Since their own origin in history, Dominicans have clung to the pride they feel for their homeland. Quisqueya —that means the mother of all lands— is how the Taino aboriginals used to call this neck of the woods before it was known as La Hispaniola. “This is a country of first things,” they beam.

“Because our capital was the first city of the Americas, and because over here we also have the first cathedral of the New World, the first hospital and the first university. And it was here were the first Mass was ever held and the first Catholic priest was ordained in the western hemisphere.” Don’t speak of Christopher Columbus!

Directly or indirectly, the country is the holder of all these historic records -something the locals feel very proud of and pay permanent tribute to: a lovely park in Santo Domingo next to the Cathedral, the breathtaking Columbus Lighthouse in the outskirts, and a Grave Mausoleum where common wisdom believes —and virtually no one dares to say otherwise— it contains the genuine ashes of the Great Admiral in a classy funerary urn that authorities occasionally display in the month of October, the time of year when they officially celebrate a new anniversary of the arrival of the European sailor and his expedition members in this Caribbean paradise.

All this much runs in the veins of ordinary Dominicans, just as much as merengue and their desire to live, a mood that peaks in February during the carnival, a party that gathers over half a million people every year like a troupe of houris that dances endlessly on their own flaming hearts and swarm over the George Washington Avenue during a weeklong celebration of burning humanity.

People come and go as possessed by a supernatural furor, without noticing that a few evanescent sunrays begin to shine through in the horizon and the daybreak is closing in on a country of 18,719 square miles, ready to beat down on dozens of turquoise-water beaches, leak through the coconut palms and glow in the coralline sands, on the glass window panes of its vernacular cities, over the dewy valleys and the springs that sprout from the mountains.

Santo Domingo, the first city of the Americas The Dominican capital is blessed with a good seaport in the mouth of the Ozama River and in the sight of the Columbus Lighthouse. As a matter of fact, this is one of the Caribbean’s major cruise terminals, but the country’s main entry points are the Las Americas and Herrera international airports.

They stand just a 30-minute drive from the downtown area, so upon arriving in the city you start the first grand tour around this scorching burg of two million inhabitants whose historic center —declared World Cultural Heritage— is a must-see. Each and every detail is thought up to seduce the most demanding tourists.

Exquisite comfort, superb cuisine, heart-filling daytime and nightly choices. The seawall leads to the foundational core of Santo Domingo, a 500-plus-year-old cluster whose adobe walls and cobblestone streets have been witnesses to a longstanding history. Any legit tour must kick off down the Las Damas (The Dames) Street, a moniker that stems from its being the place of choice for Doña Maria de Toledo and her friends —the wife of Don Diego Columbus, the Great Admiral’s son who was the first viceroy of the Indies.

The façade of the colossal mansion of Don Rodrigo de Bastidas, the village’s excise officer and mayor, overlooks this street. Yet its true and most cherished treasure of all is the Holy Basilica and Cathedral of Our Lady of Santa Maria of Incarnation, the first one ever built in the Americas that stands tall as one most valuable colonial monument of Santo Domingo.

There’s one stop you cannot pass up a few minutes into the tour and that is the Columbus Quarterdeck, a colonial building from the early 16th century near the Ozama Fort that was home to the Viceroy’s Court. A multitude of restoration efforts saved it from a painful existence and today it harbors some of the most striking elements of the Dominican civil architecture of the colonial rule.

On that same route visitors make out the Hispanic Plaza’s grove, with the surroundings of the Captain General and Royal Audience palaces a few yards ahead, coupled with the fabulous Museums of Royal Shipyard whose excellent collection spans from the 16th to the 19th centuries in a detailed recount of the country’s colonial past. Back to square one, the best thing to do now is get lost in the old Santo Domingo Square as you feast eyes on its environment down the Count Walkway that leads to the Independence Park.

Visitors have now left behind the colonial neighborhood dotted with small pubs for sipping rum and tucking in Dominican sancocho —the traditional dish— as well as scores of street vendors and the city’s exciting corners full of mulatto girls that lock sights with the foreign travelers, flashing winks of tropical seduction and roguish jauntiness.

Here you’ll also find the great arches, the huge porches that provide shelter from the sweltering sun and the pouring rain, dozens of historic buildings teeming with legends that weave themselves into this characteristically motley medieval urbanism that shows off such isolated gems as churches and military facilities, like the Homage Tower, penciled in as one of the oldest fortresses still standing in the New World. The other Santo Domingo —the one you find outside the purest colonial core— paints a more heterogeneous and modern picture with a number of sightseeing spots that help tourists get a better view of this clear-cut, joyful and picturesque Caribbean city.

There are places tailor-made for the haute culture, like the National Theater or the Palace of Fine Arts, or others as miscellaneous and bustling as the Modelo Marketplace, a gift shop like no other that sells a variety of craftworks alongside with mangos, pineapples, mammies, loquats, cashew nuts and lots of other tropical fruits, as well as cookware, rocking chairs and handmade furniture built with local precious wood. The Botanical Garden, the Zoo, the National Aquarium, the North National Park, the South Viewpoint Park, the Redeeming Christ Cemetery, the East Viewpoint Park and the Columbus Lighthouse are some of the must-sees in the outskirts of the nation’s capital.

Beaches of dreams Either on the Atlantic coast or on the Caribbean side, the Dominican Republic’s shoreline flaunts its most cherished treasure: its beaches. There are jam-packed beaches, while others are exclusive, untapped and desolate. Teal-blue or turquoise-hued, white or golden sands, marked by steep or shallow slopes, decked out with fabulous high grounds and coral reefs, ideal for trekking or for the practice of scuba diving.

Puerto Plata, some 146 miles from Santo Domingo, is the best known of all. Locals also call it the Atlantic Bride or the Amber Coast, named after the deposits of this fossilized resin so widely used in the making of craftworks.

The beaches of Samana Bay —the mating grounds of humpbacked whales between the months of January and March— as well as Bavaro and Punta Cana, are the most sought-after foreshores. Hedged with cove grapes and coconut palms, they occupy the coastline that embraces the Atlantic Ocean and the Caribbean Sea, forming a 25-mile-long white strip that divides the jungle and the sea. Some of the top hotel chains from Europe and the rest of the world have built fancy lodgings and resorts that resemble full-fledged tourist cities sprinkled with marine solace and the lavish surrounding scenery where the nights are filled with merengue, areitos, pericos ripiaos, superb cuisine and tons of fun. For those who come looking for the most exclusive coves, the road to perfection points to the south.

The Cumayasa Road, past the Dulce River, takes visitors to the lovely Juan Dolio Beach, to La Romana, a spot famous for its spectacular environment and the Cajuiles golf course —one of the finest on the face of the earth— and the Casa de Campo resort, spruced up with amazing decorations by well-known Dominican designer Oscar de la Renta, which is considered the most elegant of all in the Caribbean.

Not far from there, visitors ought to make a stop at the medieval-style village of Altos de Chavon, hemmed in by peaks that round up a crag that overlooks the sea. This is an artistic colony that renowned painters, ceramists, sculptors and artisans call home. Santo Domingo is now much closer to the west, but first you’ll hit on Boca Chica, a place that delights visitors with its ivory-hued sands and the ambience of a genuine people’s beach, brimming with musicians, artisans, canape outlets and thatch-roofed bars.

Marked by its golden dawns and unforgettable sunsets, its beautiful beaches and sweet-smelling mountains, the Dominican Republic exists as a treasure island for you to relax in an undisturbed fashion, with no other plans in mind than being happy and feeling free like a modern Robinson Crusoe.