- Thread starter MiamiDRGuy
- Start date
Drone Video: Samana
But it keeps being Las Terrenas where people want to visit and move to. They always talk about Samana Santa Barbara becoming the next big thing but it never happens. The same with Las Galeras. I remember Leonel back in 2005 or 2006 visiting Samana and trying to talk it up. Not much have happened there since. On the other hand Las Terrenas keeps growing.
You are correct about past promises, but this time it is for real. They bought out the entire row of homes on the left as you enter Samana, and are moving massive amounts of dirt to widen the road. The malecon is being revised to improve drainage during heavy rains, and they are constructing a new building to house all the restaurants. They are putting in a large port for cruise ships as we speak. Next to that they started a new baseball field.
The road has been paved from Samana to Las Galeras. They painted lines on the road, including reflectors and even guard rails. In Las Galeras they completed a baseball field with covered bleachers, nice grass and lighting. Near there they started construction for their first courthouse.
At the end of the road in Playa Grande they finished the renovations. We now have clean restaurants and bathrooms. All the older shacks are gone, and nobody is allowed to drive on the beach.
Renovations are almost finished at the all inclusive. I have not been inside, but they did a great job on the entrance. LG now has three hardware stores, two furniture/appliance stores, three small grocery stores, two fish stores, two bakeries, two meat shops and homes are popping up everywhere. At this point I would be content if it stopped growing, but who knows what will happen.
I would really like to see it for pueblo Samana. It is a great scenery with the bay. For Las Galeras I am not sure I wish for it to really take off. There is a charm to it being deserted and quiet. Small cute bed and breakfast places and small bar/restaurants.
The weird thing is that the first time the Samaná peninsula began to be prepared for tourism development back in the 1970’s, most of the government induced changes took place in Samaná city. A long time ago I read it was a small town completely made of wooden buildings and Dr Joaquín Balaguer’s plan to incentive tourism development included fiscal ones and a modernization of the infraestructure. That’s when much of the old town was bulldozed to make way for cement buildings, the malecón which until then didn’t exist, even the pedestrian bridge that goes to some of the keys in the bay wss created by the government. No doubt that was an idea they got by looking at the map of the plans the French had in the early 1800’s to built there Port Napoleon, which was suppose to be the new capital of the French Empire in the Western Hemisphere. The map shows some of those keys and the mainland connected by a bridge.
The point is that tourist development has been much in Samaná city, but rather in Las Terrenas which never got any attention from the government.
The government attempting to incentivize the development of tourism had a mixed bag result elsewhere in the country.
Puerto Plata’s tourism began after the government prepared the area for tourism development. At the same time Samaná city was intervened they intervened Puerto Plata too. That’s when the malecón was created and things like the teleférico and the gardens on top of Pico Isabel de Torres (back then there were lots of flowers.) In the 1980’s the government via the Central Bank created Playa Dorada and that’s when mass tourism truly took off in PP. In PP the government intention to make it a tourist area had a successful start.
Juan Dolio was another place the government earmarked for tourism, since before the area had nothing. At first it was a success with many hotels building resorts, but then that cooled down and things have tsken a different route.
Barahona was another earmarked for tourism development and the María Montez International Airport which was built by the government was one of the incentives. The only time that airport has been relevant was in 2010 due to the earthquake in Haiti. Everything that arrived via de Toussaint Loverture International Airport was arriving there and then taken by land to Haiti, because the Haitian airport was closed due to the earthquake. Before and after then can lay on the runway and fall asleep. It will be a long while before an airplane lands there, much less take off. I remember I once had a shiny guide of Barceló Hotels and they had pictures of every resort + the Lina they had in the DR and there was a large aerial photo that covered 2 pages of a resort they built just south of Barahona right on the coast (they also had part of that photo on the cover of the guide.) Even from the air you can tell the sand was actually pebbles. Very nice light blue sea. I’ll let figure out why that hotel is no longer in their portfolio.