We had such a great time birding in the Lesser Antilles with Ryan Chenery of Birding the Islands that we asked him to help us plan an “escape the election” trip – basically “vote and flee the country”. Ryan and wife Alex came up with an itinerary that would take us to both the Dominican Republic and Puerto Rico in search of Greater Antillean endemics.
To skip the narrative and just look at photos – including Buddy! – click here. Click any photo below to view a larger version.
We were actually in sunny southern California first so Liza could drop off her citizenship application package at the Croatian consulate. With that taken care of, not to mention visiting with family and going to a tailgate on the USC campus, we drove back to Phoenix, parked, and flew out to Santo Domingo, connecting in Miami. We arrived without incident, the only problem being too early to check in to the hotel, so we killed a few hours walking in the neighborhood of the hotel in the Colonial zone. We had lunch at a little place along one side of Parque Colón (named for Christopher Columbus), enjoyed the enterprising street musicians providing live music, and visited the adjacent cathedral.
The cathedral, full name Catedral de Santa Maria la Menor, is the oldest existing cathedral in the western hemisphere, built mostly between 1521 and 1555. Santo Domingo can argue with Mexico City over who was really first, depending on when it started vs finished, but Mexico City’s was destroyed in 1573, and this one is still standing. Construction took long enough that the arches are Romanesque, the vault Gothic, and the ornamentation Baroque.
The cathedral is adjacent to the Parque Colón, a leafy plaza sporting a big statue of Christopher Columbus. He and his family figure prominently in local history, and history is important for tourism, so he seems not to be quite as reviled as he is in the US.
We had two birding days out of Santo Domingo with guide Manny Jimenez (whose own company is called Explora), first visiting Los Haitises National Park, and the next day the Botanical Gardens. From there we continued on to Barahona, in the southwest, where Manny dropped us off at the Hotel El Quemaito overlooking a lovely beach.
The following morning our guide for the next few days, Efrain, picked us up and we headed off to the mountains of the southwestern Dominican Republic, the Sierra de Bahoruco. We ventured up to the Cachote cloud forest. Nearby was the mine where the gemstone Larimar originates. Thereafter, we stayed at apartments in Duverge for two nights as we explored the western side of the Sierra de Bahoruco. We were told that the apartment was pretty basic, which turned out to mean no hot water, but it was comfortable enough with A/C in the bedroom we stayed in. (There was a coffee maker, but no coffee … and we had stopped at a super market for lunch on the way in, if I had known I would have bought some instant … too bad.)
We had a 3 AM wakeup one morning to get picked up by Efrain, meeting extra guide Rafael at 4 AM in Puerto Escondido. We changed vehicles and Rafael drove us up to the Zapoten section of the Parque Nacional Sierra de Bahoruco. We thought the road the first full day was bad but this one took the prize… seemed more like a rocky creek bed than a road, and we probably never went over 10 mph. Efrain advised that we bring pillows from the apartment and we needed them! Rafael certainly knew what he was doing, hats off to him. The drive was worth it as it got us up to higher elevation – maybe just short of 5000 ft, in a pine forest.
We finished up our time in the southwest with a visit to Lake Enriquillo, below sea level… hot, humid (although still not Amazon humid, pretty tolerable actually), and lots of mosquitoes. But also some birds and iguanas!
On the way back to Santo Domingo, we stopped in Barahona at a roadside gift shop in search of Larimar. It is a mineral called blue pectolite that is a beautiful opaque gemstone with varying shades of azure blue and white. While pectolite can be found in different locations around the world, only the blue is found in the Dominican Republic. There is currently only one mine in the southwest, which we could see in the distance as we were on the road. We had seen some stores in Santo Domingo, with some clearly tourist prices; the shop in Barahona was more modest, and we picked up a pair of earrings.
