The resort is the easy part. The good days start at the gate.
What a buggy morning to the water caves costs, which Saona boat gets you a sandbar and not a queue, and whether Santo Domingo is worth the pre-dawn pickup. Reviews of the tours you can book from Punta Cana.
A sandbar, a buggy track, a cave and the old city.
Four bookings a first Punta Cana week hangs off. What each one costs, and what the people who took it say.
01The island dayCatamaran Boat to Saona Island with Buffet LunchCatamaran out to Saona, buffet on the sand, speedboat home across the natural pool. The day the photos come from.
02The mud dayAdventure Bundle: Monkeyland, Ziplines & Buggies Punta CanaMonkeyland, the zipline cables and a buggy through the cane in one run. Wear nothing you mind ruining.
03The cenote dayPunta Cana Scape Park and Blue Hole Full Day Admission TicketScape Park and the Hoyo Azul, a limestone sinkhole full of cold blue water. Bring shoes you can walk a trail in.
04The day off the beachFull-Day Santo Domingo City Tour from Punta CanaColonial Santo Domingo, two and a half hours west. The pickup is before dawn and it is still the trip people remember.
Every good Punta Cana day ends up on a boat.
The east coast has reef a few hundred metres out and a sandbar an hour south. Four kinds of day afloat, what it costs to board each one, and what you actually get.
★★★★★★★★★★ 4.4 · Catamaran Boat to Saona Island with Buffet Lunch
Saona Island daysCatamaran out, speedboat back, a sandbar in the middle.
Catamaran cruisesShade, a swim ladder, lunch and an open bar on deck.
Party boatsMusic from the jetty, a sandbar stop, drinks all day.
Snorkelling tripsReef and wreck stops in the flat water off Bávaro.
All 291 days on the water →
Six directions out of the Bávaro strip.
A sandbar in the Caribbean, a surf beach at the end of a buggy track, a resort coast with its own waterfall park, the first city Europe built in the Americas, a bay of mangrove caves and the port the Catalina boats leave from.
Punta Cana’s other coastline is red mud and cane road.
Every buggy and ATV day →
Ten minutes inland the tarmac gives out and the tracks run through sugar cane, a Taino cave full of cold water and a beach the tour buses cannot reach. Three ways to spend that morning.
Mud first, then the cold cave
The standard Punta Cana morning: a buggy convoy along the cane roads, a stop at a Taino water cave for a swim, then Macao beach before lunch. Back at the hotel by two.
Buggy, cable and a horse in one run
The bundles stack a zipline circuit and a short ride on top of the buggy track. More time in the van between stops, but one pickup covers the whole day.
One park, one wristband
Scape Park and the Bávaro parks sell an admission rather than a tour: ziplines, a cenote, a cave walk and a lagoon, done at your own speed with no minibus schedule.
The days out more people book than anything else in Punta Cana.
Every Punta Cana tour we have reviewed →Boats, buggies and one very long drive west. These carry more travellers than anything else on the coast, and each one earns the slot differently.
1
Adventure Bundle: Monkeyland, Ziplines & Buggies Punta Cana
Review of Punta Cana’s 9.5-hour bundle with 12 zip lines, Anamuya River buggies, Dominican lunch, and Monkeyland.
Read our review →
2
Punta Cana Zipline Adventure with Buggies and Horseback Riding
from $100
3
Full-Day Santo Domingo City Tour from Punta Cana
from $95
4
Catamaran Boat to Saona Island with Buffet Lunch
from $82
5
Monkeyland and Plantation Safari Tour from Punta Cana
from $80
6
Punta Cana Dune Buggy Adventure and Amazing Water Cave
from $61
7
Half-Day Adventure 4×4 ATV, Water Cave and Dominican Culture
from $64
8
4×4 Dominican Adventure with Chocolate and Coffee Tasting
from $59
Bávaro sells two kinds of boat, and they are not the same day.
One is a sandbar, a snorkel stop and a plate of grilled fish. The other is a sound system, an open bar from the jetty and a crowd that came to dance in waist-deep water. Book the wrong one and the day is a write-off.
Bávaro is flat and calm. Macao is neither.
The resort strip runs twenty kilometres of protected sand, which is why every hotel sits on it. Macao, an hour north by buggy, faces open Atlantic and has surf, a fish shack and no hotels at all.
Every beach day →
What a day out of Punta Cana actually costs.
Every tour on the site, grouped by price. A good number of the best days here cost less than the resort charges for dinner.
Half-day buggy runs, the water caves, a horseback hour on the sand and the airport car.
The full-day standards: Saona by catamaran, Santo Domingo, the combo adventure runs.
Private boats, fishing charters, Samaná in one very long day and the small-group Saona trips.
Three things the Dominican east coast has and nowhere else does.
