[Global Entry]

I recently spent some time in the second largest city in the Dominican Republic, Santiago de los Caballeros (or traditionally, de los treinta caballeros, being named for the 30 fighting knights of Santiago). This report is a bit abbreviated in parts, as my stay wasn’t that long (in country for around 8 days between Santiago and the coast - see below), but there some perhaps useful tidbits that may help guys land on their feet and maximize their time a bit better.

As an overview, Santiago is basically in the center of the country - its at least ninety minutes to a beach in any direction. It stands as almost a mid-point on the highway between the capital, Santo Domingo, and Puerta Plata, which is one of the major beach destinations, filled with all inclusive resorts. Santiago is like neither of these cities, having its own quiet and calm character and personality.



Getting There and Around

Santiago has its own small international airport, one with perhaps 8-9 gates total, and flights mostly to the US on Jet Blue and Delta, though there was a flight to Providenciales leaving the day I was departing as well. Direct flights are available to Miami, New York and other destinations. I flew in, one way, from Vegas via Miami for 209 - so tickets are available on occasion quite inexpensively.


When you arrive to the airport, as in Santo Domingo, you’ll need to buy the tourist pass before you can be processed at immigration. Its ten dollars - when you come to the area for immigration, bear to your left, buy the pass, and then bounce back in the other direction - passport processing was a rubber stamp - but again, there were dogs in the airport for anyone who cares about that kind of thing. You pass through immigration, the non-existent customs inspection, and you’re outside.




Expect a taxi to cost a flat 20 USD to the center from the Santiago airport (some airports provide transfers as well, give a call and check if you’re staying somewhere decent). One can also fly into Puerto Plata and take a car to Santiago, cost will probably be close to 50USD (haggle on the price). Taxis around town shouldn't exceed 250 pesos for a somewhat longer trip, and 150-200 for a shortish one. If you’re paying more for a ride of less than 10-12 minutes you’re probably being overcharged. You can specify what you’ll pay when you get in - most cabs are sitting around waiting for fares, so its pretty easy to get a legitimate price.


Currency

USD are somewhat widely accepted, and enthusiastically. The Dominican peso was at 45/dollar, and exchanges at 50/dollar were often the case. Bank machines are plentiful in Santiago, though many add a 200 peso fee for withdrawals, so better to take your money out in sizable increments.

Prices

Like in other countries in latin america/caribbean, costs vary depending on what you want. Meals I had varied from a few dollars for rice/beans/salad to 20-30 dollars are finer restaurants. I ate one night at Pez Dorado, which with a glass of wine, and a two course meal was around 30. Decent but I wouldn't go out of your way. Noah, on the other hand, near the Monument, was about the same price and quite good. Worth a visit.


Hotels vary - the leading brand of hotel in the DR is Hodelpa, and they have three hotels in Santiago. I got a good rate for them at their Hodelpa Centro Plaza and Casino at about 75 per night for the first two nights of my trip, but then the rate increased to 150 per night and I moved to the Matum Casino, which is quite close to the monument, and which houses Tabu, a small disco (more later). The Hodelpa was significantly nicer than the Matum, cleaner, better service, both hotels include breakfast. However, with the high dominican tax on hotels, Matum was only round 68 per night. They’ve a pool as well, though not a whole lot of places to sit around it.

I don’t know if the Hodelpa would check ID’s for visitors, but Matum did - even when I listed my friend on the reservation, they still took the ID and held it. No additional charge though, at least doing it that way.

After a night at the Matum, I took my friend and we headed for the coast (more on that below).

Returning to Santiago a few days later, I decided to explore AirBnB as an option and I found one that was quite good. Conquistador joined me from Santo Domingo at this point - I’m not going to post the AirBnb on my thread of pre-screened rentals because: Canada, but if you’re repped/confirmable, I’ll let you know which one it was (can also provide good info for a fair priced driver should you want to hit the coast or just have a local taxi’s number). It wasn't super cheap, around the same price at Matum, but a multi-bedroom with pretty good wifi at a location, a reasonable length walk to both Levels/BT Mall and the Plaza International (as described below), that was near ideal. I’d easily give it four out of five stars, and with a landlord that stayed away but was eager to solve any problems.

Daygame
Having gone in the summer, the Universities were presumably not active. There are two malls, amongst the most significant in Santiago, within two blocks of each other. One is called Plaza International, and the other is Bella Terra. Neither is particularly big, and I’d say that PI is a bit higher end, but not tremendously so. BT has a few outdoor bars on the first floor and the club Levels on the fourth floor (see Nightgame). Going along with the general vibe of Santiago, both places seemed a bit sleepy during the day, and while Conq and his excellent Spanish were helpful, and he did number close a girl at BT, I didn't find daygame at the malls to be that promising. I wasn’t aggressive about it, though, I mostly just walked through the malls to kill time. My spoken spanish is passable at best (I write fairly decently), and that doesn't help for daygame. For what its worth, no approach was met with a blow out - consistent with my experiences in Santo Domingo, the girls are by and large polite, and at least appear interested. The only excuse I proffered is that I was looking to buy a house in PP or Santiago as an investment.

I think daygame in Santiago could be great near the universities and perhaps I’ll run some this fall.



You can see the Bella Terra Mall on this map. Two blocks east on the same road (Pablo Duarte) is the Plaza International. The Monument area is where the pointer is, and the area in tan, directly east of the Monument, is the one of the universities. Hotel Matum is covered by the picture of the Monument in the photo, and Hodelpa Centro Plaza is on Calle Mella to the left side of the map, south of Las Carreras - from one end of the map to the other is about ten minutes by taxi. I would strongly suggest finding a place in the vicinity of the Monument, to its slight north east or south east if possible. Slightly west is OK too, but less optimal.

