Cabarete & The North Coast

Pico Duarte Trekking

River Sports

1 week Caribbean Multi-Adventure Program

Local Community

Dominican Republic: Nonstop on the North Coast
Caribbean Travel & Life
December 2002
By Nelson Taylor

"Once the secret of windsurfers and a smattering of Europeans, the area around Cabarete offers up authentic culture and the thrill of adventure."

Merengue blaring from his speakers, my taxi driver swings out of the Puerto Plata International Airport and onto Calle Principale, the main thoroughfare skirting the Dominican Republic's Amber Coast. The road fronts the Atlantic shoreline for 200 miles, and from the Haitian border to the Samana´ Peninsula. Cars, oversized trucks, motorbikes and horses weave four lanes thick along this two-lane road. Small settlements, squat mercados and thatched bohios slap by the windows. Men idle on street corners, slumped in the shade on the seats of their scooters. Farther along the Principale, the ramshackle storefronts give way to lush, open fields that look like manicured golf course dotted with towering palms. To the south, foothills like roiling seas climb into silvery clouds.

Between coppices of trees and thick ground cover snaking over sand dunes, I get my first glimpse of the ocean not more than 100 yards from the road. It's immediately apparent that these are not the waveless, aquamarine Caribbean waters that grace the shores of the southern resort towns of Boca Chica, Bayahibe and Casa de Campo. Fueled by strong trade winds, the Atlantic Ocean, much like the northern coast itself, is wild. Waves crash against the shore and the predictable breezes power some of the best windsurfing in the world. Yet the beaches and the water sports aren't the only draw to this side of the island. Not far from the white strands, green hills merge into the Caribbean's highest mountains, four of which peak at over 10,000 feet.

After 20 white-knuckle minutes, we arrive at the town of Cabarete. Lining both sides of the Principale, it's a bustling, welcome oasis that seems to have achieved a perfect balance between raw local culture and European-influenced tourist amenities. The sunburned sect in bathing suits and tank tops fills the streets alongside mamasitas balancing buckets of fruit on their heads. With its inexpensive boutique hotels, flourishing international dining scene and outfitters offering everything from soft adventures to rigged mountaireering, Cabarete is one of the Dominican Republic's best bases for an active Caribbean vacation.

Let the Adventures Begin

I drop my bags at the Villa Tai´na hotel and make my way up the Principale through Cabarete's commercial district. Young children hawk shoeshines, a man rolls cigars in a storefront, an open-air French patisserie serves pan au chocolat and espresso next door to a bar and grill advertising wiener schnitzel and Bitburger beer. I catch fragments of conversations in Spanish, German and French amid the constant scratch and trill of merengue spilling from passing cars, souvenir shops and restaurants. Drivers of motorcycle taxis, called motoconchos, honk their horns looking for fares. A man hangs out the sliding side door of a private bus yelling "Sosu´a, Puerto Plata!"

I duck into the offices of Iguana Mama. Americans Chad and Jennifer Montgomery, members of Cabarete's sizeable expat population, recently purchased this decade-old outfitter that caters to adventure seekers.

"Cabarete is sophisticated enough to be livable and foreign enough to be exciting," says Chad. "And with the ocean so close to the mountains, we've got the best of both worlds."

Another big attraction for foreigners, he says, piquing my interest, is the real estate. Not only are the condos killer and the villas posh, he confides, but they are unbelievably cheap. Just as I'm about to ask how cheap, Robinson, a creamy-skinned Dominican with a toothy smile, steps in and says he's ready to take me, Elizabeth and Brandy - a mother and daughter on vacation from Ohio - on our sunset horseback ride.

We drive out to a roadside stable with rusty tin walls. I mount a well-worn saddle atop Ya´sica, a well-worn horse named after a local river. While Robinson secures the horse's bit, I confess to being a greenhorn. Fortunately, Brandy is an experienced rider and gives me some quick driving lessons as we parade down a scrub trail toward the beach. Once we hit the sand, Brandy kicks the flanks of her white mare. Ya´sica follows at a fast trot. After a few rough bounces, I manage to get into a little rhythm with my speed.

Square in the saddle, I lean forward, loosen the reins, and give her a prod along with my best cowboy "YA!" She perks up and soon we're flying full speed, galloping along the hardpack at the wayside of the Atlantic with cool water splashing up into my face. The wide beach is backed by overgrown dunes and sea grape trees, and sweeps shaped bays. There's little development. Every now and then we pass a collection of small resorts where topless women sun on loungers while men play volleyball, their beer bottles poking out of the sand. Offshore, windsurfers harness the fresh breeze and slice through the choppy seas at Mach speeds. Around the next corner, kiteboarders take the stage, their Day-Glo mini parachutes blazing back and forth across the sky's electric blue backdrop.