Sand and palms exist all over the Caribbean. A sandbar you stand on a mile offshore, cold freshwater caves under the cane fields, and a swing on a bald hill above two lagoons do not.
Saona and the Piscina Natural
Saona is a protected island off the south coast, and the boats stop twice: once at a sandbar where the water stands waist-deep a mile from any land, and once on a beach of palms with lunch cooking under them. The catamaran takes two hours out with a bar on board; the speedboat brings you back in forty minutes. Almost every operator runs the same route, so the difference is the boat and the size of the group.
- 1Catamaran Boat to Saona Island with Buffet Lunch★★★★★★★★★★ 4.4 · 3,822 reviews
- 2Saona Island Day Trip From Punta Cana with Lunch and Open Bar★★★★★★★★★★ 4.5 · 2,709 reviews
- 3Small Group: Saona Island Full Day Tour★★★★★★★★★★ 5.0 · 1,263 reviews
The freshwater caves
The limestone under the east coast is riddled with sinkholes, and the rain that falls on the cane fields comes out of them cold and clear. Most buggy tours stop at one. The Taino carved faces into the walls of several long before anyone thought to sell tickets. Steps are cut down into the rock, the water sits around eighteen degrees, and it is the only part of the day you will not be covered in red dust.
- 1Punta Cana Dune Buggy Adventure and Amazing Water Cave★★★★★★★★★★ 4.5 · 3,411 reviews
- 2Half-Day Adventure 4×4 ATV, Water Cave and Dominican Culture★★★★★★★★★★ 4.5 · 3,394 reviews
- 3Half-Day Buggy Tour to Water Cave and Macao Beach★★★★★★★★★★ 4.5 · 2,587 reviews
Montaña Redonda
A single round hill rises out of flat coastal scrub near Miches, and from the top you can see the Redonda lagoon on one side and the Atlantic on the other. Somebody bolted swings, hammocks and a metal moon to the summit, and the whole thing became the most photographed spot on the coast. A 4x4 takes you up the last stretch; walking it in the middle of the day is a mistake.
- 1Half-Day Redonda Mountain and Esmeralda Coast from Punta Cana★★★★★★★★★★ 4.5 · 251 reviews
- 2Redonda Mountain & Emerald Coast Tour★★★★★★★★★★ 4.5 · 101 reviews
- 3Los Haitises Trip with Montaña Redonda Tour★★★★★★★★★★ 4.5 · 84 reviews
Four Punta Cana bookings that will not wait.
Most of this coast can be arranged at a hotel desk the night before. These four run on a whale season, one departure a day and a boat that fills in the morning wave.
- 01Samaná Whale Watching, Bacardi & Limon FallsThe humpbacks are in Samaná Bay from mid-January to late March. Outside those weeks nobody is running the boat.
- 02Catamaran Boat to Saona Island with Buffet LunchEvery Saona boat leaves Bayahibe in the same morning wave. Book late in high season and you are on whichever hull still has a seat.
- 03Full-Day Santo Domingo City Tour from Punta CanaIt is a two-and-a-half-hour drive each way, so the coach goes once a day and it goes in the dark. There is no afternoon option.
- 04Private Punta Cana Airport Transfers Hotels in Dominican RepublicThe resort strip is forty minutes from the terminal and the car is quoted per vehicle, not per head. Arranging it after you land is the expensive way.
Sargassum weeks, and the Atlantic days when Bávaro is not the answer.
The east-facing beaches take whatever the Atlantic sends. Some weeks between spring and autumn that is seaweed along the tideline; some afternoons it is a chop that keeps the small boats in. Both have the same answer: go inland. The caves are cold whatever the sea is doing, the cane roads do not care, and the cocoa is roasted under a roof.
Cocoa, cane rum and the Dominican countryside.
The cane fields the buggies cross are working farms, and half of them will feed you. Cocoa roasted and ground in front of you, coffee from the hills, a cigar rolled at the table and rum poured out of a barrel older than the resort.
By where the day takes you
By kind of day — deck, buggy, cave or road
Bávaro, the cane roads, Saona, Macao and one long drive west.
Cane countryThe newest Punta Cana tour reviews.
The rest of the new ones →
Half-Day Punta Cana Booze Party Cruise Experience
Read our review →
Punta Cana Buggy or ATV Adventure to Macao Beach and Taino Cave
Read our review →
SANTO DOMINGO/ City tour – the best Adventures & traditional
Read our review →
Saona Island Tour From Santo Domingo with Lunch, Open Bar, Pickup
Read our review →
Half-Day Tour 2-in-1, Redonda Mountain & Horseback Riding Tour in Macao Beach
Read our review →
Iberostar Dominicana – Round Trip Shuttle – Punta Cana Airport
Read our review →
