Your resort is lovely. The good stuff is 20 minutes past the gate.
Which buggy tour actually reaches Macao Beach. What the Saona catamaran costs once lunch and the open bar are in. Whether the airport transfer is worth booking before you land. Every tour you can book in Punta Cana, reviewed.
Four bookings a Punta Cana week is usually built around.
A morning in the dust, a day on the water, the colonial city, and the one the children talk about afterwards. What each costs and how long it takes.
01The first morningHalf-Day Buggy Tour to Water Cave and Macao BeachBuggies to a freshwater cave, then out onto the Atlantic side at Macao. Book the early slot before the track turns to soup.
02The day on deckSmall-Group Cruising and Snorkeling Catamaran TourA small-group catamaran with a snorkel stop and an open bar. Smaller boat, shorter queue at the ladder.
03The city dayFull-Day Santo Domingo City Tour from Punta CanaSanto Domingo is three hours west and older than anything else in the Americas. One coach a morning, back after dark.
04The one for kidsMonkey Land Half-Day Safari and PlantationSquirrel monkeys land on your shoulders at Monkeyland, then a plantation walk. Half a day, and nobody complains.
Buggy, quad or safari truck. The same red track, three different mornings.
Nearly every visitor here does one of these, and they all run the same cane fields, cave and beach. What changes is what you sit in, how much of the dust you eat, and whether somebody else is driving.
Six places worth leaving the pool for.
The wild beach the buggies run to, an island with no road on it, a cenote under a limestone cap, the oldest colonial quarter in the hemisphere, a market town with a basilica, and the loudest room on the coast. Each one with the best day out in it.
The Punta Cana day that starts at a jetty in Bavaro.
Catamarans out to the Saona sandbar with lunch grilled on board, small-group snorkel cruises over the reef at Cabeza de Toro, and the party boats that leave the marina at eleven and come back sunburnt. Most of the coastline only opens up from the water.
Macao Beach: the half day the whole coast is sold on.
Everything at Macao →
Twenty minutes of red track through cane and coconut, a stop at a cave you can swim in, then a public beach with real Atlantic surf and a fish shack behind it. Three ways to do it, and the difference is mostly what you drive.
Two to a buggy, and you will get filthy
A two-seat dune buggy, a guide in front and a long line of dust behind. Wear what you would throw away. The driver swaps at the cave stop if you ask.
A quad if you would rather not share
Same track, one machine each, and a lot more control on the ruts. Worth the few dollars if you are two adults who both want to drive.
The same beach at walking pace
Horses along the sand instead of engines, usually at the end of the day. It is the version that suits people who came here to hear the sea.
The days out most Punta Cana visitors end up booking.
Every review on the site →The classics, with what each costs and how long it runs. Airport transfers sit in their own list; these are the days out.
1
Private Airport Punta Cana to La Romana Bayahibe or Casa de Campo Resort Area
Meet your Transekur driver inside Punta Cana Airport after customs, then ride privately to La Romana, Bayahibe, or Casa de Campo. You get air-conditioning, Wi-Fi, bottled drinks, help with luggage, and a return pickup planned around your flight.
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
Punta Cana Dune Buggy Adventure and Amazing Water Cave
from $61
6
Half-Day Adventure 4×4 ATV, Water Cave and Dominican Culture
from $64
7
4×4 Dominican Adventure with Chocolate and Coffee Tasting
from $59
8
Saona Island Day Trip From Punta Cana with Lunch and Open Bar
from $82
The water under Punta Cana is colder and clearer than the sea.
Rain drains straight through the limestone here and collects in caves and cenotes a few metres below the coconut groves. Some are a swim stop bolted onto a buggy morning; Hoyo Azul at Scape Park is a walk in and a proper turquoise pool at the bottom.
Every cave and cenote day →
Saona has no road, no resort and one very long sandbar.
The classic is a catamaran out and a speedboat back, with a stop at the Piscina Natural where the water is waist deep a kilometre offshore. Catalina is the quieter reef; Cayo Levantado up in Samana is the one you add when the humpbacks are in.
- 1Catamaran Boat to Saona Island with Buffet Lunchfrom $82
- 2Saona Island Day Trip From Punta Cana with Lunch and Open Barfrom $82
- 3Small Group: Saona Island Full Day Tourfrom $165
What a day out of Punta Cana actually costs.
Every day out on the site, grouped by price. Transfers are left out because they are not a day. A lot of the best mornings here come in under the cost of one resort dinner.