After about an hour I'm a little saddle sore. I head back to the hotel, two bright-yellow, stuccoed buildings, one facing the Principale and the other overlooking the pool and beach. It looks like an Andalucian mansion with a Spanish tile roof and white column detail. And while every beachfront room has a balcony, the lone penthouse - a no-brainer splurge at just $110 a night - has a sundeck that spans the length of the building. This is my own private above-the-trees perch.

Stairs lead to a lush courtyard with a pool. Just past that is Villa Tai´na's oval-shaped, tile-topped bar shaded beneath a palapa. I pull up a stool, order a bottle of Presidente and watch the staff from the windsurf center spray the sand off rows of 15-foot sails that look like giant butterfly wings.

Mama Juana and the Munchies

Brought back to life by the local brew, I head for the beach in search of sustenance. Upscale restaurants line its edges; tables sit in the sand and Christmas lights hang from the tops of palms. Eateries here run the gamut from rustic French to Northern Italian to Dominican fusion foods, and their de´cor is often stylish if not downright funky. The scene is teeming with young hipsters, couples strolling arm in arm and boisterous friends clustered around tables. Musicians roam the strip with guitars and maracas playing mellow bachatas to anyone with five pesos for a song.

Drawn by the packed house and the enticing aromas, I plant myself at the only open table at La Casita de Don Alfredo. I kick off my shoes, bury my toes in the cool sand and order a caipherinia and Langostinos di Papy. Lost in the sound of the sea, I'm startled when my waitress clunks down a hugh metal pan full of mini lobsters drenched in garlic, onions, butter and cream. The magic is in the sauce, and I sop up every drop with an entire basket of bread.

I've heard that the nightlife in Cabarete is as saucy as the food. The young and beautiful are known to close the bars at 3a.m. and still be up by 7a.m. to surf at Encuentro Beach. I start out at Lax, the hottest international nightspot around. Inside, every candlelit table is crowded with people knocking back shots and snacking on tapas and sushi - a scene more Manhattan than Dominican. I take the last open seat at the bar.

"Have you tried the Mama Juana?" asks a gray-haired man next to me. Andrejs and his wife, Ingrida, are from Sweden and have been vacationing in the D.R every summer for the last four years.

"You have to try one," says Ingrida as she orders three shots. I toss back the dirty brown elixir made from honey, red wine, dark rum and bush spices that locals believe to be medicinal. Andrejs orders three more, then it's my round.

"We've traveled all over the world," Ingrida says, "and this is the only place we keep coming back to." They fill me in on must-do adventures and restaurants I have to try. Mama Juana-ed to the gills, I admit that I don't know if I'll be able to keep up this pace for the next five days. "This is a place of extremes," Andrejs says,"and the key is balance."

During the following days I begin to understand. There are the warm still mornings and the afternoon gales, the low-lying ocean and the hills that rise into mountains, the go-go up time and the indolent down time. I find myself acclimating more and more to the pace. Every day I rise early to bike backcountry roads, hike through a national park or ride a horse over rocky roads that rarely see cars. After lunch I fall easily into a siesta, often on a beach chair, which gives me the energy to take an afternoon windsurfing lesson or blow around Cabarete's shopping district. Each evening, a new dining experience segues into another night of bar-hopping.

Canyon Climbing

With just a couple of days left, I scan the photos on the walls of Iguana Mama for my next adventure, finally deciding on a canyoneering trip called the 27 Waterfalls of Damajagua. Along with a group of eight people from around the globe, I'm driven past the sugarcane fields south of Puerto Plata. Before turning off the highway, we stop to pick up a local guide from a throng of orange-shirted men. Our trip leader, Adolfo, tells us that these freelance guides grew up on the river and know it intimately. The men say the river is high and that today we'll need two guides instead of one.

After an easy hike across rocky streams and over muddy jungle paths, we arrive at a body of water being filled by a set of waterfalls. We strip to our bathing suits, dive into the midnight blue, and play follow the leader. We approach the base of one of the 20-foot falls, a sheet of water rushing over its edge. Our guides, with unbelievable strength, nimbly climb the centuries-sculpted boulderways. They perch themselves strategically to assist our ascent, offering sure hands that hoist us up through the pouring froth until we've all successfully cleared the first waterfall. Again and again, we dive into cool, clear pools, swim through a surreal, labyrinthine world of tight canyons and river-carved caves, and then climb to the next level.

