The Forgotten Paradise

ju10prd

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Article in Diario Libre today:

https://www.diariolibre.com/revista...so-olvidado-GB7571976?utm_source=tiempo-libre

I don't think many of us who have truly enjoyed the peninsula think it is forgotten. Rather it is conveniently not over commercialized.

I do promote the Tree House, zip line and Playa El Valle and would even promote the lovely Playa Moron (for which Google includes a picture or two of Playa Rincon for those lazy weekend article writers to mistake).

Yes the peninsula remains a special largely undiscovered part of DR...but not for all, and especially those seeking home comforts and their style of living.
 

Fulano2

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Dominicans are experts in overrating their country due to lack of travel experience. I mean who invented comparing Constanza to  Switzerland ?  They also think the DR beaches are the best in the world...what about Thailand, Indonesia ???
Samana a paradise, my ...
 

LTSteve

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Dominicans are experts in overrating their country due to lack of travel experience. I mean who invented comparing Constanza to  Switzerland ?  They also think the DR beaches are the best in the world...what about Thailand, Indonesia ???
Samana a paradise, my ...

I disagree with you. Yes Thailand and Indonesia have great beaches all overrun by tourists. You can still go to Playa Valle or even parts of Playa Coson and be the only one there. Unless you are on a deserted island this is getting hard to find. Additionally you can be there in 3.5 hours from NE US.
 

Fulano2

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OK, we have a two hour flight from Switzerland..as europeans. So I don't think that is an argument, and doesnt make Samana a paradise. Thailand and Indonesia (almost 15.000 islands!!) have a lot a beaches were nobody even has been.
 

ExDR

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Dominicans are experts in overrating their country due to lack of travel experience. I mean who invented comparing Constanza to  Switzerland ?  They also think the DR beaches are the best in the world...what about Thailand, Indonesia ???
Samana a paradise, my ...

Samana is decades away from being called paradise. It's a sh*t hole in my opinion. You can smell sewage in the air. Just because it's undeveloped does not mean it's paradise.
 

reilleyp

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Dominicans are experts in overrating their country due to lack of travel experience. I mean who invented comparing Constanza to  Switzerland ?  They also think the DR beaches are the best in the world...what about Thailand, Indonesia ???
Samana a paradise, my ...

Not sure why you are so angry Fulano. If you prefer Thailand and Indonesia, please post some photos for those of us who have not visited there. Before we decide to visit, can you assure us that we will never detect the smell of fecal matter in neither country?
Here is a shot a few miles south of Las Galeras. If we are two decades away from development, that is fine with me. I would prefer to be stuck in time.

https://youtu.be/-tC3B4H2b2Y
 

DRob

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I disagree with you. Yes Thailand and Indonesia have great beaches all overrun by tourists. You can still go to Playa Valle or even parts of Playa Coson and be the only one there. Unless you are on a deserted island this is getting hard to find. Additionally you can be there in 3.5 hours from NE US.

Exactly. I have a friend who raves about Indonesia, except for the fact it takes 30 hours to get there from the US west coast.

If you live anywhere east of the Rockies in NA, DR is stupid easy to get to. I'm in Atlanta, and I can be on a beach within 4 hours of settling into my seat on the plane. 

Samana is magnificent, and beautiful. Far fewer tourists, particularly on the weekends, and a much more non-commercial feel than Punta Cana. 
 
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There are many great beaches in the D.R. where few people go, Frank12 has mentioned and posted pictures of some through his travels around the island. I semi-recently went to Playa Caleton on the North Coast, beautiful little bay/cove beach, sure there were other people there, but it wasn't packed and was certainly not filled with garbage.
 

Blueceo

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I absolutely love the Samana Peninsula and try to get there as often as possible. Recently spent time in Las Galeras and found it to be beautiful and loaded with European tourists, mainly Germans. Never heard so much German being spoken since I last went to a family reunion in North Dakota. My personal favorite is Las Terenas and I'm planning on building a large ocean front estate there someday in the near future. I've been almost everywhere on the Island and to me this is the most beautiful combination of mountains, palm trees and beautiful unspoiled beaches I have seen.
 

wrecksum

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I guess some folks just don't get out much....

