On my way to Cuba from Puerto Rico, I decided I’d check out another Caribbean Island so I stopped over for a week in the Dominican Republic. Not having much interest in resorts, I decided to fly into Santo Domingo and booked a cheap AirBnB. Muchísimas gracias to Yamel and Isaac for being such great hosts!

I spent the first couple days planning my trip to Cuba and checking out some of the rock climbing just in town. After searching online a bit, I got in touch with Joan, a local adventure guide in Santo Domingo. And on the second day, he picked me up and we went to check out Escalara #3, a section of rock located on the southern edge of Parque Mirador del Sur. Although it’s not located in some beautiful mountain range or really out in any kind of nature, Parque Mirador del Sur had it’s own interesting flare being located right in the middle of a bustling city. There aren’t a whole lot of places in the world where the rock climbing is smack-dab in the middle of a big city!

Unfortunately I only had time to climb a few times in Santo Domingo, but I really look forward to returning to the Dominican Republic to check out more of what this beautiful country has to offer! From the photos and discussions with the locals, it seems like the Dominican Republic has a lot of potential for being an incredible climbing destination in the future!

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A few days later, I hopped onto a WhatsApp chat group of Couchsurfers in Santo Domingo looking for some adventure outside of Santo Domingo. This is where I met Nadi and Ivana, two uruguayas heading to Bahía de las Águilas with a tour group in town. They invited me along on the adventure and I met them at the group meeting point in the center of Santo Domingo in the wee hours of the morning.

We chatted for a bit while we waited on the other tourists to arrive and discussed which bus we thought that we would be taking. The large, fancy looking white bus to the left or the tiny, blue “guagua” bus to the right. With the $35 price tag for the tour, I’m sure you can guess which bus was ours. If you guessed the fancy, white bus, well you’d be…. WRONG!

The tour manager scurried the group onto the bus and of course, Nadi, Ivana, and I were the last to board, which as usual meant that we got the best seats. And by best seats, I mean the worst. Ivana was sat in the back next to a large man and the wheel hump at her feet making it impossible to move. I was sat in between the driver and passenger seat in a makeshift center seat where the backrest only went up about a quarter of your back, and as our consolation prize, Nadi got the luxury passenger seat. Oh, and I almost forgot to mention, the drive out to Bahía de las Águilas is approximately 6 hours…

To be fair though, despite it’s length, the scenery made it quite an interesting drive. The first half goes through a tropical and mountainous region followed by a few hours driving through a desert before arriving at the coast where Bahía de las Águilas lies. From there we hopped on a quick, few minute boat out to beach.

The boat ride out to the beach isn’t long, but it sure is cool. You have the Caribbean Sea out to your right and craggy, rock faces (I was drooling over potential Deep Water Solo spots) to your left and below you, the clearest, most vibrantly blue water you’ve ever seen.

After letting us off at the beach, we were free to relax and enjoy for a handful of hours. And that’s exactly what we did. I’m not sure what it was exactly, but I can only guess the outside temperature was reaching over 100°F (40°C). It was hot. But fortunately, the water was perfect temperature, not too hot and not too cold. So needless to say, we spent a lot of time splashing in the crystal clear water.

After soaking up the rays (this was one of the rare occasions that I actually got a mild sunburn) we headed back. Which came with quite a bit of confusion as there were several boat companies and several different groups and nobody knew which boat company was theirs. But never the less, we made it back to the bus. I guess when you pay only $35 for 12 hours of bus, a few drinks, a boat ride, and a small lunch you can’t expect everything to be smooth!

Before reaching Santo Domingo, we made one more stop at a natural pool at the end of the second shortest river in the world, Río Los Patos. As we walked up, we saw some homeless folks bathing in the river upstream, so we decided we’d just grab a beer instead of jumping in. After a while we all returned to the bus and headed backed, calling it a long but fun and exciting day! And I would call it an end to my short Dominican adventure. A couple days later I hopped on an airplane headed for Havana, Cuba.