The DR was one of those places that we don’t know if we’d ever have enough time to get tired of exploring!

It did help that our first stop was the awesome Puerto Bahia Marina. The DR can be a challenge sometimes with all the requirements to check into the country having to do the usual customs and immigration but also checking in with the armada (police). Puerto Bahia Marina was a great stop as they have it all there so we docked in and easily got all the paperwork done! The facilities at the marina are incredible too: multiple pools, games room, themed activities for the kids, restaurants, mini supermarket and an easy car rental service. The staffs friendliness and helpfulness also helped us settle in fast but what made it also super special was how many boat families there were. The kids were always busy on playdates, birthdays and just non stop fun at the pool!

The location of the marina is also great as renting a car and driving to some epic locations was usually 30mins - 1 hour. We enjoyed the diversity of the DR and it was a great stop for provisioning too and by farrrr the cheapest Caribbean Island! We did want to spend as much time as possible in the Bahamas, and given we had a lot of ground to cover as the Bahamas themselves are over 400 nm long, so we only had 5 days in the DR before we were off. Having said this, we still had time to explore Samana, Las Terrenas, El Río Caño Frío and Cascada El Limon.