Santo Domingo, D.R. cave diving
I just completed three days of cave diving in the Dominican Republic with Denis Bouret from Golden Arrow in Santo Domingo and Cristian Pitarro. Denis is a really good guy, picked me up at my hotel and knows the caves well. The three caves I dove were all right in the Santo Domingo area. I wasn’t sure what too expect. I thought maybe it would be similar to Mexico w/ less decoration, but these caves are unique in their own way and stand on their own.
La Cueva Roca is certainly different from any dive location I have ever been to. It primarily serves as a neighborhood disco. The entrance of the cave is used as a disco/swimming pool. The cave is not too decorated, but still nice. It has halocline like Mexico, dark rock and lots of fossilized sponges. When we came up from our dive there was loud music playing and people dropping rum and beer bottles everywhere. It only took about 46 minutes to dive the entire cave, but it was a nice little dive. Water temp not bad (5 mil suit was fine for me). (avg depth 15 m, max depth 25 m)
Cueva Taina is located on a nice property in Santo Domingo, I did three dives there. A really nice dive, a few different tunnels, well decorated, has some really cool air domes that are well decorated and still growing. Different parts of the cave have different colors on the rock, there is a part of the cave where the rock has a pink hue. (max depth 40 m, avg depth between 12-18 m depends on where you go).
Jardin Oreintal is a very cool cave. White limestone, with some huge tunnels you could fly a Cessna through. There was a huge amount of percolation. Like swimming through a vanilla milkshake on the way back. It’s further from the ocean than the other caves and you don’t hit the halocline until about 25 m. (avg depth 16m, max depth 30m) Kind of a pain in the butt to get to, you have to climb down into a dry cave with some pretty good places to break your ankles, but well worth it.
You can’t really hit a lot of caves in a short amount of time like in Mexico. There are a couple parts of the country w/ caves and not very many guides. It’s still not well advertised and not that accessible. If you want to hit a lot of caves, I would arrange with Denis well in advance and he could probably set it up for you, but you would have to be ready to stay in different hotels around the DR or drive a lot. I was content with enjoying the beach and just visiting a few caves around Santo Domingo.
The beach is already packed and last night’s party has rolled over to this morning, music is jamming and butts are shaking, so I have other priorities right now. Happy New Year!
Dave Marlow
Sierra Vista, AZ
