One of the questions people have when visiting a foreign country is how to access their money. Should you bring cash, travelers checks, or rely on ATMs? Can you pay for things by credit card? Where can you use Travelers Checks? Can I pay in US Dollars? How do you exchange foreign money? All important questions that can greatly affect your vacation.

Travelers Checks: While it might be good to have some, very few places accept traveler’s checks in the DR. That means you’re going to have to get them cashed and converted. There are occasional money exchange locations that will take travelers Checks but most will not. Likely you will have to go to a bank and get them cashed and converted. That is a bit of a hassle.
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During one of our beach vacations we stumbled upon a rather interesting sight. I bet you didn’t know there is a Wal-Mart in the DR! Well, it’s true (sort of), and we have pictures for proof. Now don’t expect the usual array of household items, electronic, automotive, garden and other items we’ve all come to know and expect while shopping at this retail giant. And the prices here were not exactly what I would call “mark down”. The DR Wal-Mart is a little more … well let’s say “Local”.

Ok, it’s probably not an official retail store but we did find it rather entertaining. And if you squint your eyes well enough so you block out the rest of the surroundings and only see the sign, you can almost get that nostalgic feeling with this little taste of back home (well, almost).

Dominican Republic beauty pageant contestants – Miss DR
The new Miss Dominican republic will be crowned tonight from a group or 36 candidates.
A large number of Dominican Republic provinces are represented including: (more…)

Normally this is where I would give a review of a Hotel after staying in it. But with the Residence Corte del Mar in Las Terrenas that is going to be a little difficult. Even though we had reservations we didn’t end up staying there that night.

We had planned an overnight stay with a small group of friends and family and thought this would be a good time to try out one of the larger apartment style accommodations you often find in the Dominican Republic. This time we chose a 3 room apartment with a kitchen where we would heat up several of our meals that we had pre-made. There were several different Hotels to choose from but the Corte del Mar (Sea Court in English) was close to the section of beach we liked, had nice grounds and a pool, and had a good price.

Reservations at Residence Corte del Mar

The reservation counter didn’t have a person that speaks English (not uncommon) so it was necessary to speak Spanish (no problem, my wife is fluent) but this is something to consider when making reservations here. On that note though, Las Terrenas seems to have a very large Italian population, many of the business owners seem to be Italian and most menus include English, Italian, Spanish and sometimes other languages, so if you speak Italian you might have that as an option too.

So, reservations were made. The person we talked to at Residence Corte del Mar said they have no way to take credit cards over the internet or by phone for the deposit, but they said they would send us some instructions on how we could send a deposit if we wanted and took our email address to send the instructions to. The email never arrived but we were not too concerned, the deposit was optional and most of the Hotels we have stayed at here don’t take credit cards, so except for sending by mail (which we have found can take up to 6 months to arrive at it’s destination), there is no way to send a deposit.
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