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La Capital has something for everyone, whether cobbled colonial-era streets steeped in history or state-of-the-art shopping malls. A patchwork of ancient and modern, the sprawling city lives life at a frantic pace, with gridlocked streets and other urban challenges. But there are quiet corners and shady plazas in the Zona Colonial, extensive parks offering fresh air, peace, and quiet, and the magnificent seaside Malecón, the favorite playground of Santo Domingo’s inhabitants (see Santo Domingo: The Zona Colonial).

The Three Eyes are a complex of cenotes or karst caves containing a subterranean mini-lagoon and stalactites and stalagmites. What appears to be four lakes is, in fact, a single one, taking different colors under different lights in four caverns. Steps lead steeply down to the first cave, from where walkways and a pulley-powered vessel take visitors through the underground system. Reputedly a Taino holy site, the place is surprisingly unspoilt despite large numbers of tourists, and the last of the “eyes” offers a spectacular natural landscape of tropical vegetation, sheer rock faces, and green-tinged water.

This technically impressive installation uses natural seawater to fill its various tanks, displaying an enormous and colorful range of tropical marine life. The pride of this place is Tamaury, an orphaned manatee, which was saved in 1995 after its mother was killed and now basks, apparently quite happily, in a large tank. A pleasant snack bar looks over the sea (see Acuario Nacional, Santo Domingo).

The easiest beach to reach from Santo Domingo is a boisterous and unpretentious place, verging on the raucous at weekends when tens of thousands of people escape from the capital to swim and listen to music. During the week it’s a lot quieter, but even then there’s no shortage of bars and restaurants. There are a number of hotels and guesthouses, too, offering good-value accommodation. The main draw is the beach (see Boca Chica Beach), a lovely strip of sand set in a protective bay with clear water.

This long strip of hotels and guesthouses set on the coast is not really a town as such, but an extended tourist enclave. Dating from the 1980s, when investors saw the potential of a new resort on the South Coast, it features mostly modern architecture and well-designed hotels. Most of the action revolves around the beaches, which range from the fairly rocky to the sublimely sandy. The latter are normally situated by the larger all-inclusive hotels, where different water sports are on offer.

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.

This town boasts some pretty houses from the turn of the 19th century in the gridiron area around the Parque Central, as well as a large, sprawling market area where you will see all manner of everyday and exotic produce. The town is famed for its baseball players, but its real attractions for visitors are the nearby luxury resort of Casa de Campo and the unique replica Tuscan hilltop village of Altos de Chavón.

Until the 1990s this was a quiet fishing village, with nothing much more than a few boats pulled up on the beach. But a wave of tourist development has changed its character, bringing more amenities and many more visitors. Even so, the pastel-colored wooden huts and gracious palm trees that line the beach still form a pretty scene, while the jetty is the starting point for boat trips to the offshore Isla Saona and Isla Catalina. Bayahibe is also well endowed with eating and drinking spots.

Adjacent to the well-trodden tourist track of Bayahibe and Playa Dominicus, this large expanse of protected natural wilderness covers over 100,000 acres of dry forest and palm-lined beaches. The terrain on the mainland peninsula is much tougher going and less popular with tourists, but offers the determined explorer a wealth of birdlife and tropical vegetation as well as glimpses of Taino art and culture.

The southeast tip of the country is everyone’s idea of a desert island idyll – a sweeping panorama of soft sand and gently swaying palm trees facing a turquoise sea. Mass tourism may have brought many thousands of visitors each year to the complexes of Punta Cana and Bávaro, but even the arrival of all-inclusive hotels has done little to affect the majesty of this coastline.