The ascent takes an hour. We rest for awhile at the top, then begin heading down. One after another, we fold our arms across our chests and then careen blindly down God's own water slide, exploding into the pool below. At each waterfall, there's a choice between rocketing down on our rumps or leaping from the cliffs into the deep water below. As we approach the end, our guides begin to show off, jumping from higher and higher spots, even climbing trees, to display their aeronautic abilities. At the final, deepest pool, Adolfo performs a double flip.

Fit for a King

At the suggestion of Andrejs and Ingrida, I make a reservation at the Castle Club. Located 20 minutes from Cabarete near the town of Jamao del Norte, the Castle Club is the home and restaurant of expat Americans Doug and Marguerite Beers. They've been building this 10,000-square-foot mansion for the last 14 years, serving gourmet meals for the last three. The home is a knockout: 34 open archways (there are no doors), floors made of stones from the bordering Arroyo Blanco River, 20-foot ceilings and a 360-degree view of the verdant foothills and the Atlantic beyond. Doug tells me he made most of the furniture, including long mahogany tables, wrought-iron chairs and amoeba-shaped wall sconces. "We couldn't live this way in the States," he says, "at least not in a place with these kinds of views."

Cocktail in hand, Marguerite tours me around the grounds, walking through her expansive herb and vegetable gardens and then to her hillside orchard with trees bearing oranges, bananas, avocados, mangos, figs and a cone-shaped fruit called pepino dulce. "We're not trained chefs," she says. "We both simply love to cook. The Dominican Republic is a place where you can do what makes you happy."

As we weave back toward the house, I hear a highwire mewling. "I forgot to tell you we have 12 goats," she says. Marguerite, with help from her flock, makes fresh goat cheese. While the cheese isn't on tonight's menu, most of the ingredients that make up our five-course meal of peanut-infused carrot soup, Thai-flavored cabbage salad, coconut sea bass, cilantro-jalapeno rice and cold lemon mousse come from the garden. As the evening winds down, bats dance in the air above the patio and I linger over espresso. Yes, I could definitely live like this.

Into the Heart of Callejon

On my last day in Cabarete, I catch a motoconcho to the neighborhood of Callejon de la Loma, a small, self-contained community in the hills. Aside from their various vibrant colors, the homes along the dusty main street look the same - 30-foot-by-20-foot clapboard shelters. Next to the one that is roughly painted pink, a woman in a matching apron picks guandulas (bean pods) from a stand of sidling trees. Children sit in the dirt at her bare feet playing with rocks. On the porch, a vulpine-faced, white-haired man weaves a saddle pad out of sun-dried palm leaves. Inside the open front door, a young woman sits in a high-backed chair, her hair being rolled up in curlers. In the countryside, it's common for four generations to live in the same simple dwelling.

I wander into El Tigre, an open-air restaurant. I order a Presidente and see that the daily specials board lists sancocho. In minutes, I'm devouring this popular stew made from several kinds of meat and vegetables served with freshly sliced avocado over rice. Draining the last of my beer, I overhear two men talking about a gallisticano. It's the word for a cockfighting arena. When they leave, I ask my waitress about it. "That way," she says in broken English. "Today."

The ragtag arena, set back from the road, is surrounded by chicken wire and covered with sheet metal. A plastic ring, 20 feet in diameter with padded, two-foot walls, occupies the center. Owners sit in the first row of seats around the ring with three more tiers behind them. Hours before the fights start, fast-talking man pull roosters, reds and grays, from burlap sacks and weigh them. The owners begin carefully attaching ankle spikes that look like thin, hooked fingernails. With honor and money on the line, they work with surgical precision.

I climb a ladder made of two-by-fours and thick tree branches. The flooring - rotted completely in some places - bows as I walk across it. Rusted barbed wire rises to the ceiling to keep us, the wild upper reaches, at bay.

Before I know it, the first fight of the afternoon is underway, the cocks flinging themselves wildly at each other. Much more interesting than the fighting is the betting. Men scream their wagers to each other across the room. Although I feel like Ernest Hemingway must have felt at his first bullfight in Pamplona during the 1920s - the only gringo in sight, drawn to a culture so distant from his own - I decide the sport is not for me and leave.

The sun low on the horizon, I catch a motoconcho back to Cabarete to cruise the Principale strip one last time, looking for pieces of this place I can take home. I stop in a music store for the Antony Santos bachata CD I feel I already know by heart and snap a photo of a man leading a mule loaded down with sacks of limones.

Then I notice a real estate office that has photos of a stunning three-bedroom, beachfront villa with a swimming pool. The price? Just $189,000. Maybe I don't have to go home after all..