Don't bother bringing your pans because...
Columbus scrapped the crust of this island clean of it's gold 500 years ago. However, there are gigantic quantities below the surface. In fact, the DR has the largest gold mine in the Hemisphere, and that is only tapping to less than a quarter of the estimated amount buried in this great land. By the way, there's also Marble, Amber, Larimar, Bauxite, Nickel (10% of the world's deposit), natural gas, and there are suppose to be some huge oil reserves off the coast of Azua and in the Enriquillo Basin-the Gov. spends millions searching for it with outdated machinery. They should let ExxonMobil do that job, in an instand the black gold will rise fromt the ground.