La Isabela

[Matilda]

Here is a bit of information about La Isabela.

Situated on the north coast to the west of Puerto Plata and Luperon, La Isabela is the site of Columbus’s first permanent settlement in the Americas. It overlooks the Atlantic Ocean and is full of historic interest. There are the ruins of a warehouse, chapel, and rudimentary hospital as well as Columbus house and a cemetery which, in true Dominican style has one of the skeletons uncovered.
La Isabela dates back to 1494, when Columbus settled here with 1500 colonisers, but in 1500 it was abandoned due to violent hurricanes apparently. It wasn’t discovered until the 20th Century but Trujillo sent people to clean it up, and they obviously didn’t understand what he meant and, in their enthusiasm, bulldozed many of the architectural remains into the sea.
There is an interesting museum and also a little café and there are guides who take you around should you want them to. Just down the road is the first Catholic church in the Americas, well it is a new church built on the ruins of the old one, and has religious relics and paintings inside.
Well worth a trip out to see it, but take the 29 road from Luperon. When I went, I used the 29 but from the other direction, Los Hidalgos and that involves crossing a river. The locals said there was a bridge, and there is, but it has no middle to it so you have to drive across the river – which was very heart in mouth. However, there are motoconcho drivers there who drive across on their bikes so you can see how deep it gets! Does anyone know if the bridge is fixed now?

Matilda

 

[Derfish]

Here is a bit of information about La Isabela.

Situated on the north coast to the west of Puerto Plata and Luperon, La Isabela is the site of Columbus’s first permanent settlement in the Americas. It overlooks the Atlantic Ocean and is full of historic interest. There are the ruins of a warehouse, chapel, and rudimentary hospital as well as Columbus house and a cemetery which, in true Dominican style has one of the skeletons uncovered.
La Isabela dates back to 1494, when Columbus settled here with 1500 colonisers, but in 1500 it was abandoned due to violent hurricanes apparently. It wasn’t discovered until the 20th Century but Trujillo sent people to clean it up, and they obviously didn’t understand what he meant and, in their enthusiasm, bulldozed many of the architectural remains into the sea.
There is an interesting museum and also a little café and there are guides who take you around should you want them to. Just down the road is the first Catholic church in the Americas, well it is a new church built on the ruins of the old one, and has religious relics and paintings inside.
Well worth a trip out to see it, but take the 29 road from Luperon. When I went, I used the 29 but from the other direction, Los Hidalgos and that involves crossing a river. The locals said there was a bridge, and there is, but it has no middle to it so you have to drive across the river – which was very heart in mouth. However, there are motoconcho drivers there who drive across on their bikes so you can see how deep it gets! Does anyone know if the bridge is fixed now?

Matilda

Thank you, I've been there, taken Dominicans there that didn't know it existed. But what about the site near La Vega that the people here talk about about Colombus' first colony? I have never been there, but people in La Vega talk about it.
Derfish

 

[Matilda]

Concepción de La Vega was founded in 1494 by Christopher Columbus, thus being one of the first settlements in La Española Island. At first, it was a gold producing city, an activity that turned this city into one of the richest in the Dominican Republic. Sometime after, the sugar cane crops were started to be grown for the first time in the whole continent.
It gets its name from the valley in which it is located. Due to its huge prosperity, a church made of stones was soon built, in where Fray Pedro de Córdova began to fight for the natives’ rights.
But the city was being abandoned little by little because of the discovery of some mines nearby where the Spaniards who lived in La Vega moved to;
In 1562, a devastating earthquake destroyed the city, but some of its ruins are still there, in its original location; for example, those of the San Francisco Monastery, where Fray Bartolomé de las Casas gave his first mass. The following year the city was rebuilt in its actual location, on the riverside of the Camú River.

https://www.visitdominicanrepublic.org/concepcion-de-la-vega

Matilda