Buggy mornings, cave stops, the market and cigar run into Higuey, and a rum tasting with a pickup.
The standards: the Saona catamaran, a snorkel cruise with an open bar, Santo Domingo, Monkeyland and the zipline circuits.
Private boats, Samana whale trips with the long drive included, and the once-a-holiday charters.
Three things Punta Cana does that nowhere else quite manages.
Beaches and catamarans exist all over the Caribbean. A swimmable cave under a coconut grove, a bottle of bark and honey nobody can quite explain, and a nightclub built like a circus do not.
The Water Caves
The whole eastern tip is old reef pushed up out of the sea, so it is porous, and the rain that falls on it never reaches a river. It sits in caverns under the fields instead. Guides call them cenotes, the locals call them cuevas de agua, and the temperature is a genuine shock after a morning of dust. Most buggy routes include one; take the ladder slowly, the limestone is slick.
- 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
Mamajuana
Every gift shop between here and Higuey sells a bottle of twigs. You are meant to pour rum, red wine and honey over them, leave it a few weeks and drink what comes out. The recipe is Taino in origin, the rum is Dominican, and the claims made for it get bolder as the evening goes on. Tastings usually come bundled with a cigar roller and a cacao press.
- 14×4 Dominican Adventure with Chocolate and Coffee Tasting★★★★★★★★★★ 5.0 · 2,920 reviews
- 24×4 ATV Experience, Water Cave, Chocolate and Coffee Tasting★★★★★★★★★★ 5.0 · 1,430 reviews
- 3Buggy Ride Into the jungle with cave coffee & chocolate tasting★★★★★★★★★★ 5.0 · 465 reviews
Coco Bongo
Not a club so much as a two-hour variety show with a bar attached: aerialists over the dance floor, a Freddie Mercury, confetti cannons, and covers played loud enough to feel. Nothing much happens before eleven and the ticket includes the drinks, which is the whole business model. Book the transfer with it, taxis back at three are their own adventure.
- 1Coco Bongo Nightclub Experience with Transfer★★★★★★★★★★ 4.4 · 459 reviews
- 2Coco Bongo Punta Cana Skip the Line Entrance Ticket★★★★★★★★★★ 4.0 · 362 reviews
- 3Coco Bongo Punta Cana Gold Member Skip the line Entrance Ticket★★★★★★★★★★ 4.0 · 344 reviews
Four Punta Cana bookings that will not wait for you to arrive.
Most things here can be arranged at the hotel desk the night before. These four run on one departure a day, a season, or a queue at the arrivals door, and none of them care what time your flight lands.
- 01Catamaran Boat to Saona Island with Buffet LunchThe island boats leave together in the morning and come back together. Miss the convoy and there is no later one.
- 02Samaná Whale Watching, Bacardi & Limon FallsThe Samana humpbacks are there from mid-January to late March. Outside that window the trip is a bay cruise.
- 03Coco Bongo Nightclub Experience with TransferOne show a night, and the tables with a view of the floor are gone long before the doors open.
- 04Private Punta Cana Airport Transfers Hotels in Dominican RepublicPUJ arrivals is not where you want to start negotiating a fare at midnight with two tired children.
August to October it rains hard, briefly, most afternoons.
The wet months bring a downpour that clears in an hour, and the outside risk of a named storm between August and October. Boats are the first thing cancelled and the buggy tracks turn to clay. Plan the water for the morning, and keep an indoor afternoon in reserve: a rum and cigar tasting, the cacao press, the water cave that is already underground, or a show that does not start until dark.
The ride from the airport is the first thing to sort out.
Punta Cana airport is open-sided, hot, and thirty to ninety minutes from wherever you are staying. Bavaro is close, Uvero Alto and La Romana are not. A private car booked in advance costs less than the desk out front and it is waiting when you land.
By place: the coast, and what is inland of it
By kind of day: wheels, water, culture or a bar
Buggies, a cave, an island, the old city: the week most people end up with.
The water cave
The party boat
Coco BongoThe newest Punta Cana reviews.
The rest of the new ones →
Saona Island Adventure From Punta Cana With Lunch and Transportation
Read our review →
Santo Domingo Historical Tour with Caves from Punta Cana
Read our review →
Punta Cana Panoramic Tour of The City of Santo Domingo
Read our review →
Santo Domingo Tour From Punta Cana – Zona Colonial, Los Tres Ojos
Read our review →
Santo Domingo City Tour From Punta Cana With Pick Up
Read our review →