5. Bahía de las Águilas
Head to the Dominican Republic’s little-visited southwest coast and set a course for a deserted white-sand beach
When Columbus first arrived in what is now the Dominican Republic in 1492, he declared it to be ‘the fairest land under heaven’. The seafaring explorer never reached the country’s extreme southwest corner, but he really should have made the effort. The few who do so today find it remains blessedly isolated, its crescent bays virtually untouched by tourism.
The area’s trump card is the Bahía de las Águilas – or Eagles Bay – which appears on a map as nothing more than a coastal highway dead-end, near the border with Haiti. But as locals imaginatively tell it, the nature reserve resembles the outline of a seabird. The contours of the two promontories are its broad wings; the midway point between them, its pronounced beak. And along its feathered, white belly is one of country’s most remote, yet arguably most attractive beaches.
The fun way to reach this dumbfounding stretch of sand is to take a 15-minute motorboat from Cabo Rojo, a cluster of cabanas at the tip of one of the bird’s wings. From here, cruising southeast from the jetty, the coast begins to disintegrate as though slowly tumbling into the sea. The cliffs are pockmarked and broken, a series of bluffs covered in weathered shells and cactuses.
At the motorboat’s stern is Wellington Gómez, a stringy, twinkly-eyed captain who grew up living just beyond the beach curve. Surprisingly, Wellington is a modern-day caveman, having lived in a series of eroded fissures and rock grottoes since he was a child, only moving into a thatched beach hut five years ago. Before then, his family – and the 80-strong cave-dwelling community he was part of-would eke out a simple living from the seas as spear fishermen, returning to the caves each night to light candles in the gloom.
The bay still draws these local fishermen, who cast off in the shallows for lobster, conch and barracuda. Today the occasional visitor joins them, lured by talk of the preposterously blue seas. When clouds peek over the horizon, still the sea retains its turquoise sheen. ‘Even in the Caribbean this beach is special,’ says Wellington, slowing the boat in preparation for the first glimpse of the five-mile-long bay. ‘No stones, just sand, sand, sand.’
When Bahía de las Águilas’ comes into view it is bone-white. The boat slithers to a halt, disturbing a crab. Few footprints are another sign that day-trippers are as good as alone here. This is a beach that has largely been left to nature. The sounds are the tide and the papery flap of pelicans; the smells are salty and palm-scented.
At one end of the beach, a family picnics in the shade, having strung up a hammock. A pot-bellied man snoozes in the sunshine, while his children hunt for seashell souvenirs. With not a single shop or a shack to distract from it, the sea’s potency is enhanced. No-one can resist diving into the water, not even skipper Wellington. Stripping to his waist and leaping off the stern of his boat with a whooping splash, it’s a fitting homecoming for this most willing of castaways.