The Rough Guide to Dominican Republic 2

This is a very thorough and helpful guide to the Dominican Republic. I used it in combination with the Lonely Planet guide and together they gave me everything I needed to know about the country, accommodations, eating, getting around the country, etc.

I have treveled in the DR and Haiti many times over the last 20 years doing volunteer work and this is by far the best guidebook I have run across! I read the customer reviews and noticed one that said "Good book, but lack of DR Reality". This book deals with off the beaten path and does it very well indeed! If one visits Santo Domingo or Puerto Plata and Sosua in the north, you will not encounter the country's great poverty. These are the cities of the elite and wealthy. How much poverty would one expect to find in Beverly Hills? The presidential palace and most diplomats live in Santo Domingo. There are squatter slums on the outskirts of even this great city. Where this guidebook excells is in taking you away from the big cities to the smaller towns and villages. If you want to know how to ride in the back of a pickup to adventure.. to visit Batays where sugarcane is harvested.. to see the dangerous frontier along the Hatian border, to see how common Dominicans live, to find the cheapest places to stay and to eat... This is the only book of its kind out there! I recommend the Lonely Planet guidebook along with this one for virtually all the info one would ever need on one's trip. In all fairness This is a book for the would be adventurer... the person unafrade to venture off the tourist paths. The other reader commented "We visited the DR and we don't know how they wrote 80% live in poverty..." Be prepared to confront extreme poverty outside the capital city and affluent areas. Hospitals are ill equipped and non staffed.. carry health supplies with you and get to Santa Domingo or Puerto Plata if possible if you need hospitalization. Many rural schools have closed because the teachers could not survive on their meager stipend. The travel becomes dangerous near the Haitian border as Dominican police are scarce and not able to do much there. Almost everywhere there are frequent blackouts.. most homes have a generator because this is a common problem.. dont count on electric shavers, hair dryers or other appliances and pack some candles in your bag when you venture on this route. BE PREPARED to see things other tourists never see! Dominicans are kind and generous and will go to extreme lengths to help you. DO LEARN some Spanish as in rural areas you will need to communicate and most English speakers are in Metro areas. Puerto Plata and Sosua in the north have large colonies of Jewish and German people so if you speak German you can find someone there. I hope my comments here are helpful to someone.. and don't be afrade to venture off the tourist path!

My husband and I used this book and the Lonely Planet guide on our 3 week trip to the DR. We traveled extremely cheap, taking the public transportation (mostly riding in the back of pickup trucks) all over the island. We found that the Rough Guide had more inexpensive hotels listed than the Lonely Planet. I think that Lonely Planet is so popular that once a hotel is published in an LP guide, demand goes up and prices do too. We also looked for the "Christopher Columbus" Taino cave drawings listed in the book, but even the locals couldn't find them! (We did get to visit 3 or 4 cool caves on our quest though, and while we were disappointed about not seeing the drawings we did enjoy using a palm frond torch to explore a bat-filled cave.)While this book is not one for pictures, check out the LP at the library to decide what sites to visit and take this one with you for information on what hotels to stay at.

If you're going to the Dominican Republic you've got to use this book. I brought four different books with me on my trip to the Dominican Republic and this was the one that I found was by far the most accurate. It had great, honest coverage of the all-inclusive hotels, comprehensive coverage of all the major tourism areas, like Santo Domingo's colonial district, Puerto Plata, Punta Cana, Cabarete etc. But what was most helpful were the terrific recommendations for sights to see that weren't in any other guidebook. My husband and I were able to explore Taino caves that have depictions of Christopher Columbus' three ships. These caves were in the middle of a wilderness national park and no other guide book even knew that they existed. Also by far the best restaurant and bar recommendations. Highly recommended.

If you must settle for only one guidebook on the Domincan Republic then you MUST settle on this one! Mr Harvey certainly covers all of the mainstream tourist destinations in great detail but what intrigued me is how he encourages readers to venture off the beaten path and then leads you down that path. Of course the information is the most current as the book was published within the last month. I have never had the pleasure of visiting the Dominican Republic but plan on doing so this summer. I feel fully confident that Mr Harvey's Rough Guide will get me there and back. Five stars indeed!