Bayahibe

Columbus dropped anchor here in 1494, Puerto Rican fishermen founded the town in the middle of the 19th century. Now many of the local fishermen either moonlight or have totally given up their poles and nets to skipper the speed boats that bring tourists back from Isla Saona. The small fishing village has flourished in modern times by embracing tourism, and in town Italian immigrants have opened gelato stands and seafood restaurants. Some vestiges remain from earlier times, including the 1925 green wooden church on the waterfront, from where a picture of the Virgin Divine Shepherdess is carried at the front of the annual marine procession.

Nearby is the Bamboo Beach Bar, this one owned by a French woman. Crêpes anyone? Tour buses roll in and park near the jam of souvenir shops and Haitian art vendors. On a side street, on the way to the new Bayahibe, a sprawl of attractive, low-rise apartments and duplexes rented by hotel executives and long-term snowbirds, is the Clinica Rural Bayahibe that Sunscape Casa del Mar "adopted" by cleaning, painting, and stocking it with medical supplies. And so Bayahibe village grows, an old-fashioned colmado next door to a dive shop, a small hotel here and there. As one dirt road after another is paved, the town grows less like a village. Around its periphery are nearly a half-dozen, densely populated all-inclusive resorts.

The small village of Bayahibe is about 2 km down a small road from Highway 3; signage is good; just watch for the water tower and then turn. A large parking lot on the waterfront is where buses park. Most of the resorts are on Playa Dominicus, just outside of town.