The Dominican Republic, from stem to stern

My Dominican daydreams began long before I boarded a plane for Santo Domingo. I dreamed of the crumbling stone Ciudad Colonial and the soft green unfurling of the mountainous countryside, the wood smoke drifting from tin roofs and the sea salt whipped off the break, the cacophony of dusty public bus yards and the bongo-heavy bachata spilling from tinny windowsill radios, the sweet hot oil of fried plantains and the pale malt of a cheap national lager.

My partner, Lois Parshley, and I had less than two weeks, and we wanted to see it all: town and country, highlands and coast, coffee farms and fisheries. And we wanted to prove Lonely Planet wrong. “The DR isn’t an especially great destination for shoestring travelers,” said the travel guide. It went on to highlight the country’s reputation for cheapo all-inclusives, which monopolize long stretches of coastline and offer airport-to-resort shuttle service, Brobdingnagian walls topped with concertina wire (to keep the jungle elements out and you in), meticulously raked white sand, and all the watery liquor your distended stomach can hold. Also: water aerobics, 4 p.m., west pool, BYO floatie. In short, gated fantasylands whose fantasies we wanted no part of.

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I had my eye instead on a small thumb of land, the Samana Peninsula, in the northeastern corner of the island. I imagined a tropical Maine: few roads, plenty of beach and blissful isolation. On a map, my finger made a northward traverse of the country, tracing what promised to be a study in opposites, from the sprawling, boisterous capital of Santo Domingo to a tiny dot at the peninsula’s farthest tip, the seaside town of Las Galeras.

The Zen shoestringer’s ethos, “Wherever you go, there you are — and take your sweet time getting there,” is well suited to Caribbean living. The Dominican Republic’s famous north coast is served by several regional airports, but flying into Santo Domingo — the first viable European settlement in the New World, founded in 1496 by Columbus’s younger brother Bartholomew — allows you to spend a day exploring the old Spanish city and observing the fault lines created by rapid economic development. Here, colonialism is still hard at work in the form of Ferragamo boutiques, BMW dealerships and McDonald’s franchises. (The project of postmodernity is apparently to recast the entire developing world in the image of South Florida.)

And while 500 years of earthquakes, hurricanes and battles for independence — from Spain, from France and, finally, in 1844, from Haiti — have exacted a toll on the urban architecture, small pockets of Santo Domingo retain their original quiet grandeur. Leafy cobblestone alleyways and flowering courtyards whisk you back several centuries. Pastel arcades line the streets, and wrought-iron balconies billow overheard.

Multilingual tour guides do a steady trade in the walled colonial quarter, or you can simply ruins-hop — reading plaques, chatting up guards and poking your head into half-closed doors. Dominicans like to say that their capital is a City of Firsts: the first cathedral in the New World, begun in 1512, with a 19th-century cannonball still lodged in its roof; the first university; the first hospital, sacked by the pirate Francis Drake in 1586, rebuilt and now fallen again to elegant decay; the first military fortress; the first royal palace; the first paved street, Calle de Las Damas, commissioned by Columbus fils, Diego, so that his wife could take walks without dirtying the hem of her dress.