Our free day in Santo Domingo we did most of a self guided walking tour in the Zona Colonial, visiting the ruins of the Hospital de San Nicolás de Bari (where the Hispaniolan Parakeets roost), the Iglesia de las Mercedes, and the Puerta del Conde. But the heat did us in and after grabbing some Coke “sin azucar” in the supermarket, we escaped into the Larimar museum. For a very nominal fee we saw the exhibits in air conditioned comfort… we were going to visit anyway but it was certainly nice to cool down. Of course they had a shop with a little more variety, so Liza got another pair of earrings… more expensive than Barahona for sure, but the average cost was good. 🙂
After lunch we finished up what we wanted of the walking tour, going past the Fortaleza Ozama and the Panteón de la Patria, before having a siesta at the hotel. For dinner we popped up the street to a pizza place for some takeout – quite good and just enough.
We got the flight check-in info for our flight to San Juan, Puerto Rico from Alex Chenery and were able to check in online, surprisingly. Our pickup was set the next morning for 9:00, we needed to be at the airport by 11:40, and Manny of Explora said it would be a little tight… so we expected horrendous traffic, some of which we saw when we arrived a week earlier. Lo and behold, it only took 30-35 minutes to get to the airport, at which point we remembered aha! It’s a holiday! Constitution Day! So we were at the airport with plenty of time to kill, tipped the driver, and dumped the rest of our small change at Starbucks (charging the balance).
In Puerto Rico we were met by driver Manolo and our guide for the next few days, Hilda. We stayed in Luquillo on the beach, which in the spring would be great for seeing sea turtles come ashore. The plan was mostly to bird in El Yunque National Forest, but our good luck with the weather ran out the few days we were there, lots of rain. The forest had already had a lot of rain before we arrived, and the extra rain made the slopes prone to landslides. Whether or not one could drive in was subject to change at any moment, and we did see a couple of raging waterfalls. (In fact the day after we flew home, we saw there had been a major landslide and a tree fall across the main road.) Unfortunately the rain meant the birding was a little difficult, but still we managed to see some good birds.
We flew back to Phoenix from San Juan via Miami; the nice thing about PR being a territory is that it was a domestic flight, so we had already cleared customs just getting there. A lot easier than doing customs, even with Global Entry, in Miami.
Wrapping up, the trip was a fun escape. We generally avoided television, and even when on and showing election news, at least we were spared the political ads. We enjoyed the hotel in Santo Domingo – we were happy to be in the colonial zone and not one of the high-rise beach hotels. The hotel in Luquillo was a nice little beachside inn within easy walking distance of a number of nice restaurants.
The food didn’t disappoint; we had plenty of opportunities for seafood (including octopus), and enjoyed mofongo – the classic is a dish made of fried plantains, mashed and mixed with garlic paste and chicharrón (crispy pork skin) – in both the Dominican Republic and in Puerto Rico. Robert had a trifongo one night, which is like a mofongo but with the addition of green and sweet plantains. We also had goat dishes a couple of times. Portions were generally quite generous, so we ate a lot more than we really needed.
Santo Domingo’s colonial zone had many restaurants; we went to two of the recommended, Buche Perico and El Búho. Neither looked like much from the outside, in fact we thought Buche Perico was closed until we tried the door, but both opened up into lovely spaces with big covered courtyards. But have to say the food was very good outside the cities as well, including the too large pizza in Duverge, and the octopus tacos in Luquillo. In a few places also we even found German non-alcoholic beer, something that is more difficult to find in the US.
Hotels
- Hodelpa Caribbean Colonial, Santo Domingo, DR
- Hotel El Quemaita, Barahona, DR
- Ramada Apartments, Duverge, DR
- Luquillo Sunrise Beach Inn, Luquillo, PR
- Casa Wilson Inn, San Juan, PR
Restaurants
- Buche Perico, Santo Domingo
- El Búho Eatery, Santo Domingo
- Ramada, Duverge
- La Fonda, Luquillo
- Simple Food, Luquillo
- Boardrider’s Surf Bar and Grill, Luquillo
- Luquillo Beach Bakery, Luquillo
- Cayo Caribe, San Juan
© Liza and Robert Weissler aves.org 2000-2026, licensed under the
Creative Commons Attribution ShareAlike 4.0 International License.