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Another starting point for a Pico Duarte ascent, this airy and laid-back mountain town provides a fascinating insight into everyday agricultural life. The surrounding countryside is dotted with coffee plantations and small farms, and the town itself acts as a trading center for local farmers. Apart from the fiesta patronal , staged every August, you can go on plenty of pleasant excursions to nearby rivers and swimming spots. The town also offers spectacular views over densely wooded hillsides and valleys, dotted with palm trees.

A surprisingly large town lying in a fertile valley to the south of the Cordillera Central, San Juan is a busy agricultural center, surrounded by banana plantations and coffee farms. Its proximity to the Haitian border has brought problems over the centuries as invading armies occupied and destroyed the town. Today’s architecture is modern, but there are also some turn-of-the-19th-century buildings around the Parque Central, where a permanent buzz of outdoor buying and selling makes for an interesting walk.

San Juan Bautista, or Saint John the Baptist, is revered in this folkloric religious festival.

A city’s whose fortunes have ebbed and flowed with world sugar prices, San Pedro was once the richest place in the country. Some of its Victorian buildings, such as the fire station and the mansions near the Parque Duarte, recall the boom years. But those times have gone – just a memory since San Pedro was battered by Hurricane Georges in 1998. Nowadays, the city produces world-class baseball players, some descended from the English-speaking migrants called cocolos, who settled on the island at the turn of the 19th century.

The city celebrates its patron saint, San Pedro Apóstol, with lots of music and dance.

Traditionally the gateway to the Samaná Peninsula, bustling Sánchez is where all vehicles turn off to cross the mountains over to Las Terrenas. It was an important place when a rail connection linked the port to the agricultural powerhouse of the Cibao Valley. But those days are long gone, and now the town is quietly going to seed, kept alive only by its fishing industry and the tourists. The old, prosperous times are visible in a handful of ornate but crumbling gingerbread-style mansions near the waterfront.