Barahona

Barahona is a noisy, smoky city; it's the least cosmopolitan of the country's mid-size metropolises, yet it's also a college town with two centers of higher learning, UCATEBA (Universidad Catolica y Tecnologica de Barahona) and the Barahona campus of the UASD (Universidad Autonoma de Santo Domingo). There's a Malecón (seafront promenade), which comes alive on the weekends and where you can find some of the more popular Dominican seafood restaurants. The colorful and lively market, which is open daily—even on Sunday—is a good photo opportunity and you'll be able to meet the locals.

The primary mode of transportation is the motor scooter or motorcycle, and there's an eternal buzz from them, which escalates on Friday nights when everyone in the entire region seems to come into town to party. Victorian houses give Barahona a little charm, and there's a lovely central park, but some of the streets are still unpaved. A relatively young city in a country where Christopher Columbus's family were founders, Barahona was founded in 1802 by Haitian General François-Dominique Toussaint Louverture, an important leader of the Haitian revolution.