Beautiful beaches of the Samana peninsula (Dominican Rep)

Samana peninsula is a small peninsula in the north-east of DR and is in particular known for extensive white sandy beaches. There are several touristy parts, including Las Terrenas and Las Galeras, and Samana is the mayor city. This part of the DR was recommended to me for the beautiful beaches and for being less touristy. There are no, at least I didn’t see, large hotels or major hotel chains in the area. 

Las Terrenas is especially famous among French tourists, and one can notice a large presence of French tourists, residents and establishments. The main beach is called Pueblo de los Pescadores, and two other beaches, Playa Bonita and Playa Coson. Pescadores has more tourist development with a tourist village and plenty of restaurants – especially charming at night. 

Playa Bonita, on the other hand, is much less developed beautiful beach lined with hotels.

Playa Coson is this large bay with off-white sand and beautifully cristaline blue sea. The beach is not very wide and the descent into the ocean is slow, so one needs to walk quite far. The best, though, was that the beach was completely deserted, I had the beach pretty much for myself. It was perfect and in my opinion the nicest beach in the whole region.

I stayed at Casa Coson hotel, because it was recommended by a colleague, and it didn’t disappoint in the slightest. When I arrived, I was almost the only guest, but by the end it filled up slightly. The hotel is directly on the beach, with a beautifully manicured garden, a pool, several lounge chairs and cabañas.

The hotel is run by a retired Franco-Italian couple, Yvan and Marzia, that worked in the fashion industry in Paris. They’ve been there for 16 years and make it one of the most pleasant getaways. Their staff are very helpful and pleasant. They prepare a nice breakfast on the terrace that was ideal to start your day.

They also have a restaurant that is usually open only as cafe during the day, but if you make a reservation they will also cook a surprise menu for you in the evening for $40. Totally worth it. Marzia, the Italian owner, brought with her the passion for cooking and thought her staff how to cook her way. I was the only guest that evening and very lucky, as the owners had their nephews there that day so they invited me to join them for dinner. The menu that night was a delicious Asian inspired tuna tartar to start with, tagliatelle with shrimp as the main course and chocolate mousse for dessert. Also, the piña colada Gisela prepared was delicious.

Fortunately, I rented the car as in the low season there is not much going on in Coson and the closest dinner options were in Playa Bonita or Pescadores. One evening I went for dinner to Hotel Atlantis in Playa Bonita, another lovely French establishment. For dinner I has a 2 fish carpaccio and a sea bass with Samana sauce and it was delicious, not to even mention the coconut flan for dessert. Not cheap at all, but a great experience.

On another night I went to explore Pescadores. There are several restaurants on the tourist walk and they look nice, but honestly I preferred having dinner in one of the beach shacks. The lady from Dulce Playa gave me 2 fried fish (I usually wouldn’t have fried food, but wanted to try it) with patacones. The whole meal was only RD$500 ($10) and it was delicious.

For lunch one day, I went just next door from Casa Coson to Restaurante Luis, a beach restaurant. As anywhere else, fresh fist was the main item on the menu, and here they opened a cooler box and asked me to chose the fish I wanted. This time I chose it grilled with rice and patacones on the side. Beautiful backdrop for lunch.

There are several other beaches in the Samana peninsula. I decided to explore Las Galeras, and in particular the El Rincón beach that was voted as one of the nicest beaches in the world. The road from Las Terrenas to Las Galeras is very basic and it takes at least 1.5 hours passing through Samana city. The beach in Las Galeras is also quite nice, but it seems to mostly be where you take boats to the other beaches like Rincón and Frontón. Initially, I thought that you could get to Rincón only by boat so I went to ask, but they wanted RD$3,000 ($60) for the trip. But then I found out that now you can get there by road as well. Actually most of the road now is unite new, apart from one small section. 

There’s a sandy beach road going along the Rincón beach. To the left there is the Caño Cristales stream and to the right there’s the main part of the beach. At the end, on the right, there are plenty of lounges to hire and a couple of restaurants.

The beach is breathtaking. While sand and blue water. the downside is that all the dark blue parts of the beach have seaweed on the bottom.

For lunch I went to Rubi, which was half-way on the road to the right. It was very nice and the grilled fish with coconut rice and patacones was delicious. I think this place looked the nicest compared to the other ones further down.

On the way back, I stopped in the town of Samana. There is a waterfront that is slightly sad and not really worth your time.

In the bay, in front of Samana, there is the famous Cayo Levantado, aka the Bacardi island. You can take a boat there from one of the luxury hotels that ‘owns’ the island, or also from other independent boatmen along the road east from Samana. Though I’m not sure how much they charge or if it’s safe.

Along the road between Las Terrenas and Samana there is also a waterfall called Salto el Limon, but I wan’t that interested and didn’t bother stopping, also I was quite late and taking the days easy.

All in all, the Samana peninsula offered one of the nicest beaches I’ve ever seen and provided a great escape from very busy spring in NYC. I will definitely go back and try to come out of the main season to avoid all the crowds, though I’m not sure if it ever gets very crowded.

Trip summary

On this trip, I landed on Wednesday at the Santo Domingo airport (SDQ) and rented a car to right away drive up north to the Samana peninsula. I spent 3 nights in Las Terrenas area, making a couple of trips in the region. On Saturday midday I headed back to Santo Domingo to spend a night there and fly back home on Sunday (see my post on Santo Domingo).

Trip made in June 2019.