Travel within the Dominican Republic

March 3, 2009 8:26 AM

How much time / hassle does it take to get from Santiago to Sosúa (or Puerto Plata)?

We booked our flight to Santiago instead of the airport nearer where we'll be staying because it was somewhat cheaper, but now I'm thinking of some other island roads I've been on and am wondering if that was a horrible mistake. Should we rebook? Or do people do this often enough that there'll be easy and relatively fast transport from that airport to the coastal cities?

(I've never been to the DR before, and honestly don't know much about it; this is just supposed to be a beach weekend, not adventure travel.)

posted by ook to travel & transportation (3 comments total)

Maybe I should broaden the scope of the question, then: how are the roads in the DR, in general?
posted by ook at 9:10 AM on March 3

I was forced onto my first all-inclusive for a wedding a few years back. I wanted to see a bit of what the Dominican actually looked like, so I took a local bus for an hour+ over to the nearest big city. Roads were just fine. And it looks like your ride would be a similar distance. It's subjective though...
posted by gman at 11:43 AM on March 3

As a followup, on the offchance that it'll be useful to some future searcher: while we did fine renting a car and driving ourselves, it would have been much easier to have changed our flight to Puerto Plata.

The roads are in reasonably good condition, but traffic is pretty chaotic by US standards: dozens of motor scooters constantly zipping around you, many traffic lights and signs are apparently optional, and there's a serious lack of signage (finding the Santiago airport for the return trip was a real challenge -- it's a big city!) The drive took 3+ hours, including some getting-hopelessly-lost time on each end.

(That said, people were incredibly friendly, and happy to give detailed directions to a pair of clueless American tourists.)
posted by ook at 9:57 AM on April 16