DR on the DL: Sniffing out a Caribbean hideaway’s hush-hush hot spots

From car trunk speakers thumping merengue, to marketeers hawking fresh mofongo, Dominicans have many talents — spoiler alert: quietude ain’t one of them.

That is, however, until you ask about their secret beaches — then a silence washes across their vocal cords like so much seaweed upon their shores.

Of course, quisqueyanos quickly find their words and freely bloviate about Punta Cana, La Romana, Puerto Plata. These are the tourist traps. These are the ones meant to sunburn the likes of Drake and Jake Gyllenhaal.

Then there are what locals dare only murmur about in the back corner of a colmado: the DR’s Seven Hidden Beaches, accessed only by hiking (you boat it = you’ve cheated; you horseback it = you’ve hacked it). Their names are probably meaningful if you passed Spanish I: Playa del Amor, Playa el Ermitaño, Playas Colorada 1, Colorada 2, Playa Escondida, Playa Caletón and La Playita. (You get, at least, the “playa” part.)

So, soldier: Can you handle the secrets of Hispaniola’s better half? Even if it’s a covert SPF-basted, Presidente brewski-armed black op across 1.8 miles of cranky coastline, possibly requiring a trashy beach read break along the six-hour walk?

Good, then your first order is to check into HQ.

The eight-villa, 35-acre Ocama retreat — which started as an AirBnB back in November 2023 (when the villas were first finished being built) but didn’t open as a resort with a 24/7 concierge and commercial kitchen until February 2025 — overlooks Rincón Bay on the tranquil northeastern Samaná Peninsula and is surrounded entirely by lush forestry save for the entry gate. Staff will arrange the journey (also zip-line, sailing, birding, whale-watching, ATV and city excursions).

While beaches and coves, not to mention hammocks sturdy enough upon which to horizontally drink coconut booze, are totally public, the best are hard to reach. And they’re sparsely, if at all, populated. But you shall reach them with the help of a freshly bespoke walking stick and a guide like Joel Nicolás Paredes, of Exotic Samaná, who macheted one based on height and frailty. Mine, not the tree’s. It came in mighty handily when mossy, up-and-downing crags paved the only way forward.

The Easter egg to keep an eye out for is the mysterious “blue house” along the way. Outside, a crew of two proprietors offered up coffee, tea and trinkets, for minimal coinage.

If your Right Guard is starting to go wrong, your water bottle’s needle on E and your ankles are a-crankling, there is literally a light at the end of a tunnel: a natural skylight deep inside Cuevo de Duarte, a cave named for the Dominican Republic’s founding father, Juan Pablo Duarte, right before the end.

You hear those little mouse squeaks? The good news is, they’re not! Bad news, if you insist, they’re from bats flipping and flapping above. They’re not the vampiric type so keep it together and use your best inside voicery, mind the stalactites and just appreciate the cooling darkness. And maybe don’t put the phone camera in night vision mode. Being blind as a bat is the meta.

Once on the other side at La Playita, a dip into a piña colada before heading to Caño Frío is next. If you’re salty about salt, you’ll love this sodium-free, mega-mangroved river fed by fresh underwater springs, which fearlessly goal-line stands against the saline Caribbean Sea. Expect kids with inflatable pelican floaties to mingle here with plenty of dembow blasting through the trees.

The hardest part now? Keeping the secret. Whoops.  

Perks in the lurk

Gutsy move

DR-born and -bred Fierro Pérez Castillo is Ocama’s new executive chef bringing a little bit French, a little bit Asian and a lot bit Dominican flare to his fare, happily serving it to your room or at the common and thatch-roofed area dubbed the Kai Pavilion. Chef Castillo is an alum of Meliá Hotels, Gran Sirenis and MSC Cruises, so we dare you not to enjoy his shrimp and nachos.

On the horizon

By law, all of DR’s beaches are public. But Ocama’s sneaky little slice of Rincón Bay, Playa del Amor, is de facto all yours. A fun fact about its sands: Consider its wayward seaweed like Voldemort — it shall not be named. (Psst, it’s sargassum.) When at sea, all communal and innocuous, it almost looks like the floating golf green at Idaho’s Coeur d’Alene Resort, were it unsprinklered. When it comes ashore and dies alone, though, it turns black and smells like a corpse.

Staffers here properly bury it, which is great news for all and means the imminent opening of a permanent beach bar is a go this year (as of now, you can makeshift one with Ocama’s beach tables and chairs). 

Highly rated

Ocama’s multi-level and kitchened villas come in one-, two- and three-bedroom flavors, all with private plunge pools (you’ll have to get into a donnybrook over which has one of the new soaking tubs). Just mind their steep and rail-less marble stairways as they can make for a free-climb worthy of a Netflix special — especially if you’re a few Barcelós in (from $970 per night).