Welcome ! - The north coast - Highway

The north coast highway is perfect for beach hopping, town shopping. One of the most fascinating vacations you could ever hope for begins when you fly into Puerto Plata International Airport, rent a car, pull out of the airport and just take off, go bopping from place to place along the northern coast of the Dominican Republic. You find yourself cruising along a well-maintained, two-lane highway that follows the coast alongside spectacular beaches, through typical Dominican villages in and out of breathtaking, ever-changing tropical countryside. You stop at a beach here, explore a Dominican town there and otherwise take your time checking out whatever catches your fancy.

The best thing about exploring this wilderness highway is that you're not just stuck with wilderness. The road runs from oasis to oasis of civilization. You can stop for a lobster lunch in one town, then head down the road for an hour or so and find a quaint little hotel with a neat bar on a good beach. Maybe you'll meet some people whose company you enjoy and decide to hang out for a few days. Once you've had enough, you can move on to the next place.

This journey is made all that much more colourful by the collection of offbeat foreigners who have taken up residence along this coastline. They herald from places like Vienna, Amsterdam, Sicily or Montreal and they run restaurants and bars and b&b's. They organize activities and ways to discover unusual and fascinating things hidden away in the mountains and along the beaches. They take you mountain biking, cave exploring, white water rafting, whale watching and otherwise live out their passions by making it possible for visitors to experience them too.

Quoted from POP report, written by Tim Hall.