old, so it has its own character. The first one we had broke down and they switched us onto another one before we got to the coffee plantation. The second one had a tendency to over-steer because neither of the front wheels was on straight (and might have been loose too).

These buggies don’t have very good suspension and the seats are hard, so it was pretty rough going down the unpaved roads. By the time we got to the third and last stop, our backs and bottoms were quite sore and bruised. Here’s a YouTube video I made of our buggy experience:

The third stop was Macao Beach, another beautiful beach located in a wide, crescent-shaped bay. Apparently the locals prefer this beach over the one in Bavaro because there are no resorts and the water is (debatably) nicer.

We only got through the last leg of the trip (traveling from the beach to the endpoint) because we knew that we’d soon be done with the tour and get out of these uncomfortable buggies. The place had outdoor showers that everyone used to wash the silt off. We were the only ones with red marks and bruises on our backs from the buggies. This is probably because we’re small, bony people and the buggies are built for larger people.

We returned to our AirBnB six and a half hours later. Having missed lunch, we were quite eager to eat a hearty meal and retreated into the town’s café for some comfort food.

Our second excursion on the following day also started much earlier than the time we were told to arrive. I originally thought that island life was slow and things always started late, but for some reason everyone had already loaded onto the party boat when we arrived at the beach. Our contact waved and shouted frantically from the beach to get their attention, but the yells fell on deaf ears and we watched as the party boat slowly sailed away.

We had to go to the company’s office and get another speedboat to chase after the party boat. Luckily, we didn’t miss anything and shortly after boarding we exited the boat via a waterslide to snorkel over a reef. The way we look at it, we got a free speedboat ride as part of the excursion experience!

This reef isn’t as spectacular as the one in Akumal Bay, Mexico because there is a lot of boat traffic bringing people into the area. It was still pretty cool though — we saw some new kinds of fish, coral, and sea urchins. The most interesting were these sardine-sized swordfish that zoomed around just under the surface, detouring from their straight paths to swim around us.

After the snorkeling, the bar opened and drinks started flowing. We had several cups of rum mixed with fruit punch, which prepared us for the next stop: a natural “lagoon” in the ocean.

In reality, the “lagoon” is a calm part of the coast that’s shallow (around 5 feet deep) and without any waves. All of the party boats stop here so that people can hang out in the water. Our party boat’s bartender brought drinks and a cooler of ice into the water, on a floating board, and went around the whole group to make sure we were well hydrated. He used his teeth to open the beer bottles!

On the way back, there was dancing and snacking. We decided that both of these excursions were well worth the $30 per person that we paid for, which is a surprise because they weren’t properly advertised. We only booked them because of the relatively low price. The seller showed us some videos of the excursions beforehand, but neither the video nor his explanation of what would happen truly captured what was actually going to happen.

Watch this video for a glimpse into our party boat excursion: