In the Dominican Republic, if you don’t have your own bikes, you basically travel with two means of transport: “moto(concho)” are motorcyclists with orange safety vests, who will speed you through the city if you get behind them. Fear of contact is a hindrance.

Then there are “guaguas“, intercity buses that take you from place to place. These are mostly broken old minivans that drive through town at walking speed with the door open and yell out their destination and give spontaneous people the opportunity to jump in quickly.

You can also bang on the metal of the car or yell to announce that you want to get out now. Then you hand the driver some money and that’s it. Here, too, one must have no fear of contact. Nobody is left behind. And if some people have to sit on the bonnet… After a few days we take a Guagua from Puerto Plata to Las Terrenas. The city is the entry point to the Samana Peninsula, and there we drive to the end, to Las Galeras. However, with a small stopover at a wonderful waterfall.

We check into a small accommodation in El Limón and continue on our way. A motoconcho will drop us off at the side of the road to get through the jungle to the well-known waterfall. Our waterproof sandals reach their limits in the mud of the forest.

It’s an arduous march. It’s hot and muggy.

The path is sometimes not clearly recognizable. In the end, however, we reach the longed-for pool of water. The light is incredibly beautiful right now. It looks like paradise. And apart from us, there are hardly any people here. It gives us the opportunity for an intimate bath and the private pleasure of being able to enjoy paradise to ourselves.

Sometimes we even have to wade through rivers in the jungle to get to our destination. At least someone smart hung up a rope so we still feel a little right.

In between, a couple of boys come who daringly climb up the waterfall and then jump down.

We can hardly get enough of this idyll, but at some point it’s time to go again before it gets dark. It happens very quickly here.

The next day we will go a little further to the end of the Samaná Peninsula, to the small town of Las Galeras.