When considering the Dominican Republic, most people think beautiful tropical beaches, palm trees, luxury beach resorts and beautiful oceans views. While all of that is true there is another side to the Dominican Republic, The Mountains! Don’t get me wrong, we’re not talking about the Alps here, but the 525 foot rise in elevation makes for a whole new experience, and the Jarabacoa River Club is a great place to experience it.

The Jarabacoa River Club sits on both sides of the “Rio Yaque del Norte”. The two sections of the club are adjoined by a rope bridge. Small and large swimming pools are scattered around on both sides of the river overlooking the valley and river below. Likewise there are patios, eating locations and clubhouses on both sides giving many unique vistas of the Valley.

Jarabacoa Excursions for Eco-Tourists

The Jarabacoa River Club makes for an excellent location to set out on the many excursions available in the Jarabacoa area.

• One of the favorites is the river rafting excursion on the Yaque River that winds down below the club. The price for the rafting excursions is usually about 1,400 pesos per person.
• Quads and mountain buggies (more…)

Those of us living in the interior parts of the DR can’t always get to a beach when we want to cool off on a hot summer day in the Caribbean. That’s where some of the pools come in handy. This week our group decided to visit the Casa Club pool in La Vega, Dominican Republic.

The Casa Club is actually a pretty big place with a large Multipurpose room that can fit about 2000 people, at least 2 glass walled areas sectioned off for smaller weddings and meetings and events, a smaller private bar area located below the main club area and even 15 Villas that can be rented in addition to the pool area.

For this trip we were just looking for the pool. The pool area was clean and well maintained There were bathrooms nearby and of course an “in-pool” bar where you can sit on the concrete “bar Stools” in the water and relax while having a drink. The bar appeared to open up at about 4pm. 4pm was also the time that things started to get far more active. When you check out the videos below you will see a marked difference between the first video which was pre-4pm and what the pool looks like rather soon after 4pm. If you are looking for a calmer relaxing time, you might want to call ahead and ask how packed the pool usually is on the day and time you plan on going.

The pool was well designed for families. There are three separate areas (all basically part of the same pool). The top section (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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It gets hot in the DR and well, you’re not always near a beach to cool off. One of the great ways to get around that minor problem is the Kaskada Water Park (Kaskada Aqua Park) in  Santiago.

Pools: There are two main swimming pools, one in front of the grandstand and the other attached to one of the bars. Both are good for lounging around and taking a swim. One of them had a low and a high platform to dive from.

Water Slides: There were 6 water slides. Three that required tubes and three that did not. (more…)