Samana? Pretty in some parts of the peninsula but hardly paradise...
 

ju10prd

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Or some guys do get out a lot and travel worldwide a lot.

No point trying to make comparisons with Thailand now. That country is over exploited and the only truly pristine and as such paradise locations are found in the south. Now the south and adjacent Malaysia and Indonesia do have plenty of lovely beaches but for some people going to a Muslim country is a no no. Oh yes there is a Bali, a largely Hindu island in Indonesia and it was and still is a paradise in parts where the commercialism hasn't taken over.

Over-commercialisation is destructive to paradises on this globe and that is the case in some other locations in DR too.

Back to DR and it is an undeniable fact that Samana peninsula is a largely undiscovered gem and as LT Steve mentioned Playa Coson which stretches for 13km, and there you rarely see a soul on a beautiful golden beach with a lovely tropical back drop of swaying coconut palms overhanging the beach backed up by beautiful largely virgin forest on limestone hills. Go trek in those lush foothills and you will understand and even stay in the Peninsula house with helicopter transfer to truly experience something very special. And then you have Playa El Valle which is rarely visited but wonderfully beautiful on a calm day and just inland is the unique Tree House hotel and a zip line which traverses through the very lushest of topical forest. And we haven't mentioned Playas Bonita, Moron, Rincon and Fronton to name just a few.

There are few places left in the western hemisphere like this and on that basis alone it can be called a forgotten paradise. The Caribbean is considered paradise by many travellers from Europe and beyond and tell me what a Bahamian beach, Barbados or Grace Bay offers over the whole of Samana once you step inland? And there are other places still left to be properly discovered in DR too.

Even Bicardi many years back decided it was a such a paradise for their adverts using Cayo Levantado.

For the well travelled it is indeed a forgotten, and even an undiscovered, paradise and there is so much more to it than the centre of Las Terrenas or Samana town and whales.

Fulano mentions the Dominican comparison with Constanza and Switzerland. Have you ever looked up when heading down towards San Jose de Ocoa and thought that looks just like the Jura mountains? I sure have.
 

ROLLOUT

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Or some guys do get out a lot and travel worldwide a lot.

No point trying to make comparisons with Thailand now. That country is over exploited and the only truly pristine and as such paradise locations are found in the south. Now the south and adjacent Malaysia and Indonesia do have plenty of lovely beaches but for some people going to a Muslim country is a no no. Oh yes there is a Bali, a largely Hindu island in Indonesia and it was and still is a paradise in parts where the commercialism hasn't taken over.

Over-commercialisation is destructive to paradises on this globe and that is the case in some other locations in DR too.

Back to DR and it is an undeniable fact that Samana peninsula is a largely undiscovered gem and as LT Steve mentioned Playa Coson which stretches for 13km, and there you rarely see a soul on a beautiful golden beach with a lovely tropical back drop of swaying coconut palms overhanging the beach backed up by beautiful largely virgin forest on limestone hills. Go trek in those lush foothills and you will understand and even stay in the Peninsula house with helicopter transfer to truly experience something very special. And then you have Playa El Valle which is rarely visited but wonderfully beautiful on a calm day and just inland is the unique Tree House hotel and a zip line which traverses through the very lushest of topical forest. And we haven't mentioned Playas Bonita, Moron, Rincon and Fronton to name just a few.

There are few places left in the western hemisphere like this and on that basis alone it can be called a forgotten paradise. The Caribbean is considered paradise by many travellers from Europe and beyond and tell me what a Bahamian beach, Barbados or Grace Bay offers over the whole of Samana once you step inland? And there are other places still left to be properly discovered in DR too.

Even Bicardi many years back decided it was a such a paradise for their adverts using Cayo Levantado.

For the well travelled it is indeed a forgotten, and even an undiscovered, paradise and there is so much more to it than the centre of Las Terrenas or Samana town and whales.

Fulano mentions the Dominican comparison with Constanza and Switzerland. Have you ever looked up when heading down towards San Jose de Ocoa and thought that looks just like the Jura mountains? I sure have.

Great Inagua, for certain, and many parts of Andros. On Inagua, there are two or three restaurants (which open and close at will) maybe three hotels, and miles of unspoiled beaches.
Downside, flights in and out 2 or 3 times a week last time I checked, and the mosquitoes are ferocious