Girls in Santiago tend to be slimmer and much more fair skinned than their counterparts in Santo Domingo. The picture below is an exaggeration, to a degree, but Id' say the general look of the girl on the right is Santiago, and on the left is Santo Domingo. Im not saying all Santo Domingo girls are heavy ogres, just that Santo Domingo definitely has more curvaceous and darker skinned women. I had several friends from Miami who were from Santiago, and were mixed DR/Lebanese and definitely match with this. You'll definitely see Lebanese looking people around Santiago, and may note their presence in the restaurant business.







Nightgame
This is where Santiago really impressed me. I hit two clubs, one before heading out to the beach and one afterwards. The first was Tabu, which i went to on a Tuesday night. It was quite full, and there were some nice 7-8 level girls, and even one or two that exceeded that. Music volume made it difficult to run any type of game with my poor spoken spanish, but it was clear that there were willing targets. Many unmixed and mixed groups of girls, and unfortunately very little dancing space. Still for a weekday it had a good crowd and Conq and I returned on Friday to a much smaller crowd, disappointingly, which gives the impression that different nights have different prime spots. Again to get to Tabu, walk into Hotel Matum and exit out right of the front desk (or go through the casino attached to the hotel).

The best nightspot I saw in Santiago, far and away, was Levels, on the fourth floor of the BT mall. We had tried to go there on Friday, but the BT mall had a fire in one of its restaurants and the whole mall was shut down for cleaning. By Saturday, Levels had reopened and we were down to give it a shot.

Conquistador winged me - I pulled a milf from LA Cupid and despite her online protestations about only being interested in something serious, after ignoring her for a few days whilst at the beach with another gal (a decent looking Haitian girl living in Santiago), on my return she agreed to join us and to bring a friend. Conquistador joined us as well, and we took a table at Levels (don’t wear a t-shirt, or presumable shorts or trainers, unless u want a hassle at the door).

At Levels, a table with a bottle of rum and all mixers/soft drinks was around 45 all in, and worth it. (I believe I heard Johnny Black would have been about double). The crowd was seventy percent women, many good to very good looking, and decently dressed short dominican dudes (slacks and dress shoes, with button down shirts). I didn't get a sense of really any hookers in the place either, except for one who was on a “date” with an older dude - hot girl who at one point got down on all fours on the floor and danced like a dog - very strange thing to see.

The quality of the crowd almost made me regret inviting the girls, and both Conquistador and I had our necks on swivel full time. I refocused myself on my date though, who wasn't drinking (but did get warmed up by my mediocre merengue skills) and we ended up pulling them both back to the apartment. There are late night pretty good street truck restaurants on major roads, though the pull-back didn't require any subterfuge. I was rather close to closing that night, and ultimately closed the same gal the next night anyway. Hat tip to Conquistador for canceling the taxi on night 1, I wasn't quick enough on the uptick to play that to my advantage, but anyway, it didn't matter. And Ms. Serious was quite, shall we say, pleasant and accommodating on both ends. Thirsty too

Sosua

During the middle of my week, I had a friend take a bus up from Santo Domingo where she lives. I wanted to check out the north shore. Im not one for all-inclusive resorts, and so Puerto Plata seemed less enticing. I know Sosua is full of bar girls, most of whom are haitian, but I figured that it would be fine going with a date, because (1) we could just ignore that aspect of Sosua, or (2) get one to join us (I worked this angle and it seemed feasible, actually, but never really developed, and also, the bar girls by and large were not attractive at all).

I booked into the PierGiorgio hotel (for two nights) which was on the coast near Sosua beach.




The hotel was comfortable, with a nice clean room, queen bed, very friendly service, a decent swimming pool, the requisite security guard with a shotgun outside, and ran around 75 per night all in, a modest buffet breakfast included.



Beautiful views of the coast from the rooms and from the outdoor restaurant, and a five minute walk to the main road. It was probably about the same length of time to walk to one of the two beaches, which was quite nice as well.








During the daytime, Sosua is sleepy and hot and somewhat quiet. Some tourists wandering around, but at least in August, not a whole lot of people. In certain areas, you’ll get shouted at to rent a moto or change money, but nothing aggressive in my experience and nothing a set of headphones doesn't cure.

Seems like a lot of scuba certification boats around, and I am told the snorkeling is good there as well, but I didn't go. You may be hassled regarding a glass bottom boat tour, which seems to involve squeezing way to many people onto a small boat with an outboard motor. Again, I passed.

At nighttime the main road fills up with dark skinned ladies of the evening, and the sexpats, mostly burned out looking dudes with some younger fit guys mixed in (perhaps there for the ocean sports ?). Police presence is somewhat substantial and keeps the order effectively. No danger/no real hassle experienced. Lots of moto taxis around as well, but we just walked.

We stayed out of the bar girl bars, and ate one night on main street at Sinatras, where they did a great grilled caribbean lobster (probably a pound and a half sized) for around 12 dollars.



Drinks are similarly priced to Santiago (around 2-3 dollars). Also on the main road, the Lazy Dog bar has good wifi and seems a good spot to dawdle and have an iced coffee or a beer. All local staff everywhere we visited was friendly.

I paid my driver, for a private ride in his 2013 Camry, 2500 pesos each way (he came back and picked us up Thursday) from/to Santiago. I’d had the gal call around a few other drivers, and prices varied up to around 3000 for Sosua (2500 for Puerto Plata, which is before Sosua